Around £240 million could be freed up in the apprenticeship budget if the government goes ahead with plans to remove level 7 apprenticeships from levy funding, data suggests.
Spending figures on master’s-level apprenticeships were released in response to a parliamentary question in the House of Commons this week.
When the apprenticeship levy launched in 2017-18, just £12 million was spent on the controversial apprenticeships. This figure rocketed to £238 million in 2023-24.
Although spending on level 7 apprenticeships has stagnated for the past three years, it accounts for around 10 percent of the Department for Education’s overall apprenticeship budget.
Ministers are working on plans to remove level 7 apprenticeships from the scope of levy funding because the budget is at breaking point and forecast to soon go overspent, largely due to the rise in higher-level apprenticeships which are the most expensive to deliver.
The cash freed up from defunding level 7s will aid Labour’s plan to expand the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy that funds a wider range of training programmes.
Level 7 apprenticeship starts are dominated by the accountancy or taxation professional and senior leader standards. But other popular programmes include advanced clinical practitioner, solicitor, academic professional, chartered town planner, district nurse and community nurse specialist practitioner.
Supporters of the courses claim most level 7 apprentices are under the age of 25 and hail from the public sector, with the NHS and councils set to be significantly impacted.
Ministers claim that if employers truly value level 7 apprenticeships they will continue to fund the programmes themselves.
The Association of Employers and Learning Providers insists the level 7 axe can be avoided if the £800 million gap between the amount employers pay into the levy and the government-set apprenticeship budget is plugged.
The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that £4 billion will be raised in apprenticeship levy receipts by UK companies in 2024-25.
Yet the DfE’s ring-fenced budget to fund apprenticeships in England is £2.73 billion, while the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland receive around £500 million between them.
Ben Rowland, AELP CEO, said: “If the government is going to proceed down this route – and we don’t think it should – it must do so in a way that employers can understand and work with. This means phasing in any changes over time to prevent sudden cliff edges.
“There is a real chance that in its blunt efforts to make employers invest more in training, the government actually achieves the opposite: employers, frustrated by yet another shift in the goalposts, could well turn their back on training, rather than leaning into it.”
Dozens of colleges that threatened to take awarding body Pearson to court over this summer’s GCSE English resit controversy have ditched their legal action.
Luminate Education Group led the charge for a judicial review on behalf of 31 colleges that signed a collective complaint in August and sent a pre-action protocol legal letter a month later.
But following crunch talks last week, the colleges dropped the litigation after deciding a “long legal battle would not serve students’ interest”.
The row stems from what the colleges claimed was an “unprecedented” 11-mark increase in the grade boundary needed for a grade 4 ‘pass’ in Pearson’s GCSE English language 2.0 exam.
Teachers and leaders said the “shock” hike, which was communicated just a day before results day in August, caused lower-than-expected pass rates and left thousands of borderline students who were predicted to pass distraught.
In one case, a Luminate student scored 54 marks with Pearson in 2023 and improved to 80 marks in 2024 but still only achieved a grade 3.
Pearson apologised for the poor timing of communication and explained the significant grade boundary rise was necessary to bring the qualification “in line with the national GCSE English Language standard”.
The awarding giant did offer a 15 per cent rebate to affected colleges for 2023-24 entries – which would have cost Pearson hundreds of thousands of pounds – and offered free-of-charge re-marks which usually cost almost £50 per paper.
After taking legal advice, Luminate took the view that a judicial review would have resulted in a ruling that Pearson acted “unlawfully and unfairly”.
But following a meeting with Pearson last week, the group, which is made up of six colleges in Yorkshire and had the largest number of entries to Pearson’s 2.0 exam, said a legal victory would “not change anything in a positive way for students or colleges”.
Instead, Luminate and Pearson have “agreed to work together and campaign for positive change that will help create a better system”.
Luminate CEO Colin Booth told FE Week his team was “as certain as we could be” that a judge would find in favour of the colleges but there was “nothing we could ask for in terms of redress of that, that a court was likely to force to happen”.
Any judicial review would have been carried over to next year, and the ideal outcome, a change in students’ grades, would be unlikely.
Booth said the collective college complaint has always been about the “wider impact” it could have by sparking a national debate on the flaws in the resits policy. He wants awarding bodies to develop new GCSE English and maths qualifications specifically targeted at post-16 students who are forced to resit if they fail to achieve a grade 4 ‘pass’ at school.
