Minister’s office breaks apprenticeship recruitment pledge

A pledge to fill all junior roles with apprentices until the end of December has already been broken by the Department for Education.

Job adverts for three diary managers, who will work directly with ministers and the DfE’s permanent secretary, at executive officer level are currently live and state the roles can be filled by “non-apprentices”.

It comes despite skills minister Gillian Keegan having told education select committee chair Robert Halfon earlier this month that the DfE was changing its recruitment approach to “ensure all executive assistant and executive officer positions are filled using apprenticeships, for a pilot period between 1 September to 31 December 2020”.

She repeated the promise when speaking at an Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference on 9 September – declaring that “we practise what we preach” when it comes to boosting the number of apprentices across the country.

After being shown the diary manager adverts, the DfE admitted that in a “small number” of instances an “exemption” to their new recruitment policy may be necessary.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We remain committed to ensuring all executive assistant and executive officer positions at the DfE are filled using apprenticeships, for a pilot period between 1 September to 31 December 2020.

“We are bringing in three diary managers to work in private offices across the department. The intention is to fill these roles with high potential apprentices who will be able to manage a fast paced working environment while keeping on top of their apprenticeship learning. However, it may be necessary to fill one of the roles with a candidate with a higher level of previous experience who would therefore be ineligible to undertake the apprenticeship in business administration.

“We are advertising 28 apprenticeship vacancies and have received a high level of interest from potential candidates.”

The DfE is accepting applications to the diary manager roles until 27 September. Based in London and paid £28,500 a year, successful candidates will “manage the minister or permanent secretary’s time so they are able to attend key meetings, ensure they have the time available to engage with policy and strategic issues and make business critical decisions”.

The DfE’s recruitment pilot is also being run in the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

 

Victoria Copp-Crawley, principal, Ashford College

JL Dutaut meets a college leader with a healthy disregard for the academic/vocational divide

When your path through life and career isn’t a straightforward one, it’s easy to be jealous of someone like the new principal of Ashford College, Victoria Copp-Crawley – someone for whom what to be ‘when you grow up’ was clear from early on and who has achieved it. Is achieving it.

“I always wanted to be a teacher,” she says. “I was very passionate about teaching from primary school age. My teachers, especially my PE teachers, they were everything really. When I became a sports teacher in Hastings, I thought I’d conquered the world.”

And nobody is more aware of the privilege that represents than Copp-Crawley herself. In fact, that awareness is what seems to drive her ever on. “I had a fantastic education. I felt very privileged to have that. I loved learning, and it’s nice to be able to do that for young people. And you know, being a leader of a college, you can really influence those practices, and make sure we give the best education we can possibly give to young people.”

Principal of her third college within the EKC Group (formerly East Kent College) with a stellar record of college improvement, Copp-Crawley has been entrusted since September with overseeing EKC Group’s acquisition of Ashford College. An experienced and effective leader, her belief in the transformative power of the vocational sector transcends simply getting the ‘right bums on the right seats’.

You can see a student’s life really starting from college

Having risen through the ranks as a learner manager at West Kent College, then as a head of enterprise and director of curriculum with East Kent College, it’s not so much that those experiences shape her perspective now, but that the roles she’s held reflect a philosophy that has always underpinned her professional life. “When young people have had challenging times, and they’ve really flourished in technical or vocational training and they get a job and you can see the development they’ve made – that is the best reward for me.”

Where her sense of further education’s unique role comes from is difficult to trace, but it’s clear that it is far more than ‘something you say when you’re a principal’ to her. There’s genuine passion in her voice as she tells me that “there’s a lot of people out there that don’t realise the talents they’ve got, and they’ve often not had the best support possible.” So far, so Ken Robinson, you might be tempted to say. But Copp-Crawley has little truck with the idea that the system needs substantial reform. Her emphasis is telling. It’s not that school hasn’t suited such students, but that “They haven’t suited school.” “You can see them come alive, you know,” she adds. “The number of students that go on to apprenticeships and go into jobs that hadn’t achieved anything when they got to us is really amazing. You can see a student’s life really starting from college.”

