Tens of thousands of students faced more stress this morning as a glitch in UCAS’s system automatically rejected their university offers.

Around 100,000 learners have until midnight today (June 10) to make their decisions through the admissions service’s portal.

But as many as one in five received emails from UCAS in the early hours of this morning telling them that their offers were lost.

UCAS tweeted at 8.36am to assure students the issue was an “error” and that their IT team was working “urgently” to fix the issue.

We’re sorry some offers have been automatically declined in error before the deadline. We’re working to fix this urgently and your offers will be available for you to make your replies shortly. Please be assured you will not be disadvantaged by this error.

— UCAS (@ucas_online) June 10, 2021

But it was met by a barrage of complaints from anxious learners and parents. A-level grades are being awarded through teacher-assessed grades this year, rather than normal exams, owing to multiple lockdowns caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Richard Hiding tweeted: “One very stressed daughter, email received at 1am telling her that all her offers were lost. The icing on a very difficult 18 months.”

Another user called Laila said: “This has caused so much stress. It is very unprofessional to post on Twitter without sending an email at least. What if other undergraduate/postgraduate students do not have a Twitter account. My daughter has been unbelievably stressed and is not doing okay since the morning!!!”

While another, Atif, added: “This gave us a near heart attack this morning as we were shocked to seeing all our offers getting auto declined whereas the deadline is midnight of 10th June.”

Chief operations officer for UCAS, Sander Kristel, initially told FE Week that only a “small percentage” of the 100,000 university-hopefuls had been affected, before clarifying this amounted to around 20,000.

He said the issue was fixed by 9.30am and apologised to those affected, insisting that no student will be disadvantaged by the error.

“Unfortunately, a small percentage of those due to make their decisions today were automatically declined earlier this morning due to a systems error,” he said.

“We have apologised to all affected students and reiterated that our teams are available on the telephone lines and social media to provide support and advice as students make their decisions today.”

Provider-level qualification achievement rates (QARs) will include only some courses in 2020/21, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced.

Only those that are subject to normal assessment will be included, but qualifications that receive teacher-assessed grades will be left out.

The QARs will then be shared with individual providers as well as Ofsted for inspection purposes and deciding which colleges and training providers to visit.

QAR data, which is used to measure providers’ performance and hold them to account, was not produced for the 2019/20 academic year following the Covid-19 outbreak. Providers were not sent the data nor was it shared with the inspectorate.

The ESFA had said earlier this academic year that the data would again not be published in 2020/21, but that it would be shared with providers and Ofsted.

Announcing the decision to exclude teacher-assessed qualifications again, the agency said: “Recognising the ongoing impact of the pandemic and published guidance on the awarding of qualifications for summer 2021, those qualifications confirmed as subject to normal assessment (category A) will be included in institution level QARs and shared with Ofsted and providers.

“Those qualifications confirmed as teacher-assessed (category B1) and those which may be subject to a teacher-assessed grade if they cannot safely access an assessment (category B2 and Access to HE courses regulated by QAA) will not be included in institution level QARs or shared with Ofsted or providers for 2020 to 2021.”

Ofqual has split the awarding of vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) for this year into three broad groups.

Those that are most like GCSEs and A-levels, such as most BTECs, will receive teacher-assessed grades. VTQs that are used for direct entry into employment and demonstrate occupational or professional competence will see their assessments go ahead as planned.

And assessments for VTQs that are unlike GCSEs and A-levels but are still used for progression, such as functional skills and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), should still go ahead. But if this is not possible, they can receive teacher-assessed grades.

The QARs are the percentage of enrolments that are successfully completed and passed in each academic year by providers.

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

The government should pay apprentice wages and fund their full cost of training “for at least a year” if they work for a small or medium-sized employer (SME), an influential MP has said.

Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee and a former skills minister, believes the chancellor’s extra investment for apprentice incentives and kickstart programmes should not have “been given so much to the bigger companies”.

Speaking at today’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference, Halfon said it would have been better targeted at smaller firms and went as far as to call for their apprentices’ wages to be funded.

It echoes a policy proposed by Labour, which wants unspent apprenticeship levy funding to subsidise apprentice wages.

Halfon said: “The number of apprenticeship starts has fallen steadily among all age groups since 2015/16, from 509,000 to 323,000 in 2019/20. That’s an overall decline of 37 per cent. This fall was particularly acute for the most disadvantaged young people aged under 25 who fell by 52 per cent.

