Colleges and training providers in the third wave of the T Level rollout are being invited to bid for a slice of £135 million to help upgrade their facilities.
The capital fund, launched today, is being made available to those that will offer the new technical qualifications from 2022. It follows previous funds that totalled £38 million for wave one, and £95 million for wave two.
Winning bidders can use the cash to upgrade classrooms and buildings, as well as to pay for specialist kit that meet industry standards.
The first three T Levels – the technical equivalent to A-levels – in construction, digital and education and childcare were launched in September 2020.
A further seven will be available from 2021 in subjects including health, science and onsite construction and subjects including finance, media and legal will be introduced from 2022 and 2023.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “The successful launch of T Levels earlier this year represents the start of a transformation in our technical education system – giving young people the vital skills they need to get ahead and giving employers the talented workforce they need to thrive as we build back better from the pandemic.
“To deliver world class qualifications providers need to have world class facilities and cutting-edge equipment, this funding will help to make sure students have the skills and knowledge to succeed when they finish their T Levels.”
As previously revealed by FE Week, colleges and training providers will have to keep on running T Levels for at least 20 years if they want to avoid handing back the millions they will receive in capital funding.
Forty four providers are in wave one of T Levels delivery. A further 64 will begin offering the qualifications in 2021, and a further 88 have been chosen for wave three beginning in 2022.
Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will take place remotely until after the February half term, the watchdog has announced.
The inspectorate had been due to begin in-person “supportive” inspections of schools from next week, but had yet to say whether its plans for restarting FE provider monitoring visits would go ahead during the national lockdown.
However, Ofsted said tonight that in “light of a change in emphasis from the government and clear advice to ‘act as if you have the virus’ over the next few weeks, we have decided that all planned inspection activity will be undertaken remotely until after the February half term”.
This applies to schools, early years and further education.
“We have sought regular advice from Public Health England and we remain satisfied that our planned on-site activity would be safe and appropriate under current restrictions. However, the new government messages and the practical challenges of deploying inspectors across England have prompted this change,” a statement said.
Remote inspections of schools and FE providers will begin from the 25 January.
Ofsted announced in December that monitoring visits, including to those with grade three and four ratings and new apprenticeship providers, would resume in January.
Inspectors were also planning ‘support and assurance’ visits to colleges, which would result in a report, but no grade, similar to the interim visits which took place last term.
The popular level 7 senior leader apprenticeship will have its funding slashed by 22 per cent when a revised version is made available in March and its controversial MBA component is axed.
In a blog post published this afternoon, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education announced that the revision of the standard is now complete following a request for it to be reviewed by education secretary Gavin Williamson last February.
The funding band for the standard had previously sat at £18,000, but will now be lowered to £14,000 when it is launched for new starts on 29 March 2021.
Funding has been cut owing to changes in the content of the apprenticeship. Today’s blog confirmed the “removal of the Masters qualification as a mandated part of the apprenticeship”.
However, it made clear that an employer “would still be free to use such a qualification to deliver the apprenticeship, so long as it aligns to the knowledge, skills and behaviours” that apprentices learn, as previously reported by FE Week.
“Apart from registration and certification costs, these would still be fundable under the levy up to the funding band limit,” the IfATE said.
The institute added: “The knowledge, skills and behaviours apprentices must learn as part of the apprenticeship standard and end-point assessment have been brought right up to date and the apprenticeship continues to align to Institute of Leadership and Management and Chartered Management Institute professional recognition.
“We are confident that this impressive training programme will serve the employers, apprentices and the wider economy well for years to come.”
The MBA component of the programme was set for the chop after Williamson said he was “unconvinced” it provides value for money.
The Department for Education has released a “remote education framework” to support colleges and training providers to identify “areas for improvement” in their online teaching.
The voluntary framework has been designed to be adapted to “fit the context of your provider” and to “signpost them to resources that can help them improve their practice”.
It comes days after the DfE published operational guidance which asks FE providers to “use your best endeavours to deliver as much of students’ planned hours as possible” during the national lockdown.
There are two framework documents: one for schools and another for FE.