Copp-Crawley is someone who suited the GCSE–A level–university–profession route very well indeed. Three years after her first degree in sports science from Brunel, she went to Brighton for a PGCE in post-compulsory education. Three years after that, she was back at Brighton for a master’s in education. So what is the source of her deep commitment to the FE sector? That may be down to the subject she excelled in and that propelled her through school.

Physical education sits in that sometimes-uncomfortable overlap between the academic and vocational spheres. Students who excel at sports and dream of a future playing for England are often advised – rightly – that sporting careers are high-risk and short-lived. “Have a plan B,” they’re told. All well and good for those, like Copp-Crawley, for whom an academic plan B is a comfortable pathway, but a tougher ask for those whose abilities lie elsewhere.

In reality, Copp-Crawley’s path into and through a career in education hasn’t been quite a straight line, precisely because of her sporting prowess. Introduced to squash by her brother, four years her senior, who played competitively, she was, she tells me, “the girl who follows her brother around.”

You feel quite pressured when you’re in a full-time job as a mum

“And then I started playing when he was playing.” By the age of nine, she had won the Sussex county championships in the under-10s category. She won again in the under-12s, under-14s, under-16s and under-19s! Among other tournament successes around the country, she captained the under-16s and under-19s Sussex teams to three consecutive inter-county championship victories. More than that, from the age of 14 to the age of 21 she played for the England squad and with them won the home countries championships three consecutive years.

Aged 21, from coach to the Sussex team, Copp-Crawley took her first step into a formal education role in 2002 as a part-time sports lecturer – sans qualification – at Bexhill college. But even years after completing her PGCE and master’s degree, she stepped out of a promising career in the sector for a year as the coaching and leadership programme lead for the English Table Tennis Association, demonstrating a healthy disregard for the boundaries between academic and vocational routes to progression.

Born and raised in the Hastings area, Copp-Crawley has never strayed far from the region. It’s where she has made her family – she is a married mother of two, whose husband, she says, is her biggest support and whose nine-year-old can’t get enough of college-branded pens to show off at school. “You feel quite pressured when you’re in a full-time job as a mum,” she says, but goes on to explain how important being a role model to her children is.

And there’s real passion for giving back to the community that drives her too. It’s part of recognising those privileges she enjoyed as a child – a supportive family, supportive teachers and local squash coaching talent, all aligned to give her an experience like no other.

And that’s why system reform isn’t on her agenda. For Copp-Crawley, the solutions are local and the means to find and develop them are already at hand. “Part of EKC group is that we’ve got all of our colleges and we’re now developing our EKC Trust of schools as well. We’ve got four schools as part of our trust and we engage them with community activities because it’s really important for young people to be engaged with a range of different things, and all of education has got a part to play in that.”

Given the pandemic, the country needs the FE world more than ever

This cross-over stewardship of schools and colleges means that within existing frameworks and legislation, Copp-Crawley is certain that the tools already exist to improve the chances of those less fortunate than she was, to create the types of life-affirming opportunities she had, not just through sport but through access to technical and vocational learning. “At our Broadstairs and Folkestone campuses, we’ve got our junior college that allows students to access vocational technical education at the age of 14. That enables a student to come from school and, if it’s not suited to them, to start their technical and their vocation journey earlier.”

If there’s a challenge for policy makers still to tackle, as far as Copp-Crawley is concerned, it is about the representation of the further education sector. “A lot of people think college is a place where people go because they haven’t achieved. It’s not about that. It’s a place that actually allows people to flourish in the things they’re going to be talented in. Given the pandemic we’ve just gone through, the country needs the FE world more than ever.”

With school-college partnerships like those EKC Group are developing, and leaders at the helm like Copp-Crawley, there’s hope that the institutional divide between academic and vocational education can finally be tackled, one sometimes-uncomfortable overlap at a time.

Apprenticeship provider register closure ‘stalling’ training industry, says former SFA manager

A former Skills Funding Agency manager has accused the government of “stalling” the training industry at a time of national crisis.

Martin Taft, who is now the managing director of Midlands-based Springboard Training, said the suspension of the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP) in April has prevented new providers from offering support during the economic fallout from Covid-19.

