The government must consult on a very detailed plan for the national skills fund

There are now more questions than answers about the national skills fund, writes Simon Parkinson

The WEA gave a cautious welcome to the news that the national retraining scheme would be integrated into the new “national skills fund”

As many of you will remember, the national retraining scheme pilot was announced to much fanfare in the 2017 budget with the backing of £100 million, of which the Get Help to Retrain website was one product.

Then in early April, the Department for Education cancelled all national retraining scheme tender activities for all products, and about a month ago the skills minister, Gillian Keegan, announced the scheme was to be “integrated” into the national skills fund, with “learnings” from the retraining scheme carried forward.

It seemed to make sense – why have two streams when there could be one?

There is certainly scope for simplifying education funding. As a national organisation delivering courses locally, the WEA receives funding from a bewildering array of streams, both central and devolved.

That creates administrative costs for us. More importantly, it sometimes leads to students in one part of the country being able to access a very different range of courses to those elsewhere – as determined by the funding available.

But the lack of detail on what the national skills fund would include has now begun to raise more questions than answers. There is a lack of clarity on how the funding from the national retraining scheme “pot” will be incorporated into the new fund. We found out some of the cash would be returned to the Treasury, although we still don’t know how much exactly.

Worse still, the national skills fund became the rationale for the closure of the Union Learning Fund. This was set up in 1998, was worth around £11 million a year, and was supporting around 250,000 workers a year to access learning.

When the need for retraining and reskilling is paramount, this feels like a big mistake. It is difficult to see how a new programme could match the well-established confidence that workplace learners have in Unionlearn.

Worse still, the national skills fund became the rationale for the closure of the Union Learning Fund

In parliament, Gavin Williamson also made clear that the national skills fund would be just that – entirely national.

So where does this leave the mayoral combined authorities that still hold the purse strings on much of the adult education budget? How will the national skills fund complement the investment flowing through the regions?

Perhaps we are being impatient. Around the corner are a spending review, FE white paper and (one assumes) some consultation on the direction of the national skills fund.

The nation is about to enter one of the toughest economic periods in history, with some predicting unemployment rates at similar levels to the 1980s.

The prime minister has made some stirring announcements about the importance of adult learning. Now is the time to add detail to those statements by releasing a plan – for consultation – on the national skills fund.

We appreciate that the government must move quickly in order to bring the new level 3 entitlement in by April as promised.

Welcome though that is, it’s clear that investment in the non-accredited courses and lower level qualifications is also very much needed.

These courses and qualifications often act as necessary stepping-stones towards level 3 qualifications. Not everyone is ready to go straight into a qualification, especially if they have had a negative experience in education previously, or they’ve been out of it for many years.

We also believe that there should be maximum flexibility in the courses available. Essential skills such as critical thinking, communication skills and resilience can all be gained through many different forms of education, not only the narrowly technical and vocational routes.

We at WEA would also point to the importance of adult learning in workplaces and community venues, as well as colleges.

The national skills fund ought to be pragmatic in the short term, but with a clear direction of travel. It can’t be a hasty sticking plaster.

We should name, but not shame, the colleges that are getting bailouts

The sector is shooting itself in the foot if we don’t argue that colleges getting financial help should be transparently listed, writes Stuart Rimmer

Should the names of colleges getting bailouts be made public? Well, the simple answer to that simple question is – yes! Of course they should.

Towards the end of last month, details of the revised college oversight policy were amended. We were told colleges that apply for government bailouts will now not automatically fall into formal intervention, although it is unclear why. 

That, of course, means their names won’t be published online. Here’s why that’s a bad idea… 

1.   Values 

This is the most compelling reason to publish college names. Simply put, public funds should be a matter of public record. Earlier in the year FE Week calculated that £725.8 million has been spent on bailouts and restructuring funding, based on National Audit Office figures. This is not just loose change down the back of the sofa. We cannot just ignore it because it may cause embarrassment.

2.   Funding 

The size of bailouts is not always reflective of poor management, as some would try to make us believe. Actually, it often points to chronic underfunding of our sector.

Colleges under intervention rose by two-thirds in 2018-19. Meg Hillier, chair of the influential commons public accounts committee, recently said this situation “paints a stark picture of the college sector’s plight”.  

The scale of intervention and bailouts needs to be known in order to form part of the evidence base for colleges to argue for greater funding. 