Over 86 per cent (41,268) of the 47,819 students who took the Pearson 2.0 GCSE English examination in summer 2024 were aged 17 or older.
Raising the grade 4 ‘pass’ boundary by 11 marks reduced the grade 4 ‘pass’ rate by 16.7 percentage points, moving from 37.4 per cent in summer 2023 to 20.7 per cent. The change left many students, the majority of which were taught within colleges, a whole grade poorer than if they had sat the exam in 2023.
Colleges believe Pearson’s decision to move the goalposts was the dominant reason behind an overall drop in post-16 GCSE English pass rates. Results day revealed that 20.9 per cent of the 148,569 England-based students resitting their English language GCSE achieved a grade 4 pass, five percentage points lower than in 2023.
Booth said: “Pearson’s English 2.0 qualification highlights an assessment system simply not built in the interests of further education colleges or our students.
“We would like national policy to support a post-16 GSCE English qualification that would likely feature modular assessment rather than summative, with less creative writing and more focus on practical English skills for the workplace and for life skills. The same design principles should also be applied to creating a post-16 GCSE maths qualification.”
A spokesperson for Pearson said: “We apologise for not clearly communicating to schools and colleges during the 2023-2024 academic year the fact that grade boundaries may change – sometimes significantly – and for the impact this had on students, educators, parents, and guardians on results day.”
Pearson agreed it is “evident” the current resits policy is “not meeting the needs of many students and we need a new approach”.
David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “The increase in the grade boundary by Pearson between 2023 and 2024 resulted in many students improving their performance but failing to achieve the much-coveted grade 4.
“The increase should have been communicated far earlier so that colleges and students could understand where the achievement bar was for 2024.
“I applaud Luminate for pursuing this with the other colleges, and also for stepping back now to focus on the needs of future learners.”
The government is currently running an independent curriculum and assessment review led by Becky Francis, who is expected to recommend changes to resit rules.
Most of us are familiar with the term racism, but how many of us are aware of racial fatigue? The idea refers to the emotional and psychological toll experienced by individuals who face racism and discrimination throughout their lives – personal and professional.
Racial fatigue is not just about isolated incidents, but rather the ongoing exposure to systemic racism, microaggressions and bias. This chronic exposure can lead to feelings of exhaustion, frustration and even trauma.
Dr. Rita Kohli’s book, Teachers of Color: Resisting Racism and Reclaiming Education explores how culturally diverse teachers continue to face negative racial experiences daily – experiences that mirror the racial trauma they endured as children.
This doesn’t just come from students but from colleagues as well, exacerbating their racial stress and increasing what is known as ‘racial battle fatigue’, a term first coined by Professor William A. Smith in 2003.
It is important to understand that racism often affects individuals from childhood through to adulthood. Experiences of racism during formative years can shape one’s perception of self-worth, belonging and potential.
Staff who experienced racism when they were younger may find themselves facing the same issues repeatedly as they enter education or the workforce.
There are many different types of racist behaviour and attitudes in the workplace. These include microaggressions, code-switching, being overlooked for jobs (despite being more than qualified), being excluded from key conversations, being treated ruthlessly or unfairly when mistakes are made (compared to other colleagues), and being invisible when things go right and yet hyper-visible when things go wrong.
Cumulatively, any number of these can lead to racial battle fatigue, whereby staff invest a significant amount of time and energy into thinking about and dealing with racism.
In turn, this can manifest itself in a wide range of negative reactions and emotions including hypervigilance (sometimes called the “superhero syndrome”), lowered aspirations, self-censorship, isolation, social withdrawal, exhaustion, anxiety, frustration, anger or anger suppression, helplessness, hopelessness and depression.
It is essential to acknowledge the lifelong burden that racism imposes on ethnically diverse individuals so that we can create a safe and inclusive environment that recognises and addresses their negative lived experiences.
Here are some tips for how to do exactly that.
Education and awareness
Provide cultural awareness and anti-racism training to all staff to promote understanding of and empathy towards different experiences and perspectives. Senior leaders should take this seriously and role-model inclusive behaviour in their communication with staff and students.
Open dialogue
Encourage open and honest conversations about race, racism and discrimination, creating a safe space for employees to share their experiences and concerns without fear of repercussions.
Support networks
Establish employee resource groups or affinity networks to provide a sense of community and support for ethnically diverse staff, and safe spaces for students.
