Promised investment in skills training has been questioned after FE Week discovered £125 million of FE funding has been delayed by at least a year.

The Conservative Party manifesto pledged a new National Skills Fund (NSF) with £500 million being made available in each of the next five years in England from 2021/22, but last month’s spending review only committed three-quarters of that amount for next year.

The Department for Education has now confirmed that just £375 million of the promised £500 million will be used in 2021/22, following a reprioritisation of funds to “support the government’s response to Covid-19”.

The DfE did, however, make clear that the £125 million underspend will be used as part of the National Skills Fund in future years, and it remains committed to spending the full £2.5 billion.

But it seems there are even questions over the £2.5 billion figure, as £50 million of the dedicated £375 million for next year has been allocated to a capital budget.

Shadow skills minister Toby Perkins was shocked to hear the spending delay decision, saying it was a “remarkable thing at a time when the need for this money is greater than ever before” in the face of Covid-19.

He told FE Week: “There is a particular need for this funding at this moment because there are huge numbers of people who are being laid off in one sector who need to be retrained in new sectors. We have got fast-rising youth unemployment and there is a real need for investment in skills.

“The government rhetoric acknowledges that but their actual spending commitments are even less than what they committed to in their manifesto a year ago, long before anybody had ever heard of coronavirus.”

Policies that the NSF will be used to fund in future years are not yet known, as the DfE is yet to launch its promised consultation.

Of the NSF funding being used in 2021/22, £95 million will fund the prime minister’s level 3 entitlement in his ‘lifetime skills guarantee’, and £43 million has been set aside to expand the employer-led boot camp training model.

Meanwhile, £127 million will be used to continue the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s summer Plan for Jobs, including funding for traineeships, sector-based work academy placements and the National Careers Service.

And £110 million, including £50 million of capital investment, will be used to “drive up higher technical provision in support of the future rollout of a Flexible Loan Entitlement to test and develop innovative models for local collaboration between skills providers and employers”.

When FE Week asked why the NSF was being used to fund capital investment rather than its capital spending budget, the DfE would only say the decision was “taken as part of the spending review”.

University and College Union head of further education Andrew Harden echoed Perkins’ concern about the delay to NSF spending in 2021/22.

“Questions must be asked as to why we yet again see an underspend on a key government policy designed to address a chronic skills shortage when there is a looming need to re-equip the nation’s workforce for a post-Covid-19 economy,” he said.

Harden added that the funding could, for example, be used to fund a college staff pay rise in an effort to rebuild further education’s capacity to deliver the courses needed.

Last week, the Association of Colleges recommended its members give staff a one per cent pay rise owing to a lack of government investment – a decision that outraged trade unions.

Commenting on the NSF, AoC deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said: “The extra money in the spending review for 16-to-18 education, for skills and for capital is a good start. With a lack of details or allocations yet, colleges won’t be able to make firm spending decisions, including on pay, until this happens.

“It would be useful to know where the £125 million top-sliced from the skills fund has gone. The £375 million allocated for 2021/22 will be a useful addition to the £2 billion spent on adult education and apprenticeships but it’s worth noting the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ estimate that spending halved in the last decade, so there is still some way to go to reach the levels needed to catch up.”

He added: “The need for capital investment is still very real – but there is a risk that Treasury and DfE have divided it up among a lot of budgets.”

The DfE would not be drawn on where the £125 million has been reprioritised to.

 

As most in the sector will know, calling a training programme an “apprenticeship” if it is not government-backed became illegal under the Enterprise Act 2016.

Then skills minister Nick Boles said at the time it would give officials power to take action in such cases as “we don’t want their status to be undermined by those unscrupulously passing off short courses as apprenticeships”.

So when FE Week was tipped off that a commercial training provider in the brewing industry was calling a two-week course an apprenticeship – just the 50 weeks off what is needed to meet the government’s minimum duration for a statutory apprenticeship – we began investigating and asked the Department for Education what action it would take.

But, as ever with the DfE, things were not simple or very transparent.

We were informed on Wednesday December 2 that the Brew-School, a firm that runs commercial beer-brewing courses, had been advertising plans to launch the “Brew-School’s Brewing Apprenticeship” which would last for 14 days at a cost of £2,500 per learner, from 2021.

The course would “combine the best of internationally recognised brewing qualifications with intensive experience of working in a real microbrewery”.