3.   Institutional equity

At East Coast College I led one of the first deals in 2017, through the ESFA’s fledgling Transaction Unit, latterly the Provider Market Oversight (PMO), which leads on college financial health in high-risk and complex cases. While I’m not allowed under disclosure to talk directly about it, I can say that we got a weak deal in comparison to many “fresh start” colleges that followed, as the system became more sophisticated, knowledgeable and generous.  

If deals for bailout funding are now permitted behind closed doors – with colleges and agencies hiding behind the nonsense “commercial sensitivity” argument – then the system is not transparent about whether it is treating everyone who passes through it fairly. More importantly, the situation leaves the power dynamic resting unhelpfully with the centre. 

4.   Institutions, not individuals 

One of the big problems with the dialogue around bailout is that individuals often get stigmatised. This must stop. We need to shift the narrative towards “how can we help a college in need?”. As of February 2020, the government was intervening in 48 per cent of all open colleges – with more than one-tenth in formal intervention. This is clearly not an individual personality issue. 

5.   Flattered accounts

Bailouts flatter financial performance reporting. It is a huge injection of cash that can reduce debt gearing, increase cash holding and improve performance ratios, such as earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). Not being transparent about them can stifle the public’s understanding of how a college is really performing. 

6.   Details, details, details

More contentiously, I think that not only should the bailout figure be made public but also how it is spent. Currently this relies on freedom of information requests and journalistic wrangling.  

We should know: is the bailout used to reduce debt and create long-term sustainability and drive rapid improvement of student experience? Or is it spent to excess on consultant fees servicing the various machineries of intervention?

The vast majority of colleges spend bailouts wisely. Good consultants no doubt can add huge value, but the rise of ameliorating banks and reporting back to the centre means too many pound notes flutter away from the sector. We should at least start to be honest about this.   

Less backstairs intrigue should make the jobs of the ESFA, Project Management Office and FE Commissioner office easier too.  So win, win, win, win. 

Apprenticeship providers are short-changing themselves on reasonable adjustments

Providers are stuck in a vicious cycle of ignorance and avoidance that frustrates both learners and Ofsted, writes Chris Quickfall

If apprenticeship providers were offered a way to reduce dropout rates, improve the learner experience, satisfy Ofsted and were paid to do so, it would be reasonable to assume that most would jump at the chance. 

What, after all, is not to like? 

Yet when it comes to making and claiming for reasonable adjustments (RAs) to support apprentices with learning needs, there are those providers that still fail to do so. 

The question is, why?

For some providers it’s a case of “once bitten, twice shy”. 

There’s a wariness about making claims for learning support funding that require more evidence, partly because of the perceived admin burden. But it can also be because they’ve had trouble in the past justifying additional payments to auditors. So they are disinclined to put themselves through it again. 

That’s despite the fact that by not providing the support learners need, providers run the much greater risk of being criticised by Ofsted.

At first glance, too, the challenge can seem daunting. Each apprentice is in a different working environment and programmes are strictly controlled in terms of content, timescales and employer involvement. 

Creating individual plans and making the necessary learner adjustments isn’t straightforward without the right experts behind them, and the onus is on the training provider to explain to the employer how they would work. 

Most employers, in my experience, are positive and responsive – but the provider must still manage the process, and that can be off-putting for some.

Many providers are also under the impression that any learning difficulties will be spotted because they already conduct assessments for English and maths. 

Unfortunately, this is a pretty imprecise metric. 

There is a common assumption, for instance, that if an apprentice is bright they won’t have any learning difficulties. That’s simply not true. I’d argue the smarter a learner, the less chance an educator has of spotting any need without a cognitive assessment.

Finally, self-identification can itself obscure the problem rather than illuminate it. 

Yes, one in ten apprentices self-identify with a learning difficulty or disability. But research by Cognassist last month suggests that this is the tip of the iceberg – over one-third of apprentices have a learning difficulty that could require additional support. 

All of which suggests that the issue of unidentified learning difficulties and disabilities is much greater than generally thought.

It suggests the issue of unidentified learning difficulties and disabilities is much greater than generally thought

It then becomes a vicious cycle. Providers aren’t fully aware of how great the problem is, they lack a full understanding of what adjustments can be made, the learner experience suffers, Ofsted isn’t happy, dropout rates rise and employer satisfaction falls. 