Describing the ESFA as acting as a “bottleneck”, Taft, a former service centre manager at the SFA until 2018 who has also worked at apprenticeship providers such as 3aaa and Geason Training, said: “Rather than perpetuating the monopoly of larger organisations in the further education sector, the ESFA has a duty towards small, high-quality training companies who can deliver tailored support within the local community.

“Ultimately, it is learners who are suffering due to the lack of options available.”

Springboard incorporated in November 2019 and currently offers commercial training in leadership and management, digital skills, customer service and employability. It wants to become an approved apprenticeship provider to “expand its offering and support further people into careers and upskill within their current capacity”.

The ESFA suspended RoATP to give “time for applications in progress and second applications to be completed and submitted,” and to give the government an “opportunity to review our future approach to the register,” the agency said in spring.

Suspension meant the register was closed to new bids to join, including second applications from providers which had already applied in the previous 12 months.

The ESFA told Springboard this month the register remained closed in response to the pandemic, but levy-paying companies delivering services considered “critical to the COVID-19 response” were still able to apply to provide apprenticeship training as needed as an employer provider.

Their review, they continued, was “still in progress” and the government is still “regularly assessing the impact that the Covid-19 emergency is having on training providers and apprenticeships and cannot confirm a re-opening date at this stage”.

But they promised further communications on when and in what form the RoATP will reopen would be provided in the coming months.

Benn Carson, a further education consultant, has joined with Springboard in its criticism of the ESFA, accusing it of “failing the sector” by using the pandemic as an “excuse” for closing RoATP.

He urged ministers to rectify the problem “urgently”, as: “Local and niche providers dealing with vulnerable learners are critical to our skills system. By shutting them out of registration, the ESFA has dealt a serious blow to the life chances of an entire generation and the damage is incalculable.”

The review into RoATP is likely to cover plans to make providers become “accredited” for apprenticeships standards they offer – as revealed by the ESFA’s then-director of apprenticeships Keith Smith at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference in March.

FE Week also understands there are plans to potentially introduce funding caps on providers which are yet to have a full Ofsted inspection.

A new, “strengthened” RoATP was launched earlier last year, following a number of problems in the register’s application process: including one-man bands with no delivery experience allowed to access to millions of pounds of apprenticeships funding.

The Department for Education, responding to a request for comment from FE Week, highlighted how any training provider which has not been trading for at least one year is not permitted to apply to be on the RoATP.

A department spokesperson said: “Covid-19 has had a significant impact on jobs including apprenticeships.  We’ve taken action to boost the number of apprenticeships available – offering cash incentives to employers so they can take on more apprentices – but it is also right that we make sure there continues to be the right level of high quality training on offer.

“To help provide necessary stability during this unprecedented time we closed the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers to all new applications in April. We are continuing to work through options and we will update in due course.”

Revealed: First 20 colleges chosen for the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence

The 20 colleges which will take part in the first year of the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence have been announced today.

The “centre”, run by WorldSkills UK with £1.5 million from awarding organisation NCFE, will involve training up teachers in international best practices, as well as digital workshops featuring talks from training managers from other countries.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said the “innovative partnership” between WorldSkills UK and NCFE will ensure “young people receive the best vocational training possible and help businesses access the talented workforce they need to rebuild after Covid-19”.

The 20 colleges (see list below), picked from 55 applications by general FE colleges, will have five staff members taught by high performance skills coaches – who also work as WorldSkills UK training managers – how to use techniques the coaches used to train competitors with students at their college.

This will not only involve teaching technical skills, but will also incorporate the psychological conditioning competitors receive during their preparations for the international WorldSkills and EuroSkills tournaments.

WorldSkills UK’s deputy chief executive Ben Blackledge said: “It’s about taking those learnings, and also the technical learnings, and applying that to anyone in the college, whether they are doing a level 6 or a level 1.”

As one of the participating colleges, Trafford College said getting involved was a “no-brainer”, having been very proactive with skills competitions. One of their students, Ben Metcalfe, is a potential competitor for WorldSkills Shanghai next year.

Assistant principal Joan Scott (pictured) said they are hoping they will get a “brilliant” development programme for the five educators they have chosen for training from a performance coach assigned to them by WorldSkills.

