Latest news from FE Week

Level 3 adult offer to be widened for low earners

The government is set to allow people on low wages to take multiple level 3 qualifications available through the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee for free.

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced at the Association of Colleges conference the extension of the policy would be trialled from next April.

He said: “In a trial from next April any adult in England who earns a yearly salary below the national living wage will also have the chance to take these high-value level 3 qualifications for free.”

Since April 2021, any adult aged 19 and over who does not already have a level 3 qualification or higher has been allowed to access hundreds of fully funded level 3 courses.

The AoC has been calling on the government to allow people on low wages to take repeat level 3 qualifications, insisting that the current policy is too restrictive.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said further details about the eligibility expansion will be made available to the sector “in due course”.

Zahawi claims to have evidence there will be enough employers for T Level placements

Nadhim Zahawi claims to have seen evidence that shows enough employers will offer 45-day work placements to tens of thousands of students each year when T Levels are fully rolled out.

The education secretary’s claim, made in an exclusive interview with FE Week, comes despite college leaders who are delivering the first T Levels warning they can’t even find enough placements now for their small number of learners.

“My team has shown me early evidence that they’ve done on this [and] there’s plenty of scope for those placements for real delivery at scale,” Zahawi said.

“I’m confident we’ll have the placements. The evidence is there. I want to now make sure we are operationally ready.”

The Department for Education refused to share the alleged evidence with the sector when pressed, saying all “internal advice” to ministers is not made public. FE Week has submitted a freedom of information request for the evidence to push for its release.

Just hours after Zahawi’s claim, FE Week spoke to principals delivering the first and second wave of T Levels, who said they currently have students on the flagship programme who cannot find industry placements.

The college leaders, who did not want to be named, said the issue was particularly acute for the digital pathway if the college is in a rural area.

And speaking on this week’s FE Week Podcast, outgoing chief executive of T Level provider Activate Learning, Sally Dicketts, said the government faces a real “problem” in this space. “For most of England, employers are small and medium size. They can barely provide you with three weeks of work experience, let alone 45 days of it,” Dicketts, who is also the Association of Colleges president, added.

Ministers and sector leaders have become increasingly worried about convincing enough businesses to host students for the 315-hour, or 45-day, placements, a concern exacerbated by Covid-19.

The DfE has watered down the policy for 2020 and 2021 starters by allowing a chunk of their placement to be conducted remotely – but this flexibility is only temporary.

Other short-term flexibilities include £1,000 cash incentives for employers running the placements.

Some colleges, including Scarborough Sixth Form College, attended by former education secretary Gavin Williamson, have pulled out of delivering some T Level pathways after finding it too difficult to secure sufficient work placements to meet demand.

But Zahawi, the former vaccines minister, is not fazed. He told FE Week he has made it his top target to make T Levels a success. “As I did with vaccines, I’m going to deliver on this. I will make T Levels as famous as A-levels by the next election.

“What that means is I hope everyone will know someone, family member or friend, who will have heard or have done a T Level. So it’s a huge scale-up. We are brilliant at doing a lot of evidence and thinking and reviews. We’ve had the Wolf review, we’ve had the Sainsbury review, it’s about delivery now.

“I am not the world’s greatest think-tanker. But I think I’m pretty good at delivery. And I will deliver.”

FE Week also asked Zahawi whether he had further plans to bring FE and HE closer together, following the Augar review and appointment of two joint ministers – Michelle Donelan and Alex Burghart – to cover both sectors.

The education secretary would only say: “Loads, and you have to wait until I talk about that at a later stage.”

Traineeships flop: less than half 16-18 expansion cash allocated

Less than half of the £30 million earmarked for the government’s 16-to-18 traineeships market entry exercise is set to be awarded, FE Week understands.

Sixty training providers have won contracts of between £100,000 and £300,000 in the procurement that was finally launched at the end of September.

Outcomes are being communicated to bidders this week with delivery due to start at the beginning of December.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has remained tight-lipped about the total number of providers that submitted bids and contract values, but FE Week understands only £13.7 million will be allocated.