And all this happens as providers are missing out on an estimated
£22 million in extra learning support funds.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Our work with Bradford College demonstrates that achievement rates can improve by at least ten per cent with a more robust cognitive assessment process embedded in the learner journey. 

If providers develop a better understanding of the adjustments that can be made and make them, then programmes will be much more tailored to individuals’ needs, achievement rates will go up, dropout rates will fall and funding will increase. And that’s even before any additional learning support payments.

There’s one last, key area that many providers are missing out on when it comes to providing appropriate support, and that’s reasonable adjustments at the end-point assessment (EPA). 

The EPA is a vital part of the learner journey and therefore it’s crucial that any reasonable adjustment needed by the learner is implemented.

All of this requires providers to adopt more flexible and robust assessments and to raise the level of awareness of learning difficulties among trainers and management. 

Only then will they have the confidence to make the adjustments needed and deliver more flexible programmes. 

But as things stand, those providers lacking such a strategy are not only failing to address the needs of their learners, they are also short-changing themselves.

“The Reasonable Adjustments Series” is a season of digital conversations which will break down reasonable adjustments, explain why they matter and the impact they have on learners.  To register for a free seat please visit https://cognassist.me/RAP

Lifetime skills guarantee: Fresh setback to list of free level 3 quals

The list of level 3 qualifications being fully funded for all adults under the Lifetime Skills Guarantee could take until the end of the year to be published, despite the government originally promising it for October.

Prime minster Boris Johnson announced at Exeter College in September the government would extend its current offering of a first, full level 3 qualification for learners up to the age of 23, to adults of any age, from April 2021.

The Department for Education said, following Johnson’s speech, they would set out details of the courses “next month [October]”.

Come October, and skills minister Gillian Keegan told an FE Week roundtable they were working to “give you some more information in the next couple of months, and hopefully by November”.

She told the grouping of awarding organisations and sector representative bodies the qualifications have to be high quality, have the respect of business and address a “wide range” of labour shortages.

The government is having to select the level 3 qualifications from the over 4,300 that are currently on the ESFA’s online “list of qualifications approved for funding”.

Now, the department has told FE Week: “We are working to provide more information by the end of the year.”

Federation of Awarding Bodies chief executive Tom Bewick said awarding organisations have yet to be  consulted about the details of the level 3 qualifications being funded under the Lifetime Skills Guarantee.

He urged the Department for Education to “get on with it, as the sooner we have transparency, the sooner we can get stability”.

Further glitches in T Level rollout

An update to the official list of T Level providers this week reveals several colleges cancelled courses scheduled for September 2020.

Three of the flagship post-16 technical education qualifications – in digital, construction and education and childcare – got off the ground two months ago and are being offered at 44 schools, college and training providers across England.

But the College of Richard Collyer, in West Sussex, has decided to cancel delivery of the digital pathway in 2020/21, while another, Shipley College, will no longer offer the education and childcare subject this year.

Shipley has also pulled out of delivering the T Level transition programme – which is being taken by young people who are not yet ready to start a full level 3 T Level – as has Peter Symonds College in Winchester.

A number of other schools and colleges have cancelled or delayed T Level delivery over the past year following disruptions caused by Covid-19 and a lack of industry placement opportunities.

A total of 50 providers were supposed to teach the first T Levels from September 2020, but this was whittled down to 44 by the time the academic year began.

FE Week carried out an early survey of recruitment levels in September and found that colleges and schools had missed two-thirds of their enrolment targets, with digital proving to be the toughest subject to sell to students.

However, full enrolment numbers will not be known for some time.

A Department for Education spokesperson said that while Covid-19 had an “impact on planning” for a “small number of providers”, they have had a “hugely positive start to T Level delivery and we are seeing some excellent examples of practice”.

Peter Symonds College said the transition programme “did not have sufficient student interest this year, unfortunately”, but the college remains committed to offering the course and is “confident” that it will run in the next academic year.

A spokesperson added that the college has “successfully recruited students” to the education and childcare T Level this academic year, and that learners are “thoroughly enjoying the new course and have settled in well to their studies”.

Shipley and the College of Richard Collyer did not provide comment at the time of going to press.

But the DfE told FE Week that in Shipley’s case, the college decided that, given local lockdown constraints, they would delay offering the education and childcare T Level and the transition programme until 2021.

With regard to the College of Richard Collyer, the DfE said they have decided that, given the impact of Covid-19 on recruitment, they will not offer the digital T Level until 2021.

