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The Education and Skills Funding Agency, which distributes £62 billion of education funding, has published its annual accounts for the year end March 31, 2021.

Here’s your FE Week guide to the key findings …

Funding overclaims from ITPs contribute heavily to £9.5m cash losses

The ESFA recorded 48 cases of “cash losses” totalling £9.5 million in 2020-21.

The largest sums lost related to unrecoverable overpayments to independent training providers that went bust.

The debts arise mainly where providers have overstated funding claims for delivery during a contract, for example where a learner started but did not complete.

In such circumstances, the ESFA seeks to recover the overpayments from providers in cash or from deductions against future payments. But in a number of cases, funds are unable to be recovered due to the provider closing down. If, after a prolonged period of time, insufficient funds from the provider’s receiver or liquidator are received or the provider is dissolved, the ESFA simply abandons the claim.

Un-recoverable grant overpayments above £300,000 in 2020-21 include:

Accent On Training Ltd = £2,466,000

Positive Outcomes Ltd = £2,073,000

Provident Training Ltd = £1,352,000

Education & Youth Services Ltd = £532,000

AMS Nationwide Ltd = £608,000

Bankrupt college makes up biggest proportion of £33m waived funding claims

In 2020-21, there were 24 claims waived or abandoned by the ESFA totalling £33 million.

Balances owed by academies and colleges may in some circumstances be waived to facilitate the re-brokerage of the academy or college to a more sustainable academy trust or college, or support closure.

West Kent and Ashford College, which is one of the first two colleges to be going through the education administration process, saw £20.6 million waived in 2020-21. The ESFA estimated that the total cost of putting West Kent and Ashford College, and its sister Hadlow College, through administration will probably run to over £60 million.

Another notable waiver for FE was Watford UTC, which had £463,000 abandoned.

£500k lost on Erasmus plans

The ESFA posted “fruitless payments” of £520,000 relating to work staff did on evaluating the feasibility of a successor to the Erasmus+ grant scheme in the run-up to Brexit.

However the agency was not chosen as the “preferred delivery partner” so stopped the work. A fruitless payment is one which “cannot be legally avoided because the recipient is entitled to it even though nothing of use to ESFA will be received in return”.

Only half of planned risk meetings with FE providers conducted

As part of the ESFA’s move to identify vulnerable colleges and providers early, the agency conducts meetings with those who are identified to be “high risk”, with the aim of identifying financial and/or quality issues before they become real problems.

A total of 438 of these meetings were carried out in 2020-21. This was, however, around half of the planned target.

Post-16 provider relief totalled £11m

The ESFA launched five different provider relief schemes, such as for apprenticeship and adult funding, to give “lifeline” financial support to providers during the pandemic.

Today’s report shows these schemes totalled £11 million, which in turn “protected provision and supported 32,800 learners and apprentices”.

No colleges enter formal intervention

The agency conducted 23 assessments of further education colleges in 2020-21. None resulted in formal intervention. Five of them led to the colleges’ plans being endorsed and the rest continue to work with ESFA to improve their plans.

There are 68 live investigations into FE providers

At 31 March 2021, the ESFA had a total of 80 live investigations and allegations in triage to carry forward into 2021-22.

This comprised 12 ongoing academy trust cases at “various stages” of the investigation cycle and 68 live cases relating to colleges and independent training providers.

The agency said the cases carried forward from both sectors “continue to reflect the complex nature and longevity of investigation casework”.

“ESFA investment in counter fraud and investigations, and the enforcement team, has ensured an appropriate response to increasing demand whilst also championing continuing improvements to mitigate and prevent future issues arising,” the report added.

Top ESFA staff bag bonuses totalling £60k

Eight of the 13 officials who held executive roles during the past year got a bonus. Matthew Atkinson, director of provider oversight, was handed a bonus between £15,000 to £20,000, while three others got bonuses between £10,000 to £15,000.

Former chief executive Eileen Milner was the ESFA’s highest-paid on £150,000 to £155,000.

Her replacement, former regional schools commissioner John Edwards, is paid £125,000 to £130,000 a year.