Review policies and practices
Regularly assess and update policies to ensure they are inclusive and free from bias, promoting equal opportunities for all employees and students. (Compliance does not always translate into a culture of psychological safety.)
Mentorship and sponsorship
Encourage programmes that support the career growth and development of ethnically diverse employees. Also consider reverse mentoring to enhance leaders’ personal understanding of these issues.
Celebrate diversity
Recognising and mark cultural events and holidays to foster a sense of belonging and appreciation for different backgrounds. This should be done sincerely, not just by publicising certain groups during specific times (like Black History Month) but throughout the year as an ongoing process.
In addition, Dr Kohli provides the following useful list of questions for managers and leaders to consider:
What kinds of contributions are you expecting from teachers of colour, and how do those expectations differ from your expectations for white teachers?
How do you communicate your trust and value of teachers of colour? Do you listen to their insights and understandings?
How do you invest in the growth, leadership and vision of teachers of colour? Do you (materially) recognise their unique assets and strengths through compensation, in formal evaluations and in leadership opportunities?
By understanding the manifestations of racial fatigue and implementing inclusive practices, managers can actively combat it and create an environment where all students and employees feel valued, supported and empowered.
The labour market is in the middle of a critical transformation towards sustainable economic growth and productivity. Labour’s industrial strategy and its curriculum and assessment review both highlight the centrality of skills to achieving its missions for government, but which skills? And how?
Among the many sectors experiencing shortfalls of essential skills in the workforce and growing skills gaps, construction and infrastructure play a particularly crucial role in the central initiative to ‘get Britain building again’.
The Federation for Master Builders reports that we need over 240,000 workers in construction over the next four years to meet demand. This severe shortage of skilled workers is placing an increasing burden on economic growth targets and national projects.
But focusing on technical skills will not be enough.
What skills?
Essential skills like problem-solving, teamwork and communication are equally important. In fact, people with higher levels of essential skills experience improved social mobility, employment, earnings and greater job and life satisfaction.
They also work as a platform for developing other skills such as literacy and numeracy, as well as technical skills. Overlooking them means overlooking a key driver of growth and productivity, with an estimated cost in 2022 of £22.2 billion.
We know that those from more disadvantaged backgrounds tend to have fewer opportunities to acquire and demonstrate essential skills, so they’re as important for social mobility as for economic growth.
Boosting productivity involves employers playing their part to develop essential skills in the workforce.
But how? Here are two companies that demonstrate the key elements of a successful approach.
Staff development
Amey, an infrastructure company, started using the Skills Builder Partnership’s Universal Framework in its apprenticeship and graduate programme in 2022.
A series of ten workshops initially supported employees to understand essential skills, identify their strengths and areas for development using the framework, and set actionable goals for improvement.
Amey has since trained line managers across the business to support their teams, enabling them to coach apprentices and graduates in essential skills. It has also integrated reflective practice into formal review processes.
The programme has received overwhelmingly positive feedback and staff report meaningful progress in essential skills development.
Prioritising problem-solving, collaboration and communication in a supportive environment is allowing Amey to address immediate skills gaps and increasing the adaptability and resilience of its workforce.
Recruitment processes
At Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, using the framework to recruit early-career roles widened the talent pool and improved the quality of candidate applications.
As a first step, we worked with the company to pinpoint the key skills required for success in various roles, particularly apprenticeships. We then supported them to reframe requirements using the framework to clearly articulate the desired essential skills.
With job descriptions now appealing to a wider talent pool, Morgan Sindall Infrastructure then used the framework throughout the recruitment process to inform group exercises, presentations and interview questions, ensuring a consistent approach to candidate evaluation, benchmarking and feedback.
Since embedding essential skills into their recruitment processes, the organisation has experienced a 170-per cent increase in candidates deemed suitable for roles, as well as greater applicant diversity.
So embedding essential skills is not only transformative for recruitment but it also unlocks the untapped potential of huge numbers of previously excluded potential recruits.
Long-term investment
The challenge of skills shortages in these industries is not one that can be solved overnight, and the government’s commitment to increase Britain’s building and infrastructure capacity can only be realised if we have the workforce to support it.
To truly unleash the potential of the construction and infrastructure sectors to drive our national economic recovery, government and employers alike must invest in essential skills.
Employers adopt the Universal Framework in staff development, supporting their adaptability in an evolving economy. They also use it to recruit workers with the skills they need, reaping the benefits of a wider talent pool.