There is, Scott says, “often a gap between what you’re doing in colleges and those international standards, so we’re hoping we could empower our teachers to really help and boost standards of the delivery of technical education.

“It’s not just about putting people in competitions.”

And with the economy stalling and unemployment rising, Scott highlights the importance of equipping students with high level skills to compete in the job market, while also helping employers to be more competitive.

The college is hoping the training from the centre of excellence will give students a “base from which to get jobs and be more successful”.

This programme is not about competitions and getting the UK more gold medals

Raising standards to international levels was also brought up by the chief executive of Chichester College Group, Shelagh Legrave, when she spoke to FE Week about taking part in the centre.

She is “absolutely thrilled” the college has been chosen, as she wants more of their students participating and winning WorldSkills UK’s annual National Finals and getting onto Team UK.

Another reason for taking part in the centre and taking on that international practice is: “You don’t know if the benchmark you are achieving is the benchmark the rest of the world is achieving.”

Chichester is already deeply involved with WorldSkills UK: Lecturer Andy Pengelly is the WorldSkills UK training manager for joinery, and head of furniture studies Christian Notley is training manager in cabinet making.

Legrave says a “really welcomed” opportunity with the centre is to “expand the practice we have in WorldSkills in furniture making” across the college “more systematically”.

Blackledge said WorldSkills UK is “keen” on involving colleges who have not participated with WorldSkills before, like City of Liverpool College and Barking and Dagenham College, this year: “This programme is not about competitions and getting the UK more gold medals – it’s about how do you take the learning and benefits from the competition and making sure they are more widely embedded.”

The Centre of Excellence programme will also involve using WorldSkills UK’s “unique insight into global skills systems” to help develop assessments and qualifications, as well as independent research into how other countries improve the teaching in their skills system.

In addition to the 20 colleges, a further 35 will be invited to join the WorldSkills UK Innovation Network, with access to the digital workshops, and with an opportunity to join the centre next year. Independent training providers are also set to be invited to join the programme from next year.

Speaking ahead of the Centre of Excellence’s national launch at Trafford College today, WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann OBE said: “This is a radical new way of working with college leaders to bring global best practice to local economies and level up skills across the country – ensuring that we can embed international standards into training programmes and deliver what employers need in order to kick-start the economy.”

Colleges selected to be part of the first year of the WorldSkills UK Centre of Excellence 

College

Region
North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College
East Midlands
West Suffolk College
East of England
Barking and Dagenham College
London
Sunderland College
North East
East Durham College
North East
Middlesbrough College
North East
City of Liverpool College
North West
Wirral Met College
North West
The Trafford College Group
North West
Preston’s College
North West
Dumfries and Galloway College
Scotland
New College Lanarkshire
Scotland
Chichester College Group
South East
Havant & South Downs College
South East
Wiltshire College
South West
Cardiff and Vale College
Wales
Coleg Gwent
Wales
Dudley College of Technology
West Midlands
Rotherham and North Notts Group
Yorkshire and the Humber
Doncaster College and North Lindsey College
Yorkshire and the Humber

Membership of AoC’s new steering group to increase the diversity of leadership and governance revealed

The members of the Association of Colleges’ new Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) steering group have today been revealed.

The group (full list below) will be chaired by NCG group deputy principal Palvinder Singh and is currently developing an “action plan” to tackle discrimination across the further education sector.

FE Week revealed the association had created the committee last year after our analysis found that less than seven per cent of principals were non-white, and after the AoC’s BAME Principals’ Group was disbanded in 2017.

Yesterday the association again refused to name the members of its new EDI group to FE Week on the grounds it would not be in accordance with their “general policy”, but this afternoon they were listed in a weekly email from AoC deputy chief executive, Kirsti Lord.

In the email, seen by FE Week, Lord said the group has a remit “of working to increase the diversity of leadership and governance in the sector, through influencing the Department for Education on policy, the Education and Training Foundation on development, and sharing practice in the sector”.

“The commitment around influencing policy to ensure that college is a welcoming space for all, and the potential for FE to be seen as an attractive career prospect for more diverse communities, are at the heart of the group’s work, in addition to sharing practice and facilitating thought leadership on EDI,” she added.

