The skills minister has said she is “hopeful” the list of free, first, full level 3 qualifications being funded as part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee will be published next month. 

Speaking at an FE Week roundtable today, Gillian Keegan was asked when providers and learners can find out which courses they could start from next April with backing from the National Skills Fund. 

“We’re hoping that we can give you some more information in the next couple of months, and hopefully by November, so that’s what we’re kind of working to,” she said. 

This comes after prime minister Boris Johnson announced in September the government would expand on its current offering of a first, full level 3 qualification for learners up to the age of 23, so adults of any age could take advantage of the offer. 

The Department for Education said at the time: “We will set out details of courses next month [October].” 

The ESFA’s online “list of qualifications approved for funding”, which can be downloaded from gov.uk, contains 13,628 qualifications, FE Week analysis previously found.

More than 4,300 of those are at level 3, and 1,249 of that group are eligible for the legal entitlement, making them already fully-fundable for 19- to 23-year-olds via the adult education budget. 

Keegan told the roundtable the qualifications have to be high-quality, have the respect of business, and address a “wide range” of labour shortages. 

“So if you are working on something which every year has loads of people going off into great jobs because the businesses in that sector really, really value that qualification, those are the kind of ones that we will be focusing on, presuming they are in areas we have labour shortages,” she said. 

“So there will be a wide range of courses that cover [labour market] shortages.”

Education secretary Gavin Williamson caused confusion last week after suggesting to the House of Commons that T Levels will be included in the qualifications list – even though the DfE lists T Levels as just for 16 to 19-year-olds. 

The DfE later clarified that Williamson only meant that T Levels could possibly be made available to adults in the future, not by April. 

Today’s roundtable, sponsored by NCFE, also featured contributions by the awarding body’s chief executive David Gallagher, shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister Toby Perkins, former shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, Association of Colleges area director Shane Chowen, Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie and its director of research Paul Warner, and Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans. 

Representing the college sector was Ali Hadawi, principal of Central Bedfordshire College; and representing the independent sector was Learning Curve Group chief executive Brenda McLeish.

View the full roundtable session below.

The government’s national retraining scheme pilot has been rolled into the national skills fund, Gillian Keegan announced today.

In a ministerial statement, the skills minister said the decision to amalgamate the two programmes was taken in order to “reduce complexity” in the adult education landscape.

The retraining scheme was first announced in the 2017 Budget to help adults retrain into “better” jobs, with £100 million set aside for the next three years to test and develop the scheme.

It took the Department for Education two years to rollout the resulting Get Help to Retrain service, which has been trialled in six areas of England to date by over 3,600 individuals.

The digital service acts as a course and job directory. It allows users to identify and input their current skills and then based on those skills, offer suggestions for training and alternative employment. The service then directs users to vacancies in their area based on the suggestions provided.

Keegan said integrating the scheme with the national skills fund would include the “conclusion of the trials of the Get Help to Retrain service”, but it is unclear at this stage as to whether the platform will be scrapped.

She added that the DfE’s engagement with employers on the retraining scheme “ensured we were better sighted on the skills they need their workers to have, as well as the need for a more flexible approach to the delivery of skills”.

The national skills fund was a Conservative Party manifesto commitment from the 2019 election and is worth £2.5 billion over five years in England.

Keegan said the “understanding and insights we achieved through high levels of research and comprehensive user engagement whilst developing the national retraining scheme have also produced a strong foundation for developing the national skills fund and other adult skills reforms”.

While not much is known about how the national skills fund will be spent, prime minister Boris Johnson announced last month that it will fund part of his new “lifetime skills guarantee”, which includes a free level 3 qualification to all adults that do not yet hold one.

The DfE is expected to launch an consultation on the wider use of the national skills fund in the coming months.

Keegan said: “We will engage closely with stakeholders as we continue to develop detailed plans for the national skills fund, including considering what role the fund could play in meeting more immediate needs in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

Students will still sit one GCSE English and one GCSE maths exam before the summer half term next year, despite a move to push most other exams back by three weeks.

The Department for Education has confirmed today that most GCSE and A-level exams will take place three weeks later than usual in 2021, to give learners more time to prepare.

However, the department said one English and one maths GCSE exam will still take place before May half term “to help manage potential disruption”, along with some A-level exams in subjects with “typically low” student numbers.

The summer half term in 2021 will start from 31 May. It is the usual time that GCSE English and maths exams are sat each year.

All other exams next year won’t start until after June 7, continuing until July 2.

As a result of the change, GCSE and A-level results will be handed out in the same week of August, rather than a week apart. A-level results day will be August 24 and GCSE results day will be August 27.

The DfE has also confirmed there won’t be any further content changes beyond what has already been announced.