T Levels, are being rolled out gradually over the coming years. A further seven will be available in September 2021 with the remaining 14 courses starting in either 2022 or 2023.

Employability must start with accessibility 

With the potential for even more lockdown life ahead of us, the adaptations made to the UK’s business infrastructure to remain operational seem set to remain for some time. Alongside this has been a hard lesson in humility and humanity that, coupled with our newfound affinity for tech-enabled workspaces, may prove to be the most advantageous of the changes from which there should be no going back. 

 

Flexibility and profitability  

Before buy-in from businesses was required as a matter of safety, flexible working has been proven to have a positive impact on recruitment, productivity, retention and inclusion – not to mention the potential for costs saved on office space, parking, security and other sundries associated with maintaining a physical workplace. For staff, the feeling of autonomy of their own work/life balance is emboldening. And, with so little control of our lives as we once knew them, this is an important luxury that we cannot discount as essential to our continued mental management of this ongoing crisis.  

 

The challenges of creating an inclusive workforce 

With the mention of such huge strides towards a tech-enabled work environment, it would be easy to forget the elephant in the room which is our straining economy and jobs market. 

So far, the greatest increase to unemployment has been seen in young people who have left education or some of the worst affected industries, like retail and hospitality, with few opportunities available to them. For them, the government’s recent cash incentives for employers provide a beacon of hope and it’s important that when used, these measures are inclusive of young people with a range of abilities, wherever possible.  

  

Unfortunately, this fiscal flexibility does not extend to the Kickstart scheme, for which there are more stringent terms on how this incentive can be spent. However, a recent step in the right direction toward inclusivity for young people with disabilities is that SMEs have now been invited to apply for funding. Previously, only businesses employing 30 or more placements would be eligible for this scheme. This is an important move as it will allow the support of a wider range of young people with differing needs. The Kickstart scheme needs to be seen as a programme of learning for all young people, focused on valuable employability skills and the opportunity to be exposed to workplace practices, irrespective of how different they currently look. Access to employers with the resources to support them is imperative for young people with disabilities or chronic illnesses. The widening of the scheme is good news and will help them gain access to the opportunities such a programme will afford. 

 

The future of accessibility and employability  

The ability to work from home and use technology supports employers to ensure that employees, and prospective employees, aren’t put at an unfair disadvantage because of differing needs or disabilities. To revert to how we once thought the workplace needed to operate would be a damaging backwards step.  It would slam a door in the face of those most marginalised who, through the changes needed to support industry during lockdown, have been granted the flexibility they have found so hard to win. For industry, it would be equally destructive, as it would close again the huge pool of talent that is available, if we continue to take steps to encourage it. 

 

Amidst collapsing sectors, there are new and emerging opportunities, businesses, and sectors. We have seen businesses previously bound by process, structure and sign-off move in a direction that was never thought possible. For them, there is no going back, for new businesses, there is no excuse.  

 

If employers aren’t putting flexibility and accessibility at the heart of their employment strategy, they will fall behind, both morally and in profitability. Now, more than ever before, we need a resilient and adaptive workforce and to exclude anyone from that would be to the detriment of our economic recovery.  

 

Dan Howard FIEP 

Managing Director at Skills Forward, Operations Director – Learning for Work at NCFE 

For information on focused and inclusive employability skills testing, education and support, contact skillswork@skillsforward.co.uk.  You can also visit www.ncfe.org.uk/go-the-distance to find out more about how NCFE together with Skills Forward is taking action against unemployment.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 333

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Oli de Botton, Chief executive, The Careers and Enterprise Company

Start date: Early 2021

Current job: Headteacher, School 21

Interesting fact: He once, inadvertently, shared an open mic stage with Ed Sheeran

Trudy Norris-Grey, Chair, UCAS board of trustees

Start date: December 2020

Current job: Chair, WISE Campaign

Interesting fact: A trip to Saladin’s castle in Syria was interrupted when a van load of armed militia took them away and advised them to leave – war broke out two days later

Rebecca Conroy, Chief executive, East Sussex College Group

Start date: October 2020

Previous job: Principal, East Sussex College, Eastbourne campus

Interesting fact: During the first lockdown, she took up sea swimming

Mass Covid testing ‘a game changer’ for colleges

Rapid mass coronavirus testing has been hailed as a potential “game changer” for keeping campuses open and courses running, as trials get under way in colleges.