Lord told FE Week earlier this week that AoC has proposed extending membership of the EDI group to “all relevant membership organisations to ensure insights and actions are reflected”.

It will now be meeting “more frequently to drive these actions and engage with sector members and stakeholders”.

The email continued: “The EDI steering group will be sending an action plan to the AoC board in October for sign off. The commitment around influencing policy and the shape of ITE to ensure that college is a welcoming space for all, and the potential for FE to be seen as an attractive career prospect for more diverse communities are at the heart of the work, in addition to sharing practice and facilitating thought leadership on EDI. Once signed off, the action plan will be published on our website, and be regularly RAG rated for progress.”

Palvinder Singh is also supporting another new organisation, the Black Further Education Leadership Group (BFELG), which is being convened by a number of existing and former college leaders including: former Highbury College principal Stella Mbubaegbu; former Cornwall College principal Amarjit Basi and former chief executive of the Network for Black Professionals Robin Landman, who for the last six years has been a recruitment associate specialising in further education and training and equality and diversity.

With assistance from college principal’s such as Dawn Ward from Burton and South Derbyshire College, the BFELG gathered signatures from sector leaders for an open letter to prime minister Boris Johnson, saying: “At a time of elevated advocacy for FE, failure to recognise the insidious nature of racism undermines the sector’s ability to fully engage with all its constituent communities.”

Their letter includes a number of recommendations, including a “radical revision” of FE curricula and qualifications to include teachings on colonial history and its influence on society; and for professional development programmes to include a consideration of racial equality.

Earlier this week Stella Mbubaegbu sent a letter on behalf of the BFELG to “all BAME chairs/governors to consider becoming a member of the BFEG and/or signatory of the Open Letter. A group of chair/governor members has been formed within BFELG to better engage with and harness the expertise of this constituent group.”

The letter also said: “Significant, in their silence and disappointingly, we have not heard from the government, although we have been assured very recently that a response will be with us sooner rather than later.”

The Department for Education was approached by FE Week for comment on Tuesday but they failed to respond.

The full membership of the AoC’s EDI steering group is:

  • Palvinder Singh, Group Deputy Principal, Newcastle College Group (chair)
  • Anthony Bravo, Principal, Basingstoke College of Technology
  • Everton Burke, Chair, Burton and South Derbyshire College
  • Solat Chaudhry, Founder and Chief Executive, National Centre for Diversity
  • Arinola Edeh, Principal and Head of Service, ‎Westminster Adult Education Service (on behalf of Holex)
  • Angela Foulkes, Principal, The Sheffield College
  • Jo Lawrence, Vice Principal, Joseph Chamberlain College
  • Mel Lenehan, Principal, Fircroft College
  • Rajinder Mann, Vice Chair of Burton and South Derbyshire College and EDI consultant
  • Rachel Nicholls, Acting Principal, Peterborough College
  • Seb Schmoller, Chair, The Sheffield College

Ofsted wins battle to inspect ALL apprenticeships

Ofsted will soon be handed powers to inspect all universities that offer apprenticeships – including the likes of Cambridge, FE Week can reveal.

In a controversial move, the education watchdog is set to take on responsibility for overseeing all apprenticeships, including those at the degree levels of 6 and 7, for the first time.

Only the Office for Students can police higher apprenticeships under current policy, while Ofsted’s remit goes up to level 5 – a position that has frustrated the inspectorate for many years.

Plans have been drawn up to strip the OfS of this role amid concerns the higher education regulator is not up to the job. It is understood that the switch to Ofsted will be announced imminently.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said they are working “closely with the Office for Students and Ofsted to consider carefully what the most appropriate quality assurance arrangements should be for level 6 and 7 apprenticeships” and will “provide further updates in due course”.

The Russell Group, which represents the 24 “leading” universities in the UK including Cambridge, did not pour cold water over the plan for Ofsted to inspect their members.

But a spokesperson said the group will continue to work with government on delivery and expansion of the apprenticeship route, including how to avoid “overburdensome or disproportionate regulation”.