As to government, it must not lose sight of what have often been dismissively dubbed in education as ‘soft skills’. They are, in fact, essential, and young people should be developing them long before they reach the workplace.
If we want to ensure infrastructure projects are delivered on time and to the highest standards, and if we want to set the country on a path to long-term prosperity, essential skills are… well… essential.
The government’s Get Britain Working white paper rightly focuses on tackling economic inactivity, particularly among young people. It reflects years of work to identify the causes of and solutions to youth unemployment, but will it be enough?
With NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) levels nearly reaching the one million mark and youth confidence plummeting, as highlighted in our Youth Voice Census, the proposed Youth Guarantee (offering a job, training or apprenticeship within six months) is a crucial intervention.
Youth Employment UK has been at the forefront of advocating for comprehensive youth employment support for 12 years. Our research, particularly our work with the Youth Employment Group, has directly contributed to shaping national policy discussions on youth unemployment. Seeing this commitment reflected in the paper is a testament to the collective efforts of those dedicated to improving the prospects of young people.
Being NEET is more than just a statistic; it’s a complex problem with far-reaching consequences for both individuals and society. The reasons behind this rise are varied. They range from economic challenges, mental health struggles, and lack of access to quality education or job opportunities, to regional disparities.
Therefore, it is positive to see the white paper acknowledge the magnitude of different causes of youth unemployment and prioritise preventative measures early on in a young person’s life. These include offering work experience and careers advice, tackling persistent absence, improving access to mental health services and trialling the development of transition plans.
We know spending any time NEET when you’re young has a detrimental impact on young people’s future employment prospects. Therefore, the Youth Guarantee is a fundamental step in ensuring young people begin their careers on the right footing.
Recognising this guarantee must translate into quality opportunities that lead to sustainable careers and genuine social mobility. To that end, it is encouraging that the white paper is taking a cross-departmental approach, particularly on joining up national and local efforts.
The eight trailblazers announced this week will test and pilot a collaborative, cross-sector effort that will bring together employers, education providers and young people to provide quality pathways for all. This is welcome.
It must translate into quality opportunities for all young people
However, while the white paper acknowledges the complexity of the problem and the breadth of necessary solutions, the current Youth Guarantee is narrow and could potentially exclude young people during key transition points aged 24 and under.
For young people excluded from the guarantee (which promises only to focus on 18- to 21-year-olds), the consequences are severe. Becoming or remaining NEET at any young age can impact mental health and future earning potential.
Meanwhile, the trailblazers are currently planned to be trialled in mayoral authorities that currently serve only 48 per cent of England’s population. This will exclude many areas with high youth unemployment and deprivation rates.
While we look forward to seeing the evidence from the trailblazers, we hope their expansion will happen sooner rather than later and be carefully considered to ensure inclusivity.
Youth Employment UK is driven by social value. For 12 years, we have led the way in bringing youth and employer voice and insight together and in connecting quality opportunities through our digital offer. We believe that investing in young people is not just an economic imperative, but a moral one.
As such, we see a successful Youth Guarantee not only as an important tool to reduce youth unemployment but also a vital contribution to a fairer and more prosperous society.
This week’s Get Britain Working white paper provides a strong foundation to meet those objectives. Now, it’s time to turn ambition into action. As it does so, we urge the government to continue to work closely with organisations like ours, education providers, employers, and – importantly – young people themselves.
For this guarantee to deliver a brighter future for the next generation, it must meet the complexity of the problem with inclusivity, and its local manifestations with nationwide endeavour.
A new government brings a flurry of white papers and policy announcements. The latest is the Get Britain Working white paper, aiming to increase employment. A key plank is a new Youth Guarantee, so all 18-21 year olds are offered help to find a job, training or apprenticeship.
There’s almost one million 16-24 year olds not in education, employment or training (NEET), a number which has risen since the pandemic. This is a disaster in waiting, as being out of work or education when young can do long-term damage to your pay and job prospects.
While everyone can agree we need to do better, some have criticised the government for being high on rhetoric but low on action.
It’s true that there isn’t much new money committed or any big, shiny new initiatives announced. But the last thing we need is yet another initiative, and what looks shiny at first glance often seems less so over time.
The problem we’ve had isn’t too few initiatives; it’s the lack of a plan.
The government’s idea is that metro mayors and other local leaders should get everyone round the table and agree a plan for how we’re going to contact every young person in an area and what we’re going to offer them.