And “during the two-week brewing apprenticeship you will be taught by three master brewers to the latest syllabus of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling general certificate in brewing,” it added.

The advert pitches the course against the government-backed level 4 brewing apprenticeship, saying that “unfortunately” it takes 18 months to complete “and you still will not have an internationally recognised brewing qualification”.

“The beauty with the new Brew-School Brewing Apprenticeship is that this intensive two-week apprenticeship will lead you to obtain several formal brewing- and beer-related qualifications as well as practical brewing training,” it said.

The advert even came with a syllabus for the “apprenticeship”.

FE Week initially tried calling the company, which is also not on the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers, but the number provided on its website goes straight to voicemail. We emailed asking for comment about how this two-week course qualifies as an apprenticeship, and informed them that it is an offence under the Enterprise Act 2016, which includes the following clause: “Only statutory apprenticeships to be described as apprenticeships”.

In 2017, the same clause was added to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 – the relevant legislation under which powers to intervene now fall.

At the same time we enquired with the DfE and received a response just hours later saying the department will “consider the information provided to us in relation to this enquiry and take action as appropriate”. However, it added that enforcement duties actually rest with the relevant “local weights and measures authority” (trading standards) and it would be for them to decide whether or not legal proceedings are appropriate.

Next stop, then, was to contact the local trading standards – a service typically found in each local authority to whom illegal trading can be reported and acted upon. In this case it was Sheffield City Council.

Days went by before the council called to say it could find no evidence of the Brew-School’s 14-day apprenticeship.

Upon checking back on the firm’s website, it transpired that the “apprenticeship” had since been changed and is now called a “Trainee Brewer Course”.

The DfE called that same day to say it too could see no evidence of a bogus apprenticeship.

Of course, FE Week had screen-shots and the previous syllabus saved to show the council and government what the advert had previously stated.

But it turns out the DfE’s Education and Skills Funding Agency had actually contacted the Brew-School last Thursday, the day after FE Week’s initial enquiry, and told the firm to “ensure that all references to apprenticeships are removed immediately” and to confirm that this action has been taken within ten working days.

FE Week was not – and still has not – been informed of this action by the DfE, but the Brew-School finally responded one week after our initial enquiry to tell us about the department’s communication.

A director of the Brew-School responded to the DfE to say: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention which we were totally unaware of. We have now changed the description of our course and renamed it as a Trainee Brewer Course.”

The council has since not responded to FE Week’s request for comment – so the extent of any legal action that could be taken in such cases remains unclear.

The government has said the names of colleges receiving emergency cash support must be kept a secret so as to avoid “disadvantaged learners” missing out on being educated.

The Department for Education included this claim in a host of reasons why it will not name five colleges that received emergency funding earlier this year, in response to an FE Week freedom of information request.

The response to the request said identifying the colleges could lead to a “loss of confidence in their ability to provide sustained education, and this would be likely to result in fewer students applying to the college for their courses.

“Given the additional travel required to study elsewhere, some disadvantaged learners would be likely to choose not to undertake any education at all.”

Essentially, the DfE is conceding that disadvantaged learners would have no alternative education provider were the college to stop delivering courses.

Despite their reticence in publishing the names of colleges that receive bailouts, the DfE regularly publishes the FE commissioner’s intervention reports and Education and Skills Funding Agency financial notices to improve for individual colleges, which include details of their financial situations alongside recommendations.

The DfE also claimed, in the response to the FOI request, that revealing the colleges’ names “might jeopardise any negotiations of upcoming contracts with their suppliers” and “would likely result in significant additional burdens being placed upon their resources, with the need to manage media attention, parental concerns and the potential loss of/difficulties in recruiting staff.

“This would limit their ability to effectively provide further education, harming the outcomes of learners, which would not be in the public interest.”

FE Week submitted the FOI after skills minister Gillian Keegan told parliament in September that five colleges had needed “financial assistance”. In its response, the DfE did reveal that the colleges had been handed a total of £9.6 million between April and August, with one college receiving £5.3 million over June and July (see table below).

The ESFA’s director of provider market oversight, Matthew Atkinson, told the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee last month that 64 colleges were currently at risk of running out of cash, and the government was likely to spend £70 million on emergency funding for colleges in total this year – which he said was “more than we thought”.