A pilot that tests all students and staff, as much as once per day, began this week with the help of the army at the City of Liverpool College – as part of the country’s first city-wide mass testing scheme.

Newcastle Sixth Form College is also set to launch its own trial for staff and students using lateral flow tests, which give a result in less than an hour, on Monday as ministers develop plans for further field tests in education settings across the country.

The Department of Health and Social Care would not say how many colleges in total have been asked to participate in the trials, but principals have said the these will make a “huge” difference to keeping students in the classroom and in tackling the anxiety around keeping their sites open during the pandemic.

However, questions will be raised about how a wider rollout of the tests would be staffed, and a recent evaluation of the speedy antigen tests being used has prompted concerns that cases could be missed.

Speaking exclusively to FE Week following the launch of the government’s first mass testing pilot in Liverpool last week, health secretary Matthew Hancock said: “We should all applaud the level of collaboration we’re seeing in Liverpool between colleges, the council and NHS Test and Trace in a common mission to tackle coronavirus.

“We must learn from what goes well in Liverpool and roll it out across the country.”

Matthew Hancock

Under the scheme, which involves around 2,000 army personnel, regular or repeat tests are offered to everyone, whether or not they have Covid-19 symptoms, in an effort to self-isolate those found to be infected and drive down the rate of transmission.

For schools and colleges, it also means that for students who have come into contact with someone who has Covid-19, instead of self-isolating at home for ten days they can be tested daily and continue to come into campus as long as they return a negative test.

The lateral flow tests involve a handheld kit that can produce a result within 15 minutes without the need for a lab. Fluid from a nasal swab or saliva goes on one end, then a marking appears if the person is positive.

A new Covid-19 testing site exclusively for the 500 staff and 12,000 students at the City of Liverpool College opened on Tuesday.

The British Army was deployed to open the site, which has the ability to conduct 84 tests per hour and will be running for 12 hours each day initially from November 10 to 16.

City of Liverpool College principal Elaine Bowker said: “As Liverpool’s largest college, we’re clear on our responsibility to contribute to the safety of our community.

“The wellbeing of our students and staff is our absolute priority, and we welcome the opportunity to take part in this mass testing pilot as a means of controlling the spread of coronavirus.”

Elaine Bowker

After hearing about the mass testing trial in the college, Stuart Rimmer, chief executive of East Coast College in East Anglia, said: “We should welcome this step at City of Liverpool. If this approach could be rapidly scaled up for colleges nationwide it could be a game changer ahead of a vaccine, increasing staff and student confidence to fully participate in learning.”

The City of Liverpool College appears to be the only college in the city that has its own site.

Carol Nield, vice principal at Merseyside-based Hugh Baird College, told FE Week the college “would welcome the opportunity to participate in mass testing” but has not been approached to trial it by government.

She added that the college is “fully supportive” of the idea of mass testing in education as a “vehicle for keeping our communities safe and preventing the spread of Covid-19”.

While a city-wide trial is currently running in Liverpool, the government has announced it is issuing a further 600,000 tests to local authorities, with many choosing to deploy them to schools for mass testing of students.

Sign-off has almost been given for a mass testing site at Newcastle Sixth Form College in the north-east exclusively for its 1,223 students and 100 staff.

The college was approached by government officials last week and is waiting for official approval, expected on Friday, before beginning to test on Monday.

Principal Gerard Garvey told FE Week that he expects between 15 and 20 army personnel to be deployed to the college each day from Monday until Christmas to administer the tests.

The college plans to test each student and staff member who consents each week for the remaining five weeks of this term – which means they’ll conduct over 6,000 tests.

“For as long as they return a negative test, they will be able to come into college,” he said. “This will enable us to minimise the numbers who have to self-isolate when they are worried they have come into contact with somebody who has had a positive test.”

Garvey added that students were “excited” to be part of the trial because they have “seen the impact that coronavirus can have on their education and they want to help to reduce that impact”.

No discussions have yet been had about training staff to administer the tests, but the principal said they are straightforward and the army personnel will be there to “hand materials to the students and collect in samples”.

“It is a very short test and we think it will have a minimum impact on learners. They will be asked to come from class and return to class.”

Newcastle Sixth Form College will use a student IT open access room on the ground floor of its building because it is “easy for students to get to and runs an existing one-way system so we can control and easy route in and out to keep contact with others minimal”, Garvey continued.