That should include making sure young people are offered the best help for them, referring them to the agency best placed to help even if it’s not yourself.
That’s a good idea, though we need to make sure those plans have bite – that providers and stakeholders are required to stick to the plan and that we don’t have other government departments pulling rank and preventing true collaboration and different ways of working.
And of course there’s a risk we have too many plans: growth plans, get Britain working plans, skills improvement plans, etc – when what we need is a little less conversation, a little more action.
So I hope local leaders will focus on the action part of action plans. If we do that, we can help more young people with the resources we already have.
The Youth Guarantee gives us a hook to make our case
But a guarantee is no good if there aren’t enough good jobs, training places or apprenticeship opportunities.
The government’s aiming to encourage more employers to offer young people a chance, but that will require the economy to grow faster than the rubbish pace we’ve got used to since 2008 (another key government mission).
We’re also expecting more details on how they intend to reform the apprenticeship system to encourage more apprenticeships for young people starting their career. This is a sensible move given the disastrous fall in youth apprenticeships since 2017.
Will empowering mayors and reforming apprenticeship funding be enough? In truth, probably not.
I hope the government will look at raising funding for further education, how changes in benefit rules could help young people combine flexible learning with job search, and a Kickstart-style job subsidy scheme for those who find it toughest to find work.
Those are all decisions for next year’s spending review. While that doesn’t look promising (budget figures suggest less money for areas like skills and employment support, not more), the government’s commitment to the Youth Guarantee gives us a hook to make the case for what we need to make it a reality.
A final plea from me though. It’s great we have a Youth Guarantee, but can we please make it 16-24 year olds rather than 18-21 year olds? That would give us a chance to build a more joined-up transition from education to work.
Only 5 per cent of 16- and 17-year-olds are NEET, but that’s 5 per cent too many and has consequences for them for years to come. Let’s not forget them too.
The ultimate measure of success is whether NEET rates go down, and whether young people spend a shorter amount of time NEET. The ultimate prize is young people being prepared for their futures, employers better able to meet their needs and an economy that’s growing again.
And reaching that prize is the best argument for making the most of a further education system that is brilliantly placed to make the difference.
Hordes of teachers descended upon the Department for Education today to protest the government’s pay award snub to colleges.
More than 2,000 members of the National Education Union (NEU) working in sixth form colleges across the country walked out this afternoon in the first of three proposed days of striking.
Ministers and civil servants heard loud chants and speeches from a crowd of unionised teachers protesting outside the Department for Education’s headquarters calling for funding for the 5.5 per cent pay award to apply to the non-academised sixth form college sector.
Teachers gathered on the pavement opposite Sanctuary Buildings chanting, “What do we want? Fair pay. When do we want it? Now,” and loudly booed mentions of education secretary Bridget Phillipson and skills minister Jacqui Smith.
It marks the first national walk out by education staff since the general election.
The strike stems from the summer announcement that schools and academised sixth form colleges would receive £1.2 billion to fund a 5.5 per cent pay rise for 2024/25. But standalone sixth form colleges and further education colleges would be excluded from the deal.
Government officials are under pressure from sixth form college bosses to U-turn on the decision after the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) launched a judicial review against DfE’s “sickening” decision.
Smith maintains she made the FE pay case “strongly” to the Treasury before the Autumn budget and agreed that FE and school teacher pay should match.
NEU members are set to strike again on December 3 and 4 if DfE does not resolve the dispute.
Daniel Kebede, NEU general secretary, said the strike could have been “easily averted”.
“It’s shameful that you are going into Christmas with 0 per cent as your pay award at the moment,” he told strikers.
He added: “It is small beer we are asking for. £15 million. That’s not what we’re asking for, that’s what the SFCA is asking for.”
NEU post-16 representative Duncan Blackie outside DfE HQ
NEU post-16 representative Duncan Blackie told the crowd that the sixth form sector faces becoming “two-tiered” if DfE does not settle the dispute soon.
“Colleges that are represented here will be emptied in years to come, because the pay difference [with schools] is so, so enormous,” he said.
He urged the SFCA and the Association of Colleges to tell colleges to pay the award, funded or not.
“Don’t mess about. We want the government to tell you to pay the money, but if they don’t, then pay the money. You can resolve this dispute as well,” he said.
Teachers told FE Week that their employers have empathised with workers over the snub.
“They’re just as frustrated as we are,” said Graham Childs, head of BTEC law at Peter Symonds College.