College leaders were themselves “staggered” when another FE Week FOI request revealed in January how four colleges had spent £111 million they had received as part of secretive “Fresh Start’ deals with the government, with money going towards IT equipment and writing off government loans.

An increasing number of college bailouts have been handed out in recent years and have ultimately led to the introduction of the college insolvency regime, which was used for the first time when the Hadlow Group of colleges collapsed last year.

But Atkinson admitted to the education committee these insolvencies will still cost the taxpayer over £60 million, with £6 million going to accountants alone – a figure DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood called “gut wrenching”.

Yet the government has actively worked to stop the names of colleges that receive bailouts coming to light, changing its oversight policy in October so colleges that apply for emergency funding will not automatically fall into formal intervention.

The DfE withheld the information under section 43 (commercial interest) and section 36(2) (c) (would be likely otherwise to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

FE Week will be referring the decision to withhold the college names to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

A former exams company chief executive is set to replace Dame Glenys Stacey as the chief regulator at Ofqual, FE Week understands.

Simon Lebus is being lined up to take over the top position at the exams regulator as Stacey’s interim period comes to end on December 31.

Lebus served as the group chief executive at Cambridge Assessment, which runs exam board OCR, for 15 years before leaving in 2018.

FE Week understands the appointment is set to be another interim role, though, and has yet to be fully ratified.

Stacey, who previously served as chief regulator from 2011 to 2016, took up the role in August after Sally Collier left following the exams fiasco.

It was announced this week that she is the preferred candidate for chair of the Office for Environmental Protection.

Asked by the education select committee on Tuesday what advice she would give her successor, Stacey said they should make sure they’ve “got the stamina for it” and should “really get into the technical detail”.

She urged the successor to “learn from 2020”, adding: “For example, I don’t think Ofqual was particularly visible in 2020. It had a rather established way of sort of communicating.

“We need to be much more visible and much more interested in listening to others’ ideas and working them through with them… they may be valuable, they may not… but really listening and engaging.”

Lebus was said to have driven Cambridge Assessment through “major organisational and industry change”, including technology advances such as the introduction of on-screen marking and computer-based testing.

His roles since include becoming a non-executive chairman at Sparx, an AI online platform for secondary school maths teaching, and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, according to his LinkedIn page.

The decision to make another interim appointment is likely to be controversial, particularly given the huge task ahead of ensuring next year’s exam series doesn’t become another fiasco.

The Department for Education said a replacement for Stacey will be announced in due course.

The awarding body that runs BTECs has launched a campaign to encourage students to respond to the government’s level 3 and below technical qualifications consultation.

Backed by former skills minister Anne Milton, “Your Future, Your Choice” has gone live today on Pearson’s website, aiming to give young and adult learners the “opportunity to voice their opinions on what they want for their future education”.

It comes amid a Department for Education review that plans to limit funding for applied general qualifications, such as BTECs, that compete with T Levels and A-levels by 2023.

The DfE claims there is currently a “confusing landscape” of over 12,000 courses on offer to young people at level 3 and below, with multiple qualifications in the same subject areas available – many of which are “poor quality and offer little value to students or employers”.

As well as Milton, who was in post when the DfE first announced the review in March 2019, “Your Future, Your Choice” is backed by five-time Olympic medallist gymnast Max Whitlock.

A Pearson spokesperson explained that the campaign will be giving students, educators and employers the “chance to read more about the government’s proposals for post-16 qualifications, encouraging them to respond directly to the DfE consultation running until January 15 in the case of educators and employers, and encouraging students to share their BTEC success stories with us on social media with #YourFutureYourChoice or submit longer ones on our website”.

They added that while Pearson supports the introduction of T Levels and shares the government’s vision for “outstanding outcomes for every learner”, the awarding body also thinks “offering learners a choice in what qualification suits their career aspirations best is the right way to support them and the UK economy – both now and in the future.

“BTECs have been at the heart of national need for many years and continue to transform lives and careers. We’re encouraging young or adult learners to have their say on their future education options.”

To mark the launch of their campaign, Pearson has also published research that found nine in ten young students believe it’s important for there to be a wide choice of options available to help prepare them for their futures.

A confidential document that shows the criteria the government used to choose the level 3 courses in the prime minister’s lifetime skills guarantee has been leaked to FE Week.