The FE document states that it can help providers to meet “basic requirements” using the resources and tools they “currently have (digital or physical) and to take your remote education provision further”.
It encourages FE leaders to allocate a score of between 1 and 5 to a number of “statements”, which involve six categories: leadership, student engagement, curriculum planning and delivery, capacity and delivery, communication and safeguarding.
“Where possible, identify strengths and areas for improvement, and discuss next steps with members of the senior leadership Team and governors,” the framework says.
“The framework offers suggested actions and links to relevant support depending on scores and any gaps identified.”
For example, under curriculum and delivery, the document asks if the FE provider is “working with employers to ensure continuity of off-the-job training, assessor reviews and planning for end-point assessments”.
There are boxes for the provider to then explain their ‘strengths’ and ‘gaps’ in this area, and directs them to the DfE’s guidance on how to deliver apprenticeships during the Covid outbreak.
Providers are encouraged to work through the entire framework with the senior leadership team, which should take approximately one hour to complete, or “focus on specific sections that have been previously identified as priorities”.
Students and staff are being encouraged to keep their bodies and brains active throughout lockdown by walking, running and cycling their way to the moon with their colleges.
AoC Sport, an arm of the Association of Colleges, has launched the ‘Lunar Challenge’ to keep the FE active by travelling 238,855 miles, roughly equivalent to a one-way trip to the moon.
This is not just in aid of fitness; the main focus is on supporting mental health and wellbeing and linking to AoC Sport’s ‘5 ways to wellbeing’ initiative, which covers the themes: get active; give; take notice; connect; and keep learning.
“We want as many staff and students to get involved as possible to encourage physical activity and maintain a positive relationship to physical and mental health during the lockdown,” a post on AoC Sport’s website reads.
Having launched yesterday, the Lunar Challenge already has colleges signed up, and all AoC Sport and Natspec members can get involved by completing an online form.
Using the free Strava app, there will be a national leaderboard for cycling and running/walking, as well as a cumulative activity mileage total, so colleges can compete against one other for prizes, and there will be weekly spot challenges.
Three prizes will be on offer for the colleges which contribute the most miles towards the national total, and there will be a random prize for all participating colleges which complete 300 activities during the challenge.
On top of those, there will be prizes for the weekly spot challenges.
AoC Sport said: “All activity contributes to the college and national total, so whether this is a walk around the park, a 5km run or 15-mile cycle, everything has a positive contribution to the total, so get out and get moving!”
Winners of the leaderboard challenge will be announced by Tuesday 2 March.
The Strava app is available on Apple’s App Store or the Google Play outlet, and the Lunar Challenge is running until the end of February.
AoC Sport previously ran an ‘Around the World in 30 Days Challenge’ in November, which tasked staff and students with travelling the equivalent of one lap around the world, or 46,975 miles.
This was achieved in just 11 days and colleges ended up travelling 154,310 miles in the 30 days.
Jess Staufenberg meets a leader bending the UTC model to build the pipeline of post-16 technical learners
In March 2016, Polly Lovell was standing in front of 20 people pleading for the life of UTC Plymouth. It wasn’t even officially hers yet – the leader had departed, she’d only been in the place for three years and was now “caretaker principal” of an institution that had just got the worst exam results in the city. Sat in front of her were representatives from the Department for Education, the Baker Dearing Trust and the Royal Navy, a big employer in the port city. Nothing like a rear admiral staring at you to focus the mind.
The challenge facing Lovell, an English and drama teacher from near Liverpool, will be familiar to FE Week readers. One-third of learners at the UTC had behavioural issues, with many nearby schools using the institution as “an opportunity to move on challenging students”, she explains. There had been changes of leadership, the 2015 exam results were a “disaster” and the pressure from the DfE to close was growing. The student roll – that anxiety-inducing measure for all UTCs – was dropping. “I had to present what I was going to do with this school,” laughs Lovell, who is a mass of glorious hair and dark eyebrows. “There was me, the drama girl from the Wirral, surrounded by all these STEM people…”
After her presentation, then-national schools commissioner David Carter took Lovell outside. “We went for a little walk around the UTC, and he asked, ‘What do you need?’,” she says. “And I said, ‘Well, I really need to know if I’m going to be head, because I’m happy to do this and I’ve got ideas for it. But I just need to know.” Carter went back to the governors and called for her to be made the substantive head.