The countdown to Christmas has begun and the Schools Week and FE Week Advent Calendar in association with Education Week Jobs is back!

In partnership with our sister title, Schools Week we’re returning with 12 days of festive cheers and opportunities for fantastic prizes.

We’ll have daily competitions with multiple chances to win some fabulous prizes. We’ll also have days when you’ll be able to vote for a charity to receive a £500 donation.

Alongside our daily prizes, we’ll also have an extra special Christmas Eve Prize Draw. All successful entries will be entered into a prize draw on Christmas Eve with a chance of winning an Apple Watch SE, £100 Marks & Spencer gift card or a pair of Festival of Education 2024 tickets.

Visit this webpage each day and click on the button below, between Tuesday 12th December & Saturday 23rd December to find out what’s behind the day’s window and to enter.

Access Advent Calendar

Term and conditions are below.

Prize Draw Winners

Day	Prize	Winner
One	Apple AirPods Pro	C. Taylor
Two	£500 Donation	The Trussell Trust
Three	Nespresso Vertuo Pop Coffee Machine	V. Stewart
Four	£500 Donation	Crisis
Five	Annual Subscription to Schools Week or FE Week	A. Hope
Six	Annual Subscription to Schools Week or FE Week	S. Logan
Seven	Case of Champagne	A. Lloyd
Eight	£50 John Lewis Gift Card	L. Davies R. Barrow
Nine	£500 Donation	Education Support
Ten	The Velvetiser hot chocolate machine	J. Wilson
Eleven	£500 Donation	YoungMinds
Twelve	Fortnum & Mason hamper	J. Kapsalis
Xmas Eve (1st place)	Apple Watch SE	J. Thorpe
Xmas Eve (2-3 place)	£100 Marks & Spencer gift card	M. Garlick H. Doxsey
Xmas Eve (4-8 place)	Pair of tickets to the Festival of Education 2024	S. Moy S. Welding P. Duckworth F. Wrisberg D. Saunders

Terms and Conditions Schools Week & FE Week Advent Calendar 2023

Promoter:

Learning & Skills, Events, Consultancy and Training Ltd (Lsect Ltd)

c/o Runway East, The Hickman, 2 Whitechapel Road, London E1 1EW

info@lsect.com

General:

The competition is open to anyone over the age of 18, except people working for Lsect Ltd their families or anyone connected to the promotion.

No purchase of any product is required to be eligible to enter.

Participation constitutes the entrant’s full and unconditional agreement to these terms and conditions.

The entrant consents to the use of their personal data by the Promoter for the duration of the Advent Calendar, 12 December 2023 to 31 December 2023.  

How to enter:

Competitions and polling will commence each day at 00:01 and end at 23:59.

To enter a Schools Week & FE Week Advent Calendar 2023 competition simply undertake the activity on the day it is published.

The calendar is based on the GMT time zone.

Entrants are permitted one entry per day.

Entries by one person in different language versions will be excluded.

The entrant will be prompted to enter personal data. These fields must be completed in order to enter the free prize draw.

There will be a maximum of 18 entries possible per person.

There will be one prize per day for the period of the promotion and there will be a first, second and third prize for the Christmas Eve Prize Draw.

Entrants who correctly answer questions or submit an entry to one of our charity donation days will be entered in to our “Christmas Eve Prize Draw”.

Allocation of the prizes will be done at random from those entrants who select the correct answer to the question. The draw will take place the following day.

Incomplete, or corrupt entries will not be accepted.

Christmas Eve Prize Draw Prizes:

• First place | Apple Watch SE
• Second to Third place | £100 Marks & Spencer gift card
• Fourth to Eigth place | Pair of Festival of Education 2024 tickets

Prizes will be sent out within 30 days of the draw. There is no cash equivalent offering to any prize.

The Winners:

Winners will be notified by email within 7 days of the draw and will have 5 days to respond confirming receipt of this email notification and their postal details. In the event that no response is made within this time, the Promoter reserves the right to offer the prize to a reserve winner.

In the event of any dispute the decision of the Promoter is final. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, the Promoter reserves the right to substitute the prize for an alternative of equal or greater value.