“So to support SMEs, we should fund 100 per cent of training costs and salary, at least for the first year of an apprenticeship.”

He added that government should “try and ensure” that every person is given an “apprenticeship guarantee” and “strategically weigh the levy in favour of young people, especially those disadvantaged backgrounds to address the rising unemployment figures in this age group”.

Under chancellor Rishi Sunak’s plan for jobs, the government has offered apprentice incentive payments to all employers since August. The cash bonuses for starting new apprentices currently amount to £3,000 for any age at any employer.

And Sunak is also investing £2 billion in kickstart – a wage-subsidy scheme that allows people aged 16 to 24 who are claiming Universal Credit to take newly created six-month work placements with employers, who will also have their overheads covered.

Kickstart grants for employers can total £6,500.

 

‘Proposals from Halfon and others can make a difference’

Expanding on his call for apprentice wage subsidy for SMEs in a Q&A after his speech, Halfon said: “The money that government has given towards apprenticeships and kickstarter is going to every company whether they’re big or small.

“And I think, they perhaps should not have given so much to the bigger companies and given that money to smaller companies. You’ll be able to give those companies more money than the existing schemes and I think that would have been a bigger incentive for those smaller companies to employ young people and employ apprentices.

“I talked about an apprenticeship guarantee and I think if you gave that incentive to small businesses to do this I think it would make a huge difference. Huge difference. And I suspect that it would be very successful, and they would be able to employ a lot more apprentices than they otherwise might do.”

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie said: “AELP called for wage subsidies early in the pandemic and so we are pleased that the opposition and the education committee chair share similar views.

“We are concerned that young people on kickstart, for example, are not necessarily going to progress on to an apprenticeship and so proposals from Robert Halfon and others can make a difference in giving young people a proper career path instead of a welcome but short-term respite off benefits.”

The head of the government’s careers quango has bemoaned how independent providers have not been given enough access to schools to talk up technical education.

Speaking at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference today, Oli de Botton (pictured, right) committed the Careers and Enterprise Company to this year making sure more students know all the options available to them beyond A-levels.

“It is true historically that there hasn’t been enough access for ITPs or enough information about apprenticeships and technical routes for young people,” the CEC’s chief executive, appointed last October, told delegates.

He promised the company, set up in 2014, would be working “very, very hard this year” to ensure students know all their options as this is important to the government’s levelling up agenda.

“What is very clear is when you do give access to different providers and all the options, young people are more likely to take them,” he added.

His remarks came in response to a question on research by UCAS, released late last month, which revealed one-third of students are not told about apprenticeships.

This is despite secondary schools and colleges in England being legally required to allow other training providers access to their learners to inform them of technical qualifications or apprenticeships.

This is what is known as the Baker Clause – named after its author, former education secretary Lord Kenneth Baker – which became law in 2018, and meant schools and colleges also had to publish statements online outlining how they will comply.

In a report on its research, UCAS stated an ambition to “act as a ‘digital Baker Clause’, providing comprehensive information, advice, and content tools to help students make informed and aspirational choices about the full range of post-secondary options in a single location”.

The Department for Education and its agencies have made several small-scale attempts to enforce compliance with the clause: then-academies minister Lord Agnew fired off letters to headteachers last year, warning them to comply with the legislation.

It followed letters to five academy trusts about non-compliance that were sent out by the DfE in 2019.

In May 2020, Ofsted judged a secondary school to be ‘inadequate’ for “not currently meeting its statutory responsibility to ensure that providers of technical qualifications and apprenticeships visit the school to inform pupils about these options”. FE Week understood this was the first case of a school being pulled up by the inspectorate for failing the Baker Clause.

But the CEC’s own data, published in November, showed just 47 per cent of the more than 2,000 schools in the quango’s careers hubs fully met a target for a “meaningful encounter with providers of the full range of learning opportunities” for staff and students. For those schools not in the hub network, 13 per cent met the target.

In its landmark Skills for Jobs white paper, which formed the basis for the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill currently going through Parliament, the DfE pledged “tougher formal action against non-compliance” with the Baker Clause.

This, the paper published in January said, will be based on a new minimum requirement “about who is to be given access to which pupils and when”. Government-funded careers support for schools will also be made conditional on Baker Clause compliance.

de Botton, himself a former headteacher, did also say today the Careers and Enterprise Company had heard from the schools and colleges that “they are providing more and more access to ITPs, more and more compliance with the Baker Clause”.