Lovell with staff in the UTC’s uniform
Two weeks later Ofsted rolled up and promptly awarded a grade 4, placing the UTC in special measures. By 2018, Lovell was again facing a cliff edge. Since 2015, when there were 220 students, following the Ofsted report she was down to just 70. Looming large nearby was City College Plymouth, also offering an engineering- and technical- focused education.
“At that point, it looked like the DfE was going to close us. We didn’t take in a year 10 group because I thought it was going to shut.” But Lovell did not give up. After speaking to her local MP, she secured an appointment with schools minister Nick Gibb and travelled to see him. “We did a begging meeting with him,” she laughs. “We explained, we’re in Plymouth – this is the home of STEM! We worked tirelessly.”
The UTC remained open and, extraordinarily, today has 320 learners on roll. Given the timeframe, it’s nothing short of a miracle. Of course, the UTC has capacity for 650 students and so remains significantly under capacity, and Ofsted has yet to return – but it’s a rise from the ashes nevertheless. How has Lovell done it?
To understand, it’s worth understanding Lovell. The daughter of a travelling salesman, she appears to know how to take risks, pull them off and sell them to others.
“My parents had missed out on their education because of the Second World War, but they were very aspirational. My dad in particular was a big influence on me around my work ethic,” explains Lovell. “He was really determined for me and my sisters to be independent and have a profession. I’d go on work experience with my dad, helping out with sales.” Her mum, meanwhile, was a “taskmaster – you went to school even if you were sick or didn’t want to. That’s influenced the way I am and my values.”
Lovell at home in the Wirral as a young child
Lovell is that rare mix of creative, curious and restless – she says she’s lived in about “56 places” – alongside a disciplined, tightly organised approach, qualities that together have likely got her to where she is. Having got poor GCSEs, she attended an FE college in Cheshire and blossomed under good lecturers within the drama department. During her degree Lovell spent a year in Portland, Oregon, enjoying “the freedom of America” so much that after graduating she “bought a one-way ticket to New York” aged 22 and didn’t look back. She moved to Chicago to work in music festivals and for a theatre company. But aged 29, it could have looked a bleak scene. Her father had passed away and she returned home from the US with two young children, disillusioned with the “life of a starving artist”, some sales experience and no maths GCSE.
Again, Lovell turned to FE colleges. “I did night school courses, in A-level psychology and computer courses, and I did my maths GCSE, whilst working a full-time job with two children.” An application to a primary school PGCE was turned down on the basis her degree was not in a “core” subject; but undaunted, Lovell used the Monday she had off from her retail job to volunteer in a school. She was eventually accepted on to a secondary PGCE, going on to work under Dame Sue John in west London, became head of year at a secondary in Exeter, a deputy head at an emotional and behavioural difficulties school in Devon and an assistant head at a pupil referral unit. At the same time, she trained as a special educational needs co-ordinator.
Lovell’s acting headshot in Chicago
Then, just when everything was getting “very parochial”, Lovell moved back to Chicago with her teenage children to take a role with publishing company Pearson, setting up online learning for schools, years before Covid-19 arrived and when everyone was still using Webex. Did she know much about online learning, I ask?
“I had no experience in online learning. It was scary at first!”
Time and again, Lovell has taken risks. She speaks often about making a “sales” pitch to convince others to get on board with her, whether it’s the importance of drama studies for all students (in one school she increased uptake from 40 per cent to 90 per cent); or, as with the UTC, the case for its continued existence. Despite having had her Scouse accent elocutioned out of her in her drama degree, she retains all the charm of a Liverpudlian. Also, it turns out, all the no-nonsense.