“They know that the SFCA want to make a pay award, but without the promise of extra money, the only way to do that will mean to make shortages elsewhere. We don’t want to see our pay rise funded by redundancies of other staff.”
‘We expected better of a Labour government’
Kebede added that the strike was also about reversing the “deep, severe” recruitment crisis in sixth form college sector.
“This is about turning the tide on a direction of travel that seeks to erode and privatise education,” he told the crowd.
Earlier this month, NEU achieved a 97 per cent vote in favour of striking from 32 of the 39 colleges balloted.
Sixth form teachers told FE Week they assumed the DfE originally made an error by excluding them but given it has not rectified the oversight, it could “potentially” be a tactic to force sixth form colleges to academise.
“That’s something even the Tories didn’t try to do,” Ian Morton, accounting teacher at WQE and Regent College in Leicester. “We just expected better of a Labour government. No Labour government worthy of the name performs actions like this.”
“It must be by design and it’s just really sickening,” Childs added.
I'm outside the Department for Education offices in the heart of Westminster where non-academised sixth form teachers are striking after the government snubbed them from the schoolteacher 5.5% pay rise pic.twitter.com/A4dUNeRy4F
In classrooms and community centres across the UK, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses are a lifeline to migrants and refugees whose potential is trapped behind a language barrier.
Those charged with unlocking that potential must deliver the curriculum intelligently and sensitively. Their classrooms have to be sanctuaries, and their methods as diverse as the backgrounds of learners in front of them.
ESOL teachers, such as Sam Pepper, don’t just teach the language; they actively support learners in establishing themselves in the UK despite underfunded services and a sometimes hostile atmosphere.
His success as an advanced learning practitioner at Camden Town’s WM College, including designing an ESOL IT course to give learners computer skills, earned him the ‘inspirational tutor of the year’ gong at the Mayor of London adult learning awards.
He tells Jessica Hill what a busy Monday looks like for him.
Sam Pepper reading his Russian language book
7am
I wake and have coffee with my wife who, like me, has a passion for languages.
She’s from Tajikistan, where they speak Tajik Farsi (Persian), and Russian because they were part of the Soviet Union. I’m trying to learn both, and Uzbek, her dad’s language.
I also speak French and I’m an Arabic translator, although translating jobs are scarce.
I’m very much a Londoner, and my grandfather was a tradesman in Camden. Many people travel overseas to make an impact on the world, but I’m proud to work in the place where my family are from.
9am
I cycle to Camden’s Gospel Oak Primary School as part of our community outreach work to teach an ESOL IT class with mums of pupils. These classes are for the hardest-to-reach learners who need English language and digital skills but may not have the family circumstances or self-confidence to come to our college. For them, the school is a familiar place.
Learners come from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt and Venezuela. Our aim is to build their confidence to support them with their ESOL journey.
At first, they were unsure about having a male teacher, so it took me time to build rapport. Because my wife is from a Muslim background, I have a good knowledge of that aspect of their culture, which helped me build trust. In my job you have to appreciate cultural sensitivities.
The course was hard to teach initially because of the two-factor authentication you need on phones to log in, then it’s tricky accessing Microsoft Teams and Office 365. Now we’ve got going I enjoy seeing their progress.
WM College
11.30am
I cycle on to WM College to teach a self-study workshop, which is a chance to teach learners about the computer and phone tools they can use to study at home.
At school, I was told to sit down, be quiet and work hard, but if I emulated that teaching style in adult education it wouldn’t work. I treat people as equals, empathising with their abilities and inabilities. If they can’t do a task, I ask what I can do to support them.
That’s doubly true with people who sometimes don’t know how to use a mouse.
Our ESOL learners, by and large, have had a difficult struggle to be where they are today. I learn about the human condition working with people from diverse backgrounds, and my patience has improved 100-fold since I started working here.
Our Afghan learners in pre-entry classes are often women who were unable to attend school as children. They’re not just learning English; they’re also learning how to organise their time, how to use a pen and paper and how to formulate letters.
Teaching literacy is totally different to the training I’ve received through my English teaching qualifications, which are all about language acquisition and communicative language teaching. I was out of my depth at first – you need a lot of patience to help people formulate letters when they don’t necessarily have the motor skills to write.
One Afghani learner, a mum of five in her 40s with no education background, has come to classes for two years. She’s super persistent. We’ve never had a conversation of more than three words but I like to think her inclusion is progress.