It is not clear at this stage whether the underspend will be put back into the traineeship programme.

The ESFA said it would not comment on leaks when approached for comment.

The market entry exercise was launched in a bid to rapidly ramp up the number of young people taking part in the pre-employment programme, which has experienced low engagement since its launch in 2013.

To be eligible for this round of funding, training providers needed an ‘outstanding’ or ‘good’ Ofsted rating unless they hold an existing contract for 19-24 traineeships.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak set a target to triple the number of starts in both the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years, backed with almost £250 million.

A progress report for Sunak’s Plan for Jobs was published in September and revealed there were 17,000 traineeship starts last year – 46 per cent of the government’s 36,700 target.

Ministers hope to achieve 43,000 starts on the scheme this year.

Two weeks ago, at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers autumn conference, the ESFA’s director of FE Kirsty Evans admitted the government will “not quite” achieve its starts ambition again this year, as she expressed “frustration” at delays to the programme’s expansion.

Officials had been promising a 16-to-18 traineeship market entry exercise all year but it was slow to get off the ground. This is despite the agency running a procurement to expand the 19-to-24 traineeship provider base, although that was beset with delays.

‘Wrong message’: leaders criticise ending of T Level maths and English requirement

Axing the requirement for T Level students to achieve GCSE-level English and maths by the end of their course risks devaluing the brand of the new qualifications, sector leaders have warned.

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi revealed the move this week, saying it has been made after the Department for Education “consistently” heard of some students being put off taking a T Level because of the rule.

It will bring T Levels in line with other qualifications, including their academic equivalent A-levels.

But former DfE director of FE funding Sue Pember believes the decision “sends the wrong message” to young people.

She told FE Week that removing English and maths GCSEs as the entry criteria for T Levels was “bad enough” and stopping the exit requirement will make their appeal to universities and employers “suffer”.

Ruth Spellman, former chief executive of the WEA, added: “Devaluing T Levels by reducing entry requirements will boost the take-up but risks increasing the fall-out. Can this be the right way to address skill shortages and build credibility with students or employers?”

Shadow education secretary Kate Green has also questioned what other support will be put in place to “ensure students do achieve these essential skills”.

Until now T Level students have been required to achieve either a grade 4 in English and maths GCSE or level 2 in functional skills in order to pass their programme.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which has responsibility for T Levels, has been told to remove it with immediate effect for all pathways. The Education and Skills Funding Agency said it will provide guidance “shortly” on how this will be implemented.

The DfE hopes the moves will boost T Level take-up. Around 1,300 young people started T Levels last year – the first year of their rollout.

Starts figures for this year’s enrolments will not be available until “the end of the year”.

While there is some scepticism about the removal of the exit requirement, colleges that deliver T Levels have welcomed it.

Deputy chief executive at Luminate Education Group and principal of Leeds City College, Bill Jones, said the rule “might have created an unnecessary barrier to otherwise technically highly able and competent students”.

Luminate’s deputy chief executive for curriculum and quality, Gemma Simmons-Blench, explained that the requirement had “prevented a number of students from accessing the provision”.

“Enabling more inclusive access to T Level programmes can only serve to cement their importance and relevance in the curriculum landscape,” she added.

Corrienne Peasgood, principal of City College Norwich, described this as a “welcome announcement because of the parity it puts in place between T Levels and A-levels, given that students are able to achieve three A-levels without having passed GCSE English and maths”.

However, she doesn’t believe this change will affect large numbers of T Level students, “simply because having a good level of literacy and numeracy is essential to access the T Level curriculum”.

Pember, who now leads adult education network HOLEX, warned that this country has a “history of poor English and maths skills which results in lower productivity and poor economic performance” and said that making GCSEs an integral part of T Levels was a “robust way of showing their importance”.

She told FE Week that although English and maths have been removed as an “exit requirement” for T Levels ,“they are being transferred to being a ‘condition of funding’.

“So where a 16-to-19-year-old does not have grade 4 or above GCSE, they will be required to study towards a GCSE or level 2 functional skills.”