I blink rapidly when Lovell tells me, only half-jokingly, that she believes in the “militarisation of the UTC” – a smart, disciplined workforce of learners who are expecting to meet their prospective employer any minute. “I gained a lot from the Royal Navy on ideas of how to turn around a school. If you look at recruits in a passing out parade, there’s three sets: the ones who have just arrived, the ones in training and the ones passing out. The ones passing out present themselves and stand differently.” She looks at me. “What I want to know is, what did the Royal Navy do that we can do?”
Lovell, her husband and their dog
Now Lovell has applied this mix of entrepreneurialism, risk-taking and strategic focus to the very model of the UTC itself. To start with, in October 2018 UTC Plymouth joined the Reach South Academy Trust. This was the very same year in which Lord Baker said he didn’t want UTCs “watered down, and that is the danger if they get into a MAT”. But just a year later Baker had revisited his position, saying instead that “membership of a MAT is an important way to help UTCs succeed”. The interesting point is that Lovell and her headteacher, Jo Ware, now have a direct line of access to other schools in the same group. As Lovell puts it, “I’ve got eight Reach primaries around Plymouth.”
Her second move was to begin accepting year 7s for the first time in 2020, breaking with the UTC model of accepting entrants in year 10, aged 14. There are currently 94 year 7s, and 96 are expected next year for a year group with capacity for 120 – fairly healthy numbers. Her student roll today reads like a history of the UTC’s fortunes: year 9 has 92, year 10 has 50, year 11 has 42, year 12 has 30 and year 13 has just 17. But if Lovell and Ware can keep it up with the younger years, they’re developing a formidable pipeline for post-16 technical and vocational education. These are learners who, by the time they reach year 12, will have been embedded in the industry-focused, skills-based ethos of UTCs since they were 11 years old.
And although Lovell was not the first to do this (Leigh UTC in Kent was an early pioneer), others are following. Engineering UTC Northern Lincolnshire, for instance, welcomed year 7s this September.
In many ways, Lovell herself encompasses the UTC model – having failed GCSEs, taken unusual paths, been career- rather than academically focused and suiting FE more than school life, she understands these learners. She breathes pride in the model, describing how one of her most challenging students has just been taken on as an apprentice technician at the UTC, or how other students developed an app that is now in regular use by the Royal Navy.
I gained a lot from the Royal Navy on ideas of how to turn around a school
But to prove the model, Lovell has also had to change it – she is in a multi-academy trust of schools, and the pretence that recruiting at 14 works has been dropped. When I ask if year 7 recruitment is the future for UTCS, she says, “If you’re in a large area where you’ve got a number of students who can come to you, it’s fine. But if it’s a smaller town like ours, it makes sense.” I suspect more UTCs will follow her example, and recruit in year 7.
In which case, won’t UTCs arguably be schools rather than colleges? The way they have evolved is unlikely to be what Lord Baker anticipated when he proposed them in 2010.
But as a route to technical education post-16, it’s got legs. Lovell is seeing to that.
FE staff should be moved up the priority list for Covid-19 vaccines so that providers can reopen to all students safely, college principals have said.
Ministers have been under pressure to vaccinate teachers, with a petition being debated in parliament this evening and education secretary Gavin Williamson saying he “hopes” those working in education get priority.
Earlier today the government published its “vaccine delivery plan”, which explains how doses will be provided to those most at risk before deciding on how “phase 2” will be delivered.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has asked the Department of Health and Social Care to consider occupational vaccination in the next phase of vaccine rollout, in collaboration with other government departments including the Department for Education.
While most of the talk has been about school staff being given priority in phase 2, Ali Hadawi, principal of Central Bedfordshire College, said FE “needs to be part of” the discussion.
“I am not saying our staff should be prioritised above NHS staff or the police, but we can’t just be run-of-the-mill depending on our age,” he told FE Week.
“We have got a sector that needs to be fully operational. College staff need to be part of this priority so that we have a chance to reopen them safely.”
He added that it would be a “massive insult” if school but not FE staff were given vaccine priority.
“We have had examples of where we have had to send a whole site home after three members of staff tested positive,” Hadawi continued.
“If we can get over the issue of vaccination where people feel confident that they could come in because they have had the vaccine, then we can facilitate a much closer to normal college operation than we are now.”