The University Vocational Awards Council, which also represents a number of universities, has previously voiced its opposition to such a move and questioned Ofsted’s expertise to inspect degree-level fields such as registered nurses, social workers and architects.

FE Week analysis of the latest DfE data, which covers the first three quarters of the 2019/20 academic year, shows there were 231 providers offering level 6 and 7 apprenticeships – with over 26,000 starts between them.

Of those 231 providers, 47 (20 per cent) are currently completely out of Ofsted’s scope of inspection as they deliver no provision at level 5 or below.

Included in this 20 per cent are many prominent Russell Group universities such as the University of Manchester, University of Nottingham and the University of Warwick.

The most well-known redbrick university that delivers higher apprenticeships but has been out of scope for Ofsted visits to date is the University of Cambridge.

Cambridge currently delivers two level 7 apprenticeships that have a combined cohort of 120 apprentices: applied criminology and police management, which commenced in 2019; and architecture, which launched this month.

A University of Cambridge spokesperson said they would “welcome scrutiny from relevant bodies” and should Ofsted begin to oversee all levels of apprenticeship provision, “we will necessarily adjust to meet the requirements in the best interests of our student apprentices and their employers”.

Oversight of degree apprenticeships has sat with the OfS since their launch, but monitoring of the provision is not official inspections of the type Ofsted conducts.

A decision was made in June 2019 for the higher education regulator to oversee all level 6 and 7 apprenticeships, including those without a prescribed HE qualification delivered at providers not on the OfS’ register, which had gone years without any oversight.

This was against the recommendation of the post-18 education review conducted by Philip Augar, who had called for Ofsted to inspect all apprenticeships.

Frustration has been building over the pace of the OfS’ work in this area. The regulator has so far only completed “pilot reviews” to a small number of providers not on its register of HE providers in late 2019 and concluded an evaluation of the pilot before lockdown hit.

OfS previously said they would publish these reports, but has now gone back on that promise. A spokesperson explained that they have paused their oversight of level 6 and 7 apprenticeships until HE providers are able to return to “a more normal operating environment”, as is the case for its other regulatory activity.

Being handed oversight of all apprenticeships will mark a big win for Ofsted, which has been clamouring for the job for over four years.

Chief inspector Amanda Spielman has voiced concerns multiple times that some universities and training providers are getting away with offering level 6 and 7 apprenticeships which are simply “repackaged graduate schemes”.

In an interview with FE Week in March 2019, Spielman said the first FE inspection she observed found a large accountancy firm had “very clearly” turned its tax graduate trainees into level 4 and 7 apprentices.

But because the inspectorate’s remit only extends to level 5, Ofsted could only inspect the level 4 provision, while in another room level 7 apprentices were not being reviewed.

“It was very clearly a graduate training programme that existed for many years that had been reframed slightly to make sure it genuinely did meet the requirements, but nevertheless was the kind of training that firm would have always have been providing and paying for,” she told FE Week.

“We were there to look at only one piece of this graduate traineeship programme, which made for an extraordinarily artificial conversation.”

Last week, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE, Paul Joyce, said he would welcome the power to inspect all apprenticeships and it is something “that I think we could do, absolutely”.

PICTURE: Madingley Hall, built in 1543 by Sir John Hynde, part of Cambridge University and home to the Institute of Continuing Education where apprenticeships are delivered

Sending a hundred students home so soon was a reality check

One case of Covid-19 among the staff had an immediate impact on how we could run the college, writes Sam Parrett

With great anticipation and excitement, last week saw the re-opening of all our college campuses and schools. After months of forced closure, staff have worked tirelessly over the summer break to prepare sites for the safe return of staff and students.

The risks and concerns have been uppermost in all our minds, but so has the determination to get our students back into the classroom.

All our schools and college campuses are following every Covid-19 guideline; from staggered starts to having fewer people on site, mask-wearing in communal areas and encouraging hand hygiene. Yet the reality is that we will see cases of the virus across sites as we move into the autumn and winter months.