The FE Week Podcast: Association of Colleges Conference Special

This special episode comes straight from the Association of Colleges annual conference in Birmingham, one of the biggest FE events of the year!

Shane is joined by two leading principals: Sally Dicketts, chief executive at Activate Learning, and Jo Maher, chief executive at Loughborough College.

Together they take a closer look at Nadhim Zahawi’s speech that day, in the education secretary’s first appearance to the sector…

Listen to the special episode 7 below, and hit subscribe to follow the podcast!

Deliver more apprenticeships, Zahawi tells college leaders

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi has issued a call to arms after learning that less than a third of apprenticeships are currently delivered by colleges.

He told the Association of Colleges conference this morning that he “knows colleges are more than capable” of expanding in this space.

In an interview with FE Week after his speech, Zahawi stopped short of setting an “arbitrary target” for colleges to aspire to because it “is wrong for us to do that” but urged leaders to be “ambitious as possible”.

His message comes six years after then skills minister Nick Boles told the same conference to stop letting private providers “nick your lunch” – criticising colleges for failing to secure more government apprenticeships cash.

At the time, in 2015, around 27 per cent of apprenticeships were delivered by colleges.

Zahawi told delegates today: “I would love to see even more colleges involved in delivering apprenticeships.

“Currently around 30 per cent of apprenticeships are carried out in colleges, but if we really want to transform supply we will have to grow that number. I know colleges are more than capable of it.”

The education secretary said the country needs to “ensure far closer alignment between colleges and employers right across our skills system” – and listed off colleges’ role in upcoming local skills improvement plans and urged them to also get involved in other programmes like skills bootcamps.

Just 10 out of the 36 providers signed up to deliver the national rollout of bootcamps.

Zahawi refused to share his hypothesis about why colleges have not stepped up their apprenticeship delivery over the past six years.

But he told FE Week: “My call to arms is to say, look, the colleges that have really focused on this and are doing it well, I’d love you to learn from them, I’d love you to scale up because you are very much at the heart of communities.

“Join us on this journey and be ambitious about it.”

Most college boards missing black and Asian members, AoC finds

Over half of FE college boards have no black board members, while less than a third have no Asian members, new research by the Association of Colleges has found.

The report also shows nearly half of boards surveyed had 10 or more male members, but only eight reported 10 or more female members.

The Current Status of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in the Further Education Sector in England is based on a survey of 113 governance professionals and 328 board members, plus an analysis of college websites and 836 sets of board minutes.

Association chief executive David Hughes said there is “more work” to be done “to be representative amongst senior staff and leaders” as colleges are “some of the most diverse institutions in the country in terms of students”.

This report, carried out by education and skills questionnaire provider QDP Services, provides a “baseline to work from and highlight the challenges that remain around representation, diversity and inclusion in our sector,” Hughes said.

As well as 32 per cent of boards having no Asian members and 51 per cent having no black members, the report also found 63 per cent had no members declaring a physical disability.

Ninety per cent of boards had fewer than three members aged under 24 and less than one per cent had a member who identified as non-heterosexual or which had a gender reassigned member.

Despite this, 70 per cent of governance professionals – paid employees who work with the board – described their board as diverse.

Only 36 per cent of board members felt their board pays sufficient attention to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI), and one third felt their board was failing to implement EDI.

Boards most commonly monitored EDI within the organisation using an annual report on the matter, but the report called this “often a rather token mechanism”.

The report recommends all boards have a clear and contextualised definition of EDI, as it found: “Confusion over their meaning and relative stature is a common ground on which EDI stalls.”

Boards must put in place evidence-based strategies to promote EDI and “bookend” efforts to improve it with audits of issues and outcomes.

The most effective training interventions to promote EDI should also be promoted and government needs to put resources into supporting the FE sector on this.

A call for further research to come up with objective measures with a “360-degree view of EDI” is also needed.

Diversity in FE leadership has become a hot topic in the sector, with FE Week reporting in July 2019 that less than seven per cent of college principals were non-white.