Mike Hopkins, principal of South and City College, echoed Hadawi’s view.
“Like schools, college staff need to be a priority for vaccination to ensure that they can maintain staffing and remain open,” he said.
“Vaccination will remove the serious difficulties that there are currently with contact, infection, and requirements for self-isolation, all of which are shared with schools.”
Yiannis Koursis, principal of Barnsley College, said getting students physically back in class is “hugely important” and treating staff as a priority group would “speed up the process”, while NCG chief executive Liz Bromley added it is “only fair that FE is treated with parity and added to the priority vaccine list alongside schools”.
Independent training providers with onsite staff are also calling for their workforce to be given vaccine priority.
Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Trianing, which operates two automotive academies for apprentices in Derby, told FE Week: “The tutors in our academies are key workers and need vaccine and testing priority so that we can reopen our academies safely.
“This should not just be about teachers in schools, but about protecting teaching colleagues and those they teach in any place of learning where teaching takes place face to face.”
Last Wednesday, health secretary Matthew Hancock said teachers had a “very strong case” for priority after clinically vulnerable groups.
As reported by FE Week’s sister title FE Week, this could mean that teachers who did not fall under existing priority categories could be moved up the queue above the last five groups set out by the JCVI for the first phase (see table below).
Under the priority groups for the first phase of vaccine rollout, those over 50 years of age, and all those 16 years of age and over in a risk group, would be eligible for vaccination.
The government plans to deliver “at least” two million vaccinations per week with over 2,700 vaccine sites across the UK.
Priority Risk group
1. Residents in a care home for older adults and staff working in care homes for older adults
2. All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
3. All those 75 years of age and over
4. All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals (not including pregnant women and those under 16 years of age)
5. All those 65 years of age and over
6. Adults aged 16 to 65 years in an at-risk group (see below)
Employers should pay for apprentices’ digital devices to continue training remotely, Gillian Keegan said today as she confirmed learners at independent providers will not be offered them for free by government.
Speaking on an FE Week webcast this afternoon, the skills minister claimed that independent providers would not be included in government initiatives to hand out devices to 16 to 19-year-olds during lockdown as most of their learners will be employed and not taking full-time courses.
She said it was ultimately up to employers to give their apprentices the devices.
“First of all, apprentices are employees, so their employers are responsible for their technology,” the minister said.
“I was an apprentice myself, and if I was an apprentice today, I’m sure I would be expecting to get that support from my employer. It seems to me that’s where you would get your technology from, you know.
“It isn’t the government and the state’s job, obviously, to give everybody across the country, a PC. I mean it just isn’t.”
This is despite the fact the Department for Education, in December, announced their programme to deliver free digital devices to education providers to order would be expanded to 16 to 19-year-olds studying at both schools and colleges.
Keegan continued: “That can be looked at and kept under review but to be honest, many of the people in FE colleges are doing full time courses and a lot of people that are in independent training providers will quite often be employed and quite often their employer will be responsible for making sure that they’ve got the right equipment to be able to work from home to study from home.
“But if there are any specific instances where that’s not the case, then you know we always keep things under review, but I haven’t heard, specifically about that issue, within the sector.
After Keegan made her remarks, FE data expert Steve Hewitt highlighted how in 2020-21, there will be 36,213, mainly full time, 16 to 19-year-olds placed with an independent training provider.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said they recognised government had to prioritise, but said to “simply pass the buck to the employer is not the answer.
Jane Hickie
“In a normal year, three quarters of a million apprentices are on a programme spread across all parts of the country, half of them work for small, now many struggling, businesses and many of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“How the minister expects firms to be driving down to their local PC World to bulk buy laptops is quite beyond our understanding. Where is the levelling up agenda in all this?”
The webcast was run in partnership with Pearson, was hosted by TV presenter Steph McGovern, and also featured Pearson’s senior vice president for BTEC and apprenticeships Cindy Rampersaud, Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans, Barking and Dagenham College principal Yvonne Kelly, WorldSkills UK gold medallist Haydn Jakes, and BTEC adult learner Feven Zeray.