He thinks the difference mass testing in college will make is “huge”.

“We have had just 23 student positive cases so far this year but this led to us having to self-isolate 130 students and work from home. We believe that with A-levels in particular, the best place for learners is in the classroom, with expert teacher guidance. The more learners we can continue to do that for will only benefit learners as they head towards exams in the summer.”

Garvey added that the testing should provide peace of mind for staff, students and parents: “There has been anxiety around the pandemic and I think our students and parents have felt reassured by the way we have been operating, but this pilot will give us an extra level of assurance for parents that we are looking to minimise, in particular, asymptomatic transmission. This benefits not just the college community, but the wider community in the north-east.”

Gerard Garvey

Despite excitement around the rapid lateral flow Covid tests, a recent study by Public Health England and the University of Oxford found that while false positives were rare, the tests were found to have a 76.8 per cent sensitivity rate, meaning they do still miss nearly a quarter of cases.

On Thursday, a record 33,470 people tested positive for coronavirus in the government’s latest daily figure. It was the highest daily number since mass testing began in the UK, and brings the total number of cases to more than 1.29 million.

Schools and colleges are still waiting to hear if or when the lateral flow tests will be rolled out nationally, including how they would be staffed.

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said he was “pleased to see colleges included in the mass testing pilots because reliable testing will augment the plans already in place”.

“With testing, we expect young people and adults to be even more confident about attending college face to face, allowing them to get the education and training they deserve,” he added.

‘Significant strides’ made towards addressing safety concerns at Shrewsbury college, says FE Commissioner

A college has been praised by the FE Commissioner for making “significant strides” towards ensuring its campuses safe, after Ofsted accused it of safeguarding failures that led to a grade four.

Such improvements at Shrewsbury Colleges Group include employing additional security personnel as well as enforcing the wearing of lanyards by all students and staff.

The college was downgraded by Ofsted from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ in March, following an inspection in November found “not all students feel safe in the college,” and a small number of vulnerable students felt “intimidated” around the college.

Leaders and managers were criticised for having “not taken sufficient steps to help ensure the safety of students”, and were told to develop “as a matter of urgency” a detailed and effective safeguarding risk assessment for the college’s estates.

That ‘inadequate’ grade was challenged by the college group, but this fell flat following a second visit from Ofsted in March.

The subsequent grade four report triggered an intervention by FE Commissioner Richard Atkins, who assessed the college with his team through an onsite and a virtual visit in September.

His report, released today, said the college group’s leaders and board “responded well to the safeguarding issues that were raised by the Ofsted inspection and have improved onsite security”.

New measures, such as employing extra security and “consistently” enforcing the wearing of lanyards by all students and staff, means students say “they now feel safer and it is now not possible for unidentified persons to access the college sites”.

Additional security measures, such as barrier security in the car parks, are also in the pipeline, and funding received from the group’s partnership with grade one Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group on the College Collaboration Fund will “seek to address any remaining challenges with safeguarding”.

In a letter attached to the report, dated for yesterday, apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan commended the “significant strides towards addressing areas for improvement identified by Ofsted”.

The college had to implement further safety measures for the Covid-19 pandemic, and the commissioner’s report says senior leadership “responded well” to measures which were observed during the intervention visit as “rigorous and appearing to be working well”.

Its finances were also assessed as being in good shape, with the board even predicting performance in 2020-21 will be “slightly improved”.

Principal James Staniforth said: “The commissioner’s report reflects the dedication of staff throughout the college in continuously improving safeguarding and their hard work to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of students during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The commissioner makes a number of recommendations in relation to strategic planning and leadership development that we are working through.

“We look forward to another visit by the commission in March 2021.”

The college has been handed a list of recommendations, including a new strategic plan, which must review its current designation as a sixth form college, and develop a comprehensive estates strategy.

The commissioner’s report said “significant” extra work is needed to “establish a single culture across the group which combines the expectations and culture of a sixth form college, with those of a general FE college”.

The “aging” estate also needs “significantly” more maintenance and investment, if “costly problems are not to be stored up for future years”.

Shrewsbury Colleges Group was formed in August 2016 from a merger of Shrewsbury Sixth Form College and Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology.

A-levels are delivered at two sixth form campuses in Shrewsbury town centre, while technical and vocational programmes are based at the former FE college site on the edge of town.