The following October, the Education and Training Foundation announced its Diversity in Leadership programme including one-to-one coaching for aspiring black, Asian and minority ethnic leaders.

Several sector groups focusing on EDI, such as the Association of Colleges’ EDI steering group and the Black FE Leadership Group, have also been formed to push for action.

Ofsted handed £24m to inspect all schools, colleges and providers by 2025

Ofsted has bagged an extra £24 million from government to inspect every school, college and further education provider by summer 2025.

For colleges specifically, they will receive a full inspection from September 2022 regardless of whether they are rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’. These colleges would typically receive a short inspection.

The inspections will also be “enhanced” to take account of “local skills needs”, in line with proposals set our in the skills for jobs white paper.

Ofsted said the decision to accelerate inspections has been made to give a quicker assessment of how well education is recovering from the pandemic.

Without the new cash, funded through the spending review, it would have taken a further year for all schools, colleges and providers to be completed, according to a spokesperson.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman expanded on the announcement at today’s Association of Colleges conference.

She said: “I’m confident that this is a positive development and one that will be welcomed by the sector. It followed discussions with the DfE about how inspection can respond to the focus on local skills needs.

“I’m in favour of assessing the extent to which colleges have regard to local skills. We’ve had concerns about mismatches in the past between courses that are popular and courses that really open doors. There is a moral imperative here on two fronts – both to help the economy thrive and to present students with realistic pathways.”

Spielman added: “It’s really important that we get a true feel for the local economy so we can properly consider the contribution of colleges. This work clearly doesn’t lend itself to light-touch inspection. We need full inspections, with some enhancements, which I’m pleased government has recognised.”

The chief inspector said Ofsted has already started to pilot its methodologies for inspecting skills needs, and the watchdog will be seeking the sector’s input.

FE Week understands Ofsted is on a recruitment drive to hire between 18 and 25 new inspectors to build capacity for the accelerated inspections of colleges and other FE providers.

Following today’s announcement, Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders warned “the government has some strange ideas about the priority for education recovery”.

She said the “government hasn’t committed anything like the level of investment which is needed” to deliver recovery programmes at the scale provided. The prospect of having “deal with a visit from an inspection team isn’t particularly helpful” when schools and colleges are still dealing with pandemic disruption, she added.

Labour: BTECs defunding delay ‘doesn’t go far enough’

Ministers’ one-year delay to defunding many BTECs and other applied general qualifications does not go far enough, the Labour Party has warned.

Addressing today’s Association of Colleges annual conference, shadow education secretary Kate Green called on the government to introduce a four-year moratorium on scrapping any of the qualifications so that none are removed before 2025 – as called for by the House of Lords.

Education secretary Nadhim Zahawi last night announced that qualifications like BTECs, which will be subject to a planned cull of level 3 qualifications that overlap with T Levels and A-levels, would not have their funding stripped until at least 2024 instead of the original plan of 2023.

He also revealed that the requirement for T Level students to achieve level 2 English and maths by the end of their course will be removed.

Green said today: “For me this doesn’t go far enough. Some BTECs will survive – but the secretary of state won’t tell us which. That undermines confidence among employers and students.

“The announced removal of the requirement for GCSE English and maths to access T Levels came without any indication of what support will be put in place to ensure students do achieve these essential skills, or how the additional need for work placements that might result will be accommodated.

“Meanwhile, pilots continue with the English and Maths GCSE requirement in place – what does last night’s announcement mean for these students?”

She added: “Ensuring the right choices remain for all students, is so important especially for the most marginalised, and that’s why Labour will continue to urge ministers to take the time to get all this right and to accept our amendment passed in the Lords with cross party support for a four-year moratorium on scrapping BTECs.”

Green also used her speech to reiterate Labour’s plans for skills.

It includes the creation of a new “further education recovery premium” – which would essentially be a post-16 pupil premium – as well as a commitment to giving every school and college access to a professional careers advisor one day a week.

A Labour government would also reinstate the equivalent of at least two weeks of compulsory work experience, Green said.

FE Week is media partner for this year’s AoC conference. Read our edition coming out on Friday for full coverage of the event.