If the long-anticipated White Paper doesn’t recognise the needs of 2021, then it will fail like so many initiatives before it, write Mark Dawe and Tim Blackman
We have both spent our careers working in education and training – from primary schools to PhD researchers – and there is no doubt that the Covid crisis is the biggest shock to education we have ever seen.
Both our organisations are also leading providers of high-quality courses that use technology to enable flexibility for learners.
Because of Covid, never has this flexibility been more important.
So with the FE White Paper due any day, we have agreed a seven-point checklist to measure its suitability for the 21st century world.
1. A joined-up tertiary education system
We are in an age of converging technologies, rapid change and increasingly hybrid job roles.
It is an age when everyone needs to keep learning but often on a climbing frame rather than a ladder, mixing knowledge, skills and levels.
The old world of separate further and higher education sectors is for the last century, not this one.
We need to create a whole system of seamless tertiary education that supports lifelong learning, with common qualification frameworks, standards and funding.
2. Empower the learner
We are more and more used to shopping online and using data to inform our purchasing decisions.
Now is the opportunity to put the system in the hands of the informed learner, whether choosing an apprenticeship, a degree, a technical qualification or short courses.
Selection should be fair and transparent, and for many courses we need far less selection. Many entry requirements are narrow, traditional and ignore the capability of students especially when not demonstrated by formal qualifications.
A lifelong funding or credit entitlement would revolutionise the funding and support system, introducing flexible fee and maintenance support over a working lifetime.
Public policy priorities such as digital literacy should be designed into the system using funding conditions and incentives.
3. Unbundle qualifications
Full qualifications are important when necessary for occupational competency or to demonstrate academic achievement, but how someone gets there and the flexibility of options should not be rigid and time-bound.
That is not how society and the economy work any more.
Instead, learners should be able to build a collection of units over time, each recognised in their own right but contributing towards to an overarching “fully qualified” status, in which constant change means that “fully qualified” will be seen as a moving end-point.
Every year there will be new units, as technology changes the way roles are defined and the skills that are needed. Rather than once-and-for-all training and education, the norm should be to top-up, receive formal recognition and then progress.
4. Progression and articulation
Along with unitisation we need clear progression pathways through levels of learning, which allow learners to fluidly mix levels and skills.
Occupational standards are helpful frameworks but cannot become straightjackets, artificially creating silos of learning that are detached from the reality of how job content changes and new types of job continually emerge.
It must be possible to mix and match units relevant to what a learner or job needs.
5. Hard skills
We are in the human age, when human skills – what cannot be done by a machine – are more important than ever.
It is time to rename soft skills as hard skills: these are the ability to work in a diverse team, to communicate empathetically, to solve complex problems and above all learnability, which is the ability to find out, evaluate, innovate and improve.
Time and again these skills are sacrificed in the pursuit of exhaustive definitions of industry-specific technical content packaged in a qualification that quickly dates.
We’ve got this the wrong way around: human skills should be the core units of every programme at every level. They are what make people employable and mobile in a dynamic labour market.
6. Diversity as a resource
Everyone is different and a team full of difference is a highly functioning team. Diversity prevents narrow framing of problems, puts more possible solutions on the table, and avoids groupthink.
Education can support diversity by enabling learners to study different topics that create opportunities for innovation and learn how to work with other specialisms towards a common goal.
7. Online and upwards
Mainstream education and training are no longer just about buildings, classrooms, lecture theatres or workshops.
Any policy that favours these over digital technology risks making the publicly-funded system a dinosaur in a digital world.
Of course, there are challenges such as digital poverty to overcome, and blended approaches will always be in the mix.We are not advocating every piece of learning going fully online. But the OU is already using augmented and virtual reality to make practical learning “real” and enabling its students to undertake lab experiments operating equipment remotely.
This transformation will be dramatic, far beyond current virtual learning environments.
If the White Paper can demonstrate that it sets us on this path, we welcome it wholeheartedly.
If it does not, then it will join the failed promise of so many other education and training policy papers.
This is not about being brave or taking risks. It is about how our world is changing and how education and training need to smell the coffee.