But the government has also said it plans to engage with schools and colleges over measures needed to address potential disruption, meaning schools and colleges could be left waiting as much as six weeks to hear ministers’ “plan B”.

The DfE said more detail would be published “later in the autumn”, in order to “ensure students have confidence that they will be fairly treated in terms of assessment in 2021”.

Ministers announced in June that they were consulting on a potential delay to exams in 2021, along with other changes to try to address disruption faced by pupils and schools and colleges.

The outcome of that consultation was published by exams regulator Ofqual in August. It set out content changes for GCSE and A-level exams aimed at safeguarding public health. It also announced changes to bring in more option content in some subjects.

However, the consultation outcome stated that more time was needed to consider the timing of exams.

Today’s announcement confirms rumours that the DfE was proposing a three-week delay, and details of how the system will work.

The government said the decision to hold the two English and maths GCSE exams before half term, which means a longer gap between them and other exams in the subject, will give year 11 pupils affected by Covid-19 “the best possible chance of still sitting a paper in each of these core subjects”.

The DfE also said that “no further subject-level changes to exams and assessments will be made for GCSEs, AS and A-levels” beyond what was set out by Ofqual in August.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Students have experienced considerable disruption and it’s right we give them, and their teachers, the certainty that exams will go ahead and more time to prepare.

“I will continue to work closely with stakeholders and I’m grateful for the commitment and willingness that’s been shown in delivering this additional time to ensure young people have the best opportunity to succeed.”

However, the DfE said today that its engagement exercise with the sector would last for six weeks, meaning schools could be facing a long wait to hear what other contingency plans are to be put in place.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL school leadership union, said he was “dismayed” by the announcement, and said delaying the start if exams would be “of marginal benefit when compared to the loss of learning from the national lockdown and ongoing disruption”.

“It has taken the government an eternity to reach a very inadequate response to the scale of the challenge which lies ahead for students who are taking GCSEs and A-levels next year.”

A new app that forecasts the spread of Covid-19 in colleges has been launched.

Developed by the University of Exeter in collaboration with colleges, the free online tool is said to analyse individual college data according to various inputs such as class-based bubbles, larger year group bubbles and attendance on different days.

It also allows the user to input community infection rates as well as information about how they are running their college to forecast how many people may need to self-isolate and other steps they can take to minimise disruption.

The app is still in its beta edition, but after a “successful trial” with several colleges, the app is now available to every college in the country.

A spokesperson for the developers said that with rising infections in many areas, this new Covid planning and modelling app has the “potential to help college leaders forecast how many students and staff might need to self-isolate and plan accordingly”.

Sean Mackney, principal at Petroc College which helped develop the app along with the Association of Colleges and City and Guilds, said: “The flexibility of this app is its greatest asset and can provide useful forecasts for different approaches for different cohorts of learners and to see the combined effect at college level. The app has helped inform our decisions about bubbles, social distancing in teaching spaces and the timetable. It allowed us to us control infection and minimise the numbers who would self-isolate.

“As you can set your own variables, it is also useful to see whether the approach we took when community cases were 10 per week will still be the best ones to take if we were seeing 200 cases a week – so we can use it to revisit the way we set up our college to be sustainable, stable and safe, whatever the external context.”

Professor Gavin Shaddick, chair of data science and statistics at the University of Exeter, said the organisations involved in the development have worked together to ensure that the “underlying epidemiological forecasting model reflects the kinds of situations that colleges may experience during the pandemic”.

“Similarly, the app has been designed jointly between data scientists and stakeholders to provide users with an easy to use interface, providing the tools needed to assess the effects of different scenarios and measures that are designed to reduce disease transmission within students and staff,” he added.

David Corke, director of education and skills policy at the AoC, said: “We hope this new app will give colleges the confidence to work from the data they input and make timely and sensible decisions on safety measures, the amount of blended learning they provide and keep students and parents informed of any changes quickly.

“Keeping students and staff safe is the number one priority and the new online tool will giving colleges an indication of when and if they need to change tact in dealing with coronavirus.”

The spokesperson for the developers said that if the app continues to be useful to colleges, they will seek funding to refine the tool, extend the support for users of it for a longer period, and share lessons learned.

Colleges can find out more about the app and how to access it by contacting tammi.jahan@aoc.co.uk at the Association of Colleges.

A former college principal who championed further education and skills as a member of Parliament has been knighted in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours. 

Nic Dakin, who represented Scunthorpe from 2010 to 2019 after having run Sir John Leggott College in the city, is one of 20 FE and skills figures to have been recognised. 

Other honourees include the principals of Nelson and Colne College, Harlow College and the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, and three medallists from WorldSkills Kazan 2019. 

The honours list was originally due to be published in June, but was pushed back until the autumn, so it could recognise people who helped tackle the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Speaking to FE Week, Dakin said when he was first told in June he had received the honour, he thought it was a hoax. 