The winners may be required to participate in publicity arising from this competition.

Additional:

If deemed necessary, due to reasons outside its reasonable control, the Promoter reserves the right to cancel, modify or extend or suspend this Advent Calendar.

This promotion is governed by English and Welsh Law.

Bridget Phillipson has been appointed as the new shadow education secretary.

The news was announced last night as part of a reshuffle of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s top team. The reshuffle resulted in Kate Green being moved out of the job.

Here’s what we know about the new shadow education secretary.

She was born in Gateshead in 1983. However, even at 37, she is still not the youngest person ever appointed to the role. That record is still held by Angela Rayner, who was 36 when she took it on in 2016.

Phillipson has been an MP since 2010. She was elected to represent Houghton and Sunderland South. She is the first MP representing a north east constituency to be shadow education secretary since Pat Glass, who held the role for just two days in 2016. She is also the fourth MP elected in 2010 to hold the role.

This is her second shadow ministerial brief. Phillipson served on the back benches and as an opposition whip for her first 10 years in Parliament, before being promoted to the shadow cabinet by Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in April 2020 as shadow chief secretary to the treasury.

She attended state schools. Phillipson pointed out on Twitter last night that she had attended state schools. This is not unusual among more recent shadow education secretaries. Her predecessor Kate Green attended state school, as did recent postholders Angela Rayner and Rebecca Long-Bailey.

She is Oxbridge-educated. Phillipson read modern history at Hertford College, Oxford, graduating in 2005. Attending an Oxbridge university is also not unusual among shadow education secretaries. Lucy Powell attended Oxford (albeit only for a year), as did Stephen Twigg. Tristram Hunt went to Cambridge.

Politics is in her blood. Phillipson has spoken about how she attended Labour meetings as a child with her mother, Claire, a party official. After graduation, she went on to work in local government and then for the charity Wearside Women in Need, which her mother founded.

Phillipson has criticised the government’s apprenticeship reforms. In May 2019, she warned that access to apprenticeships is “getting worse”, including in her area, following a report by the public accounts committee that she sat on. She pledged to “keep pressing ministers to ensure there are more available in our area”.

She has also argued for greater certainty for school budgets. In June, she urged the government not to wait for the spending review to allocate more catch-up funding, and said that schools needed to be able to make decisions “over not just a few months, but many years”. She added that “long-term outcomes are better delivered when they can be planned on a longer-term basis—more than one financial year at a time”.

Government cuts to education spending over the last decade are “effectively without precedent in post-war history”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

Contributing heavily to this are a 14 per cent fall in spending per student in colleges and 49 per cent drop in adult education funding.

The economic research institute also states in its annual report on spending that the extra investment announced by the Treasury at the recent spending review for FE will only partially reverse past cuts.

It warns that while the present government has “ambitious goals” to level up poorer areas of the country, emphasising a big role for technical education, changes to education spending have been working in the opposite direction.

Here are the key findings for FE from today’s report…

Overall spending on education falls by £10bn

Between 2010 and 2019, total public spending on education across the UK fell by £10 billion, or 8 per cent, in real terms, according to the IFS.

Researchers say this led to a fall in the share of national income devoted to education spending, down from 5 per cent of national income in 2007 to 4.4 per cent in 2019,

If education spending had remained at 5 per cent of national income, it would have been £16 billion higher in 2019, today’s report reveals.

There was a 3 per cent real terms increase in education spending in 2020, but this “mostly” reflects the temporary extra levels of support during the pandemic.

Extra 16-18 funding will still leave FE 10% short of 2010 levels

The IFS says funding per student aged 16 to 18 in further education and sixth-form colleges fell by 14 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2019, while funding per student in school sixth forms fell by 28 per cent.

It adds that recent increases in funding, such as the extra £700 million in 2020-21, have been eroded by fast growth in student numbers, which are set for further growth of 10 per cent between 2021 and 2024.

Even with the additional £3.8 billion announced at the 2021 spending review, college spending per pupil in 2024 will still be around 10 per cent below 2010 levels, while school sixth form spending per pupil will be 23 per cent below 2010 levels.