In response to de Botton’s comments, a DfE spokesperson said: “It is vital young people are informed about the wide range of options for them to reach their future careers goals.”

A consultation on proposals to “strengthen” the Baker Clause will be conducted in the summer they added, and more details “will be released in due course”.

Training providers will this week warn against new legislation in the Skills Bill that they fear will impose “costly bureaucracy” on the sector.

At its annual conference, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) will highlight an unexpected set of conditions required of independent training providers to be on a new government list of approved providers.

Under the proposals, any provider not on the list will not be granted funding agreements or be allowed to subcontract with another provider who is on the list. It will be additional to the existing register of apprenticeship training providers. 

No consultation has taken place prior to the conditions being included in primary legislation and AELP said this should happen before any new requirements for providers are introduced via regulation.

The association is worried that conditions stipulate providers should take out a potentially expensive form of insurance cover which doesn’t currently exist in the sector. The government’s own impact assessment of the Skills Bill states the new list could impose “significant” extra costs on providers.

 

‘A major rethink is required’

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie (pictured) said her members have been put in a good position to support businesses recover from Covid with extra funding for apprenticeships and traineeships, but what “we don’t need is for them to be saddled with unnecessary and costly bureaucracy which is threatened by the new legislation”.

“A major rethink is required,” she added.

The Skills Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords on 15 June.

AELP’s four-day conference, sponsored by Learning Curve Group and NOCN, will feature keynote speeches from skills minister Gillian Keegan, shadow skills minister Toby Perkins and Commons education committee chair Robert Halfon among many others.

The future of apprenticeships, traineeships, adult education and devolved skills programmes will be discussed by sector leaders, who will also give their verdict on the government’s controversial catch-up funding announcement.

Up to two-thirds of schools and colleges will have to wait until at least next spring to hear if they will receive grant funding for senior staff mental health training, the government has confirmed.

The Department for Education published brief new guidance on Wednesday setting out further details of its pledge to offer every school and college training for a senior mental health lead. The government has announced £9.5 million so far for leads in up to 7,800 schools and colleges.

But training has still not yet begun almost three years after the plans were announced in a 2018 government mental health green paper. The DfE has blamed delays on the 2019 election and Covid.

Here are the key takeaways from the DfE’s latest update to schools and colleges.

 

1. New mental health waitlist for most

The DfE reiterated previous statements that around a third of schools and colleges can benefit in the next year.

But amid widespread frustrations over long waiting lists for other children’s mental health services, most schools and colleges could find themselves on a waiting list too.

The DfE said it would create a “waitlist” for those schools and colleges not approved this year, but schools and colleges will still not be given certainty over provision in future academic years.

The DfE “will confirm future grant funding in the spring of 2022”.

 

2. Training aimed at heads and SLTs

The guidance underlines that funding is primarily aimed at school and college leaders, which could leave some more junior staff with a mental health remit disappointed.

A section on ‘which staff can get the training’ says it is up to schools or colleges, but suggests heads, deputy heads, and members of the senior leadership team.

Existing mental health leads or mental health support team coordinators can be nominated.

But schools and colleges considering appointing staff who are not senior leaders “need to consider whether the individual has the authority, capacity and support to influence and lead strategic change within the setting”.

 

3. ‘Up to £1,200′ for two days’ training

The DfE says schools or colleges “should get up to about £1,200,” but will have to wait until the autumn term to find out exactly how much.

Training should be “approximately two working days”, depending on specific learning needs and types of course.

 

4. Colleges able to sign up ‘soon’

The DfE promises more information “soon” on its new senior mental health lead guidance page about how schools and colleges can sign up for any training from September.

But training providers have still not yet been invited to submit their senior lead training offers for quality assurance, and the DfE’s criteria for this assurance will only be published “in the summer”.

A list of approved courses will then be published in September, suggesting training is unlikely to start immediately in the next academic year.

 

5. Focus on ‘whole school or college approach’ to mental health

The DfE makes clear the funding is not compulsory, but designed to give schools and colleges the knowledge and skills to develop a “holistic”, “whole school or college” approach to promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing.

It says a “coordinated and evidence-informed approach” improves pupil emotional health and readiness to learn. Funding is to go towards both training and hiring supply to cover staff while away.