Our classrooms are quite unique human creations. We live in one of the most diverse cities on earth, but having all those people vulnerably share a space in a room is unusual and special. It’s an inclusive space.
Sam Pepper teaching a digital skills ESOL class
12pm
I have my weekly catch-up meeting with my line manager, Felix, who, like me, is interested in language generally and in social inclusion and community learning.
Like many ESOL teachers, I learned the craft because I wanted to travel the world. After graduating from the University of Essex with a degree in history and politics and teaching English for six months in India, I got my Celta (certificate in teaching English to speakers of other languages) in Prague before working for the British Council in Cairo for five years.
Cairo is a chaotic, lively place where people constantly communicate with each other, making it easier to pick up Arabic quickly.
I started teaching at WM College in 2021. Although the name stands for Working Men’s College, nowadays, 70 per cent of our learners are women, so there is a discussion about changing it.
12.30pm
I run an optional book club where learners read chapters of graded reader books. Then we meet and talk about the vocabulary themes. We’re currently reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Noughts and Crosses by Valerie Blackman last Black History Month didn’t go down well with some of my Ukrainian learners, who requested we read something happier!
The best way to teach language is to boost autonomous self-study, so the purpose behind the club is that learning also takes place when they’re at home.
Sam Pepper at WM College
1.15pm
I have seafood rice for lunch, which I made with my wife yesterday. Learners always say hello when they see me at lunchtime, but I avoid detailed conversations because I don’t want to break boundaries.
Over lunch I see unlikely friendships forming between people from very different cultures. In one class, a learner from Venezuela gets along really well with a Syrian lady. Although both have very limited English, they support each other a lot.
Sometimes learners who speak the same language prefer to sit together in class, but I try to pair stronger and weaker learners to support each other.
Learners sometimes stop me and ask for recommendations for British restaurants. I’ve told them that British restaurants are everywhere because our cuisine is international – although I also tell them about the nearby pie and mash shop which only takes cash.
2.30pm
I have an online class with level-1 learners, who join me from home.
All our learners are given a form at the beginning of the term, asking them about their education background, first language, interests and employment plans. That helps me work out what learners are into, and what they want to focus on.
The more I can stimulate class communication, the more their learning cements. So, I’ll show learners pictures from my own life, for example of my brother, who works in a music shop with his cat. My other brother is 12, which challenges their views of what a nuclear family should be.
Real life works better than a canned EFL textbook, which is often not well-pitched to learners’ lives.
Sam Pepper teaching a class
3.30pm
I spend time preparing classes for tomorrow. I look at my scheme of work – the bigger picture of what I’m teaching, with a weekly theme – and think about what we did last lesson, what we need to recap and who struggled.
I also try to develop individualised material to motivate my learners.
I recently taught a lesson on Donald Trump. We didn’t talk about the US election result but looked at his biography. Learners really want to express their opinions, and there are some honest and sometimes amusing comments from people which it’s important to hear.
Last week I prepared a reading task on environmental issues, drawn from press articles. I used AI to adjust the language level to grade it to our learners. The articles were about Amazon rainforest deforestation, high levels of a dangerous particle in Honduras, and climate activists in Munich banned from protesting. They read the articles in groups, then fed back and presented to each other.
I use AI more and more. It saves me about two hours a week in preparation time. It’s good for summarising information, but if you ask it to pick out 10 language items in a text, it will give you 14. So you really need to check it.
We try to bring in as much cultural learning to lessons as possible – what the government calls ‘British values’. Many ESOL teachers are critical of that label because these are shared values for everyone. But some cultural knowledge is important. I recently planned a lesson on Bonfire Night. Learners who didn’t know about it might have been shocked by the noises coming from outside their window, so providing that knowledge was helpful.
I taught about Armistice Day as a factual lesson and as a chance for my learners to reflect on their own histories and how war has affected everyone’s lives, while also being sensitive to avoid triggering people.
Sam Pepper preparing for a lesson on Bonfire Night
4pm
I was asked to write a job reference for one of my learners who has applied for a volunteer shop assistant role at Mind. I suggested he write on the application form about why mental health is important to him. He’s a really optimistic guy who is one of several refugee learners who has slept rough on the streets.
We take safeguarding seriously at the college, so these things are escalated, and we try to provide as much guidance as possible.
We try to empower learners to use English to help themselves, but in difficult safeguarding situations where they don’t have the fluency, I step in to interpret.