Adult ed and apprenticeships spend still 15% below 2009 levels

In the 2021 spending review, the government allocated an extra £550 million for adult education by 2024–25 (from the previously announced National Skills Fund) and £170 million in increased apprenticeship funding by 2024–25.

As a result of this additional cash, funding for adult education and apprenticeships will rise by 30 per cent in real terms between 2019 and 2024, the IFS said.

However, combined spending on adult education and apprenticeships at this point will still be 15 per cent below 2009 levels.

Spending on adult education on its own fell by 49 per cent between 2009 and 2019 and will still be one-third below 2009 levels even with the additional funding.

Frustration at government’s ‘repeated lack of clarity’ on skills spending

Transparency around the National Skills Fund and other skills policy areas is highlighted as an issue for FE providers in the IFS’ report.

The report states: “The government has promoted the National Skills Fund as a £2.5 billion fund to support adults with training and gaining skills.

“The 2021 spending review allocated £550 million in 2024–25 as part of the National Skills Fund. Yet it is entirely unclear how money will be spread across years and whether the fund has been exhausted.

“Similarly, there remain questions about the design of the forthcoming lifelong loan entitlement. All of this continued uncertainty creates issues for providers of adult education and skills training.”

IFS’ damning verdict on education spending

Luke Sibieta, IFS research fellow and an author of the report, said: “The cuts to education spending over the past decade are effectively without precedent in post-war history.

“Extra funding in the spending review will reverse cuts to school spending per pupil, but will mean 15 years without any overall growth, and college spending per student will still be lower than in 2024.

“Recent funding changes have also worked against schools serving disadvantaged communities. This will make it that much harder to achieve ambitious goals to level up poorer areas of the country and narrow educational inequalities, which were gaping even before the pandemic.

“Fast growth in student numbers in colleges and universities will add to the challenges facing the education sector.”

Fifteen winners from across UK schools and colleges have been honoured in the 2021 Pearson Teaching Awards for their dedicated work in education.

The “inspirational” gold winners have been revealed following a week-long celebration of teaching on the BBC’s The One Show. 

Now in their 23rd year, the awards celebrate the best teaching across the UK and thousands of nominations were received for the gold award winners.

The week ended with all the award-winning teachers, teaching assistants and lecturers being presented with their trophies at a ceremony at The Brewery in the City of London.

Here are this year’s winners. You can also read about the silver award winners here.

Primary teacher of the year

Jacqueline Birch, St Peter’s C of E Primary School, Wigan

Jacqueline is described as an “inspirational educator” who is a “passionate advocate for children, working tirelessly to unlock their potential”.

During lockdown she embraced technology, supporting learners with their studies and wellbeing remotely as well as producing a digital Christmas video instead of a nativity play.

Secondary teacher of the year

Abigail Chase, Bassaleg School, Newport (Wales)

An English teacher and associate head for pedagogy and reflective practice, Abigail “inspires the whole school community with her infectious passion for learning and genuine care for pupils’ wellbeing”.

She embodies “to her core everything teachers should aspire to in the way she sets the highest expectations for herself and those around her”.

Outstanding new teacher

Hannah Lewis, Troedyrhiw Community Primary, Merthyr Tydfil

Hannah is described as a “vibrant, enthusiastic and committed teacher who motivates positive learning attitudes from all those around her”.

During lockdown, she was “instrumental” in training parents and children to use digital devices, and followed up with in-school support sessions.

Primary school head of the year

Reema Reid, Hollydale Primary School, London

The daughter of a Windrush immigrant who started in education as a lunchtime supervisor and TA in Lambeth, Reema has worked as a substantive headteacher in Southwark since 2013.

As headteacher, she has been “at the forefront” of tracking initiatives that have ensured her school can respond to the challenges of a changing pupil demographic and is driven by continuous school improvement.

Secondary school head of the year

Michael Allen, Lisneal College, Derry (NI)

Michael Allen joined Lisneal College in 2015 as headteacher and his commitment, leadership and inspiration to all stakeholders “has been nothing less than outstanding every day since”.