At the end of our induction week, we had notification that one of our college staff had tested positive for Covid-19. Seeing a case so early in the term was a real wake-up call as to the reality of the virus. As ever with these things, the call came on a Sunday. This meant our senior leadership team dropping afternoon plans and jumping on a Zoom call (with one of us dialling in from a kayaking trip, complete with life jacket!).

It’s been a stark reminder that Covid-19 is with us

It was vital to ascertain not only what the situation with the affected staff member was, but the impact it would have on the wider college. Getting hold of Public Health England and the DfE proved tricky (on a Sunday afternoon) and it took some time for us to establish exactly what action we needed to take.

After some initial confusion as to who would need to self-isolate, we were advised through the NHS Test and Trace system that up to 15 staff members would need to stay at home for 14 days. Fortunately, due to the Covid-safe measures we had taken at college (social distancing, compulsory masks in all communal areas etc) no student was affected on that front.

But with a number of tutors now unable to come into college, we had no choice but to contact around 100 students and move them to our online learning platform temporarily. This is not ideal so early in the academic year, when students and tutors have not yet formed relationships with one another. But in this case, it was sadly unavoidable to reduce any risk of Covid-19 transmission.

Having gone through this experience, we now better understand the crucial processes that must be in place, particularly in relation to test and trace; ensuring we know exactly which students and tutors have been where and when they have been there. Policies have been updated and clear procedures shared among all staff, so that everyone understands what is required.

We are focusing on ensuring everyone on site continues to familiarise themselves with the guidance and follow it. The “hands, face, space” message has to be crystal clear as this is the only way we can protect ourselves and our community.

In hindsight, it’s also clear we were lucky in terms of the number of staff who came into what is deemed “close contact” with the individual who tested positive. It could easily have been more, which would have had a severe impact on the college. Managing bubbles and contact between staff and students is extremely challenging. For example, a student or staff member may be in a particular ‘curriculum bubble’ but then go into the library or the common room and end up being part of another bubble, which makes contacting and tracing more difficult. It’s also tricky trying to balance staff cover.

In total, as a result of one staff member testing positive, around 100 students and 15 staff were directly affected – having to either go home or change their timetable.

It has been a stark reminder that Covid-19 is with us. Having thought we’d prepared for every eventuality, we’ve had a reality gap as well as a reality check – which thankfully we’ve now closed.

 

Without a clear plan for virus control, colleges have been left to guess

Lack of a blueprint for keeping colleges safe partly explains why one college even considered ‘alternate weeks’, writes Stuart Rimmer

My great friend Craig, who features in many of my stories, is a builder. I was chatting to him about restarting college life and how government kept issuing guidance after guidance through the summer. He asked, “Don’t you just get given a plan?”

I was stunned into silence. He went on to tell me that he never starts any (re)build without a clear and agreed plan. A blueprint of what it needs to look like – so everyone is happy, costs are controlled or fairly allocated and quality delivered.

Embarrassed, I fudged an answer that consisted of attempting to explain the freedoms of incorporation, representative bodies, nuances of governance and local context, of some colleges having more money than others (so could do more than others), the complexity of staff and union consultation, and so on. But in the end he was simply correct.

For every college there appears to be a different way of approaching re-opening in the context of Covid. We’ve all taken DFE “guidance” and attempted to apply it with sense and integrity. But without a clear and unchanging set of rules the problem is that some of us will undoubtedly get it wrong. What is considered “reasonable” by one college would be considered against the rules in another.

We are experts on pedagogy, not virus control

Some colleges set out their positions early in the summer to help with staff planning. Others waited. Should we use temperature testing? Who knows? Should we wipe down after each class? To mask or not to mask? How big can a bubble be? What proportion of provision should be online? Does anybody know?

College leaders can’t agree. Some are at 20 per cent online, some even chancing their arms at 50 per cent flip week timetables – as we saw with a college last week.

The college announced plans to alternate students between on-site provision and working from home each week, and then U-turned after an outcry from parents.

The ESFA has also started phoning around checking onsite attendance – prompting the question, does it have a view of what is right or wrong? We were told to use our judgement, and so we used our (totally unqualified epidemiological) judgement as best we could.

Other colleges have taken a pragmatic or generous view of “social distance where possible”. In my own college, we are trying to deliver a full onsite timetable to provide some normality and opportunities for learners (before Boris Johnson almost inevitably shuts us down again).