“It’s a surprise. I’m really pleased to be recognised for my work in further education, as well as my work politically. 

“Standing up for further education has been an important part of my work, championing issues around post-16 funding and adult learning during my time in Parliament.” 

During his time as a Labour MP, Dakin served as shadow schools minister, on the education select committee and has regularly spoken out in favour of increased funding for FE. 

He says he kept “banging on” about FE, so by the time he left, “I wasn’t a lone voice, you heard voices from the Conservative and Labour benches”. 

“It’s humbling,” he said, “to be picked out when there are so many great people working in the FE sector”. 

Sir Nic, who only told his wife yesterday, is not sure if he will use the honour, but may do “if it helps improve the lot of other people”. 

Amanda Melton, the principal of Nelson and Colne College who also sits on The Independent Commission on the College of the Future, has been given an CBE. 

She said working in colleges for 26 years has been a “complete privilege,” and she owes the honour “directly” to the roles she has had to “shout out for FE” with, “most importantly the College of the Future Commission”. 

Melton said her dad, who died three years ago, would have been “completely blown away that his little girl was honoured in this way”. 

The principal of Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education Debra Gray has been made an MBE for services to education.  

Harlow College principal Karen Spencer has also received that honour, for services to further education and aviation. 

Her college set up Stansted Airport College in 2018, and she chairs a working group on STEM aviation jobs and skills for the all-party parliamentary group on general aviation. 

Spencer said she was “extremely proud” of the honour, which was a “real testament” to the sector, her staff, students and the governors. 

“I have an amazing team and I am delighted to share this amazing recognition with them. I am really proud to be their principal.” 

The former chair of Wigan College, Frank Costello, who served in that role for three of his 20 years on the college board, is another recipient of the MBE. 

The chair of the South West Apprenticeship Ambassador Network Nigel Fenn has also received an MBE. The network acts as a representative body for apprentice employers in the area. 

In his other role in human resources at Pennon Group, he started the apprenticeship programme at subsidiary company South West Water, which now has 120 learners and are looking at a target of 500 starts over the next five years. 

Fenn said he feels “fantastic” about the “huge honour,” and while he does not see himself as a figurehead for apprenticeships, he is “passionate” about it: “Seeing them move into our permanent workforce is so refreshing.” 

Another of those recognised is Haydn Jakes MBE, who won a gold medal in aircraft maintenance at WorldSkills Kazan. 

Jakes “couldn’t quite believe it” when he received the letter, he said. 

“Winning the gold medal was such a fantastic experience, it meant the world to me and to be recognised for this achievement is just brilliant,” he continued. 

Rebecca West, who won gold in beauty therapy, has received the same honour, as has Jakes’ training manager Martin Yates. 

Conor McKevitt, who won silver in car painting in Kazan, and Phoebe McLavy, who won bronze in hairdressing, have been awarded the British Empire Medal. 

A college group is planning on providing festive relief to families in need this Christmas by bringing back its hugely successful foodbank project.

London South East Colleges (LSEC), in partnership with 30 other colleges, including Boston College, Central Bedfordshire College and Chichester College, raised £43,800 for their local foodbanks after launching #FEFoodBankFriday when the UK went into lockdown in spring.

The group is now looking to rekindle their partnership with those and other colleges for #FestiveFEFoodbankFriday, which aims to collect 30,000 items for local foodbanks. 

“As the pandemic continues to impact so many people, it is imperative that we pull together to support one another,” said LSEC chief executive Sam Parrett, adding: “Sadly, food poverty continues to affect too many people.”

Collection baskets for food and other donations will be placed at four of the group’s sites: Bromley, Bexley, Greenwich and Orpington. 

Regular lists of the most-needed items will be published to help target donations. 

Fourteen colleges are already signed up for this latest project and will be providing a basket in their reception areas for donations and will be updating LSEC with a collection total every Friday at midday.

On top of that, the group is launching a JustGiving page — https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/FestiveFEFoodbankFriday — to raise £12,000. These funds will be divided up between the involved colleges and then distributed to their local foodbanks.

“In the run-up to the festive period we will be running a number of virtual activities to raise as much money as possible – as well as collecting as many actual donations as we can,” Parrett said. These activities will include a fireworks display and a Santa dash.

She continued: “Christmas can be a difficult time for many people and our aim is to help make it a bit easier for families in our community.”

During the last drive, the group donated three trolley-loads of provisions from its own BR6 Restaurant as well as a chest freezer to a local foodbank. The student union of one of its colleges, London South East Colleges, collected almost £3,000 from students, after making the project their charity of the year.

Colleges looking to sign up for #FestiveFEFoodbankFriday should contact Andrew Cox on andrew.cox@lsec.ac.uk.