5pm
After work, I’llgo for a swim in the local lido or do some yoga.
After eating some chicken soup for dinner, I’ll sometimes watch The Big Bang Theory on TV with my wife – she likes it, but it’s not really my cup of tea.
Then I’llread a book in Arabic or Russian to relax before sleep. Tomorrow I have an evening seminar at SOAS university, so I’m thinking about how to prepare for that.
It’s a busy life, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sam Pepper in the library at WM College
If you have a suggestion for a future day in the life of article, email jessica.hill@educationscape.com
There was a miniscule rise in apprenticeship starts last year, including in the number of young people for the third consecutive year.
However, as level 2 apprenticeships declined further, starts on higher-level programmes continued to grow.
And Multiverse delivered the second-highest number of starts last year, jumping two spaces in the top 10 provider league table.
Here’s your roundup of full-year 2023/24 apprenticeships data.
Level 2s are half what they were
Overall apprenticeship starts were up a paltry 0.7 per cent compared to the previous year, representing an increase of 2,440 and bringing the total for 2023/24 to 339,580.
Although that seems small, it’s only the second time in five years that apprenticeship starts have increased.
Following the trend of previous years, declining intermediate-level starts were offset by the rising popularity of higher-level apprenticeships.
Six years ago, nearly two in five apprenticeship starts were at intermediate level. Now it is one in five. Higher-level apprenticeships made up 36 per cent of starts last year, up from 19 per cent six years ago.
The number of young people aged under 19 has crept up slightly for the third year in a row. There were 78,930 young starters last year, which was 23.2 per cent of the overall total, up 0.1 percentage points from 2022/23. While it’s not bad news, the proportion of young people starting apprenticeships has still not recovered from pre-pandemic levels.
Nearly 20,000 more young people started apprenticeships in 2018 than in 2023. Labour said it plans to reverse this decline by diverting spending from level 7 apprenticeships and introducing new foundation apprenticeships.
On the level
Stats for last year show small rises in apprenticeship starts at every level above level 3.
At level 7, 23,860 people started an apprenticeship last year, up from 21,760 the previous year. As a proportion, level 7 apprenticeships coincidentally made up 7 per cent of overall starts, up 0.5 percentage points.
But there was a near-2 percentage point drop in level 2 apprenticeships. The decline here over time is substantial. Over 20,600 fewer level two apprenticeship starts were made last year than two years ago.
Early years educator, a level 3 standard, was the most popular apprenticeship for the second year in a row overall with 15,300 starts.
Two level 7 apprenticeships, accountancy and senior leader, maintained their places in the top 10.
In fact, there were 1,000 more apprentice senior leaders in 2023/24 than the previous year. And new apprentice solicitors nearly doubled, from 780 starts in 2022/23 to 1,350 in 2023/24.
Ministers insist that if employers value these level 7 programmes, they will self-fund them when levy funding is removed.
For under 19s, the level 3 business administrator was again the most popular apprenticeship with 4,800 starts (down from 4,990 the year before). Early years educator, hairdressing professional and installation and maintenance electrician were the next most popular for young people.
Two-thirds independent
Independent training providers increased their market share of apprenticeship starts last year, now delivering over two-thirds (66.7 per cent).
Further education colleges saw their share drop slightly from 17.4 percent to 17.2 percent. Back in 2018/19, a quarter of apprenticeships were started by FE colleges.
Apprenticeship starts in the “other” category, which includes higher education institutions and local authorities, also dropped slightly; by one percentage point.
The proportion of starts in schools, sixth-form colleges and specialist colleges remained stable at 0.1 per cent, 0.1 per cent and 0.7 per cent, respectively.
There was also a consistent proportion of apprenticeships that were funded by the levy, 68 per cent, suggesting small and medium-sized businesses are still struggling to boost their numbers.
Into the Multiverse
Lifetime Training remained untouchable at the top spot in our analysis of overall starts by training provider. Even though they started 660 fewer apprentices than in 2022/23, the training giant still clocked up 16,330 last year.
Our analysis of training providers with the most apprentice starts last year shows Multiverse jumped from fourth to second, increasing their annual intake from 5,770 to 7,910.
Multiverse displaced the British Army, which dropped to third, and BPP Professional Education, which dropped to fourth.
Corndel climbed to fifth with 6,780 starts, 1,540 more than the year before.
The only new entry to the top 10 was Marr Corporation, placing tenth with 4,130 starts.