But among students and frontline staff and leaders, there is a huge spectrum of views. In the same day, it was suggested to me we shouldn’t bother with any mitigation as Covid was a “conspiracy”, while other staff told me they feared leaving the house.

This polarised difference of opinion, which mirrors the wider public, is playing out in every college in the country. What’s important is that they are all valid views, but it makes effective delivery almost impossible.

We all carry personal bias into this scenario. Leaders try to navigate this logistical nightmare by implementing best-fit plans. This is far from a criticism of colleagues, in whom I have witnessed a stoicism and can-do attitude of which we should be fiercely proud.

But we are fighting the Covid battle from a position of inherent weakness. We are experts on pedagogy, not virus control.

We are likely to experience local lockdowns over the coming weeks and months, which will disrupt and damage learning, but if the government had provided a clear, unambiguous and mandated blueprint then at least we would have begun the term with some consistency.

Without a plan, have we built the start of the academic year on shaky foundations and will the walls come tumbling down?

It remains to be seen, but I can tell you now that Craig wouldn’t have started this without his signed-off blueprint. Should we?

How can we be in financial intervention yet ineligible for Covid relief?

Being turned down twice for relief funding feels like we are losing out partly because of our hard work, writes Chris Malish

As lockdown began to really bite in April, the announcement of the ESFA’s post-16 provider relief scheme was welcome. The aim of the extra cash was “to continue to retain capacity within the apprenticeships and adult education sector to deliver the skills needed to support economic recovery post-pandemic”.

But as always, the devil was in the detail. Our college has been turned down twice, and I’m going to explain what that was like.

The requirements for applications included proof of eligibility for the scheme, “proof of financial need” and proof of eligible costs which make up the financial need.

Among other requirements, a transitional plan also had to be in place that demonstrated the ability to operate without any further relief on or before October 2020.

To its credit, the guidance on the scheme was clear and gave a template on how to provide the information, including cash flow information.

The impact of this was demoralising for the college

But there were other issues. The application timescales were tight and originally set at around five working days for the April submission.

That’s before you consider the wider context of Covid-19, which was causing us and other colleges to struggle to deliver courses to our students.

Many of our staff had home schooling commitments for their own children, while at the same time adjusting to working from home. Most colleges would also have been deep into business planning for the next academic year.

We were unsuccessful with the first application as we were not classed as “at risk”, mainly, I feel, because of our cash position and were perceived to be able to cope without the funding in the short term for the activity that was required. It was frustrating, but we persevered.

By the second round of applications, gathering the data became much smoother and the original plan was still relevant; the finances just needed updating.

But what wasn’t clear at the outset was exactly what the threshold was for receiving these funds. Again, the applicant’s cash position seemed to be the biggest factor. If you had cash in the bank, you weren’t deemed in need, and if you didn’t have cash in the bank, you were.

But the money we had in the bank was already earmarked for other activities and ensuring bank covenant compliance. We needed the funds for additional activities as yet unfunded. Nevertheless, we were turned down a second time because of our cash position.

This suggests to me that there was a fixed amount of money available for the Covid relief scheme (although a fixed figure was certainly never announced for it); the ESFA was unsure about how many applications would be received and the level of funding that would be requested; and the criteria might even have been formulated after applications had been received.

This is very different to other initiatives such as the Job Retention Scheme and Eat Out To Help Out. It makes me question where education funding ranks in the government’s priorities, especially as education will be central to rebuilding the economy.

It’s especially confusing not to receive the funds since we are under financial intervention and our finances, under the ESFA’s own health score metric, are judged to “require improvement”.

The impact of this was demoralising for the college, as over the last three years we have been working hard on improving finances. To have funding for much-needed activities declined, to the detriment of our financial position, has left us feeling let down. It feels as though we have lost out partly because of our hard work.

However, it was not unexpected and enforces the feeling in the sector that we are undervalued and underappreciated.

So now, all the plans put forward in the application have been continued, but unfunded. Bradford College is not driven simply by finances, but by a vision  ̶  of creating a better future for all through education and training.