It shows the methodology adopted by the Department for Education involved wage outcomes, alignment with government “priorities” and the “ability to address labour market need”.

The list of nearly 400 qualifications that made the cut, which will be available to adults to study from April for free if they do not already hold a full level 3 qualification – equivalent to two A-levels – has been unveiled today but controversially excludes major economic sectors such as hospitality, tourism, media and arts.

So how did the government decide which courses were in and which were out? The documents show a two-step approach was used. Here are the details.

 

Step 1 – wage outcomes

Firstly, the DfE analysed the existing sector subject areas (SSAs) to “understand the strength of their average wage outcomes, which is the most robust source of evidence we have to indicate the labour market value of approved qualifications”.

The data sources used were as follows:

1. • “Median earnings per SSA five years after study for full level 3 achieved in 2011/12. This is our lead criterion, as this gives the most robust sense of long-term earnings potential.
   • “Median earnings per SSA three years after study for Full L3 achieved in 2013/14. This was included to sense-check earnings data five years post-achievement.
   • “Median earnings per SSA one year after study for Full L3 achieved in 2016/17. This was also included to sense-check earnings data five years post-achievement.”

The DfE says it then set a “sensible minimum threshold” for wage outcomes of £19,000, which is “broadly equivalent to the median wage for all level 3 SSAs considered when looking at wage outcomes five years after completion”.

“We then sifted through filtered qualifications data to understand which SSAs included 100 or more learning aims for certificates or diplomas amongst adult learners with prior attainment below level 3 in 2018/19,” the document continues.

“This is to ensure that the evidence base for our wage outcome data was large enough, and to ensure that will be sufficient learner demand to make delivery viable from 2021.”

 

Step 2 – expanding scope to include government priorities and areas of labour market need

The DfE says it acknowledged that wage data alone is “not an appropriate means of identifying qualifications with labour market value across the country” and that relying solely on this “may not result in a list that is inclusive enough to generate strong uptake and good labour market outcomes”.

Recognising that it may also be “appropriate” to include SSAs in which the government would like to see growth, despite low current uptake amongst adults, the department ensured qualifications with under 100 19+ learning aims in 2018/19, alongside those with potentially lower wage outcomes, were included in this evaluation.

“We have therefore taken the below steps to widen the scope of SSAs, which gave us an assessment of each SSA’s alignment with government priorities and ability to address economic need,” the document explains.

1. “We performed a qualitative evaluation of all SSAs regardless of the number of existing learning aims and wage outcomes. To do this, we assessed each SSAs’ alignment with the 2017 Industrial Strategy in the first instance (as per the existing High Value Course Premium (HVCP) methodology). 
2. “However, using the Industrial Strategy alone may not produce an inclusive list of qualifications, and is not necessarily reflective of more recent government priorities. We therefore expanded the scope of ‘government priorities’ to include sectors referenced in more recent government announcements.
3. “We then scrutinised the list of SSAs against published analysis of current and future labour market need (such as the Migration Advisory Committee’s Shortage Occupation List at RQF level 3-5), which factored in impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit. We should note that measures of labour market demand are imperfect, and difficult to predict accurately in the current economic climate.”

 

So what qualifications are included?

By carrying out both of the above steps, the DfE identified those SSAs for inclusion in the targeted level 3 entitlement (see list pictured below).

The department adds that they believe these SSAs have the “strongest wage outcomes, alignment with government priorities and ability to address labour market need”.

In total there are 379 qualifications on the list (click here to view in full), which includes a mix of existing vocational and technical qualifications and A-levels.

There are 76 A-levels in total, including 10 A-levels in physics which are offered by different awarding organisations.

Others, like the Advanced Certificate in Bookkeeping, are too small to be counted as a full level 3 qualification.

Meanwhile, all Access to HE qualifications have been excluded as these are eligible for advanced learner loans that are written off upon completion of an HE course and are “not primarily aimed at facilitating immediate labour market outcomes”.

The DfE concludes that they believe the qualifications in scope for the level 3 targeted entitlement extension should focus on “providing the skills that will have immediate labour market value (i.e. they should not be primarily focused on gaining access to higher qualifications)”.

 

Can the list change?

Yes. The DfE says it will keep the list under review and used its confidential briefing to ask awarding bodies to provide evidence for why other qualifications should be added, or why those included should be removed.