His “outstanding leadership” has resulted in a dramatic increase in school enrolment and through gradual change and improvement, he has taken the college’s provision to “another level”.

Primary school of the year

Roundhay Primary School, Leeds

Roundhay School has been the “most oversubscribed primary school in Leeds” for the past couple of years, and “consistently” achieves outcomes above the national average.

Over the last 18 months, Roundhay supported the school community through the pandemic by setting up a foodbank and creating bereavement boxes for children who had lost relatives or other loved ones to Covid.

Secondary school of the year

Wymondham College, Norfolk

Wymondham College is one of only a handful of state boarding schools in the country, creating a “culturally diverse community with students from a huge range of backgrounds”.

Many students come from deprived areas and have challenging personal circumstances and are supported to “make great academic and personal progress”.

Excellence in special needs education

Stephen Evans, Derwen College, Shropshire

As sports and leisure co-ordinator for a further education college which caters for young people with a range of learning difficulties, Steve’s students have a wide variety of complex special educational needs and disabilities.

His impact on these students has been described as “life-changing” as he works tirelessly to ensure that every young person is included in the huge range of activities he provides and is able to benefit from regular exercise.

Teaching assistant of the year

Dorota Hall, St Edward’s School, Dorset

Since joining St Edward’s School, Dorota has made a “significant difference” to the learning of every child through her meticulously planned and engaging literacy lessons.

Her patience and determination with students with considerable speech and communication challenges have enabled children to socialise and engage “beyond expectations”.

Impact through partnership

Roma Narrowing the Gap Team, Queen Katharine Academy, Cambridgeshire

Staff at Queen Katharine Academy (QKA) have worked “tirelessly” to understand and support their Gypsy-Roma community, which were originally at the top of school statistics for disruption, poor attainment and attendance.

They visited the Roma community in Slovakia to better understand the people and culture firsthand, employed Roma staff to better foster inclusion, and worked closely with Roma educational organisations to share best practice for supporting these students.

Digital innovator of the year

Emma Darcy, Denbigh High School, Bedfordshire

Emma has been the “driving force” behind the strategic implementation of technology for learning across all schools in the Chiltern Learning Trust MAT, ensuring access for all students.

Her work has ensured digital poverty does not affect some of the most disadvantaged students in the country, long before the Covid-19 pandemic.

Lockdown hero award for learner and community support

Matt Jenkins and Jo Fison, The Deaf Academy, Devon

Matt Jenkins is described as an enthusiastic teacher who applies solutions to difficulties commonly faced by deaf learners.

Driven by a desire to ensure that deaf learners had equal access to information and learning around Covid, Matt developed the popular ‘Ask a Deaf Teacher’ YouTube channel.

Jo Fison is an experienced teacher who ensured that online platforms were sign language friendly, able to stream sign language efficiently and clearly, and considered well-being at the heart of all delivery.

She ensured online platforms were accessible to all, even those who had not grown up within the digital age, giving up much of her time, to lead, to handhold and to cajole staff in believing that teaching remotely was possible.

Lifetime achievement award

Marie Lindsay, Saint Mary’s College, Derry (NI)

Marie Lindsey has devoted her 35-year career as an educator to inspiring generations of young women in the city of Derry and beyond.

Her leadership of St Mary’s College has had a “life changing impact” on her pupils, their families and the wider community, and the school is recognised as one of the highest performing all ability secondary schools in Northern Ireland.

FE lecturer of the year

Melissa Tisdale, Walsall College

Melissa has some of the highest achieving media students in the country, despite many students coming from socially deprived areas with historic challenges to education.

Her success stems from her independent production company, Future Flames, where students gain valuable real-world work experience on external commissions, including filming and editing for the NHS.

FE team of the year

The PE Department, New College Pontefract

The team over the last five years has built not only an outstanding track-record of learner outcomes, but also a reputation as the largest provider of extra-curricular activities across the college.

The commitment of the department has led to many standout student athletes and stories of sporting successes. The department has produced students who play hockey for England, as well as Team GB swimmers.