The tender for the nationwide rollout of the government’s technical skills “boot camps” has been launched, with £36 million from the National Skills Fund on offer.

The Department for Education has invited suppliers to bid for two lots, both worth £18 million: the first for digital skills boot camps in the nine geographical regions of England to “meet the skills shortage vacancy needs of local areas”, starting this April.

The second will award “a number” of contracts for boot camps in sectors such as electrotechnical, nuclear or green energy, but also for digital skills, at a local or national level, based on “evidenced demand”.

Both will last for one year, with the possibility of a one-year extension for lot one and two one-year extensions for lot two, and start this April, when the National Skills Fund is due to be rolled-out.

It comes after two waves of boot camp pilot schemes, both worth £4 million, were commissioned in areas such as the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Derbyshire-Nottinghamshire, and the south-west last year; featuring training for digital skills as well as industries including welding, engineering and construction.

People aged 19 and over seeking work, looking to change careers, or already in work looking to retrain are again set to benefit from the up to 16-week-long boot camps, which the tender says will “meet the needs of employers and to address the skills shortages vacancies in different regions of England,” and will include a guaranteed job interview for those seeking employment.

The DfE said it anticipates that at least 75 per cent of all trainees will “move into a new job or role within six months of completing training”.

The department is looking for suppliers with a track record of engaging with employers and delivering training which meets their needs, who can recruit trainees, can flex delivery to meet their needs, can track trainees’ destinations, manage the guaranteed job interviews, and report outcomes for evaluation purposes.

According to the tender, the DfE “strongly encourage local area bodies, employers and providers to come together in consortia” to bid.

These consortiums, which must bid as a single legal entity, should include a lead supplier such as a local authority, local enterprise partnership, or mayoral combined authority, and a guarantor to alleviate the department’s concerns about “the economic and financial standing of such single legal entity, or in relation to the technical and professional ability of the same”.

The lead supplier will have to state which employers are involved with the bid and show how they have helped design and approved the training.

Payment to providers will be on an agreed rate for each learner, and 30 per cent will be earned for a start on the boot camp, for example, if a learner completes their first, full week, or after a set number of guided learning hours.

Sixty per cent will be earned if a learner achieves the boot camp’s required standard, which will be defined by the provider at the bidding stage, including evidence of how learners will be assessed, what quality assurance is in place and whether training is externally validated.

And the final ten per cent will be earned by a learner progressing into a new job within six months, or if there is a change in role for learners who are already employed, or if self-employed learners can find new opportunities.

FE Week has previously reported the national roll-out would be worth £43 million, and as this tender is worth £36 million overall, the Department for Education has said details about the remaining £7 million will be announced “in due course”.

Potential suppliers have until 12 February to submit tenders for both lots.

Ofqual’s new interim chief has warned that the solution to replacing this summer’s exams “won’t be the same for all” qualifications.

Simon Lebus, the former Cambridge Assessment group chief executive, offered a message to students to continue to engage “as fully as you can” in education on Wednesday morning ahead of the education secretary’s speech that outlined his plans for grades this summer.

Gavin Williamson announced that it was his desire for teacher-assessed grades to replace GCSE and A-level exams again in 2021, but questions remain about whether the same approach will be adopted for vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs).

Lebus, who only took over from his predecessor Dame Glenys Stacey on Friday, suggested the approaches will differ: “The way ahead is not straightforward: exams and standardised assessments are the fairest way of determining what a student knows and can do,” he said.

“We need to consider a wide range of qualifications – from A-levels and GCSEs to many different vocational and technical qualifications – and the solution won’t be the same for all.”

Centre-assessed grades were introduced for some VTQ learners last year to replace exams, while others were allowed to have their assessments adapted by, for example, using online tests, and the rest had their assessments delayed.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief policy offer Simon Ashworth has urged Ofqual not to create a two-tier grading system again.

“Instead of the government and Ofqual talking about different types of solutions for different forms of qualifications, we need a fair and consistent approach between academic and vocational pathways,” he told FE Week.

“Otherwise there’s a danger of reopening a big divide and undoing all the work to bring better parity between the two as part of the levelling up agenda.”

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes echoed Ashworth’s view: “It is vital that the proposed way forward is consistent and fair to every student because of the worry and confusion that abounds currently, particularly following the mixed message that January exams are going ahead while this summer’s exams are cancelled.”

He added: “As well as young people, there are around 250,000 apprentices and one million adult students studying for qualifications in colleges. Decisions for all qualification types need to be made and communicated as soon as possible, so we welcome the speed at which the government has committed to work on this.

“Not only do the plans need to be fair, comprehensive, inclusive and robust; they also need to be agreed quickly, communicated clearly and be flexible enough to work in practice.”

The outcomes for the government’s traineeships tender have been delayed, the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced today.

In a message to bidders at 3pm this afternoon, the agency said the “high volume of tenders received” has “necessitated having to inform you that notifications of award will be delayed slightly”.

The ESFA had planned to notify bidders of outcomes on 11 January, but it will now aim to publish a revised timetable next week.

FE Week has asked the agency if this means the planned contract award date of 1 February will also be delayed. We had not received a response at the time of going to press.

As FE Week revealed in November, the procurement, which is for 19 to 24 traineeships only, received 370 bids.

It is being run on an “accelerated” timetable, with a slice of £65 million up for grabs initially to be spent between February and July 31, 2021. The total pot will be split across nine regions in England – ranging from £20.8 million for London providers to just £2.6 million for the south-west.

The £65 million tender is hoped to fund around 20,000 starts in the latter half of 2020/21, while a further £315 million was made available to support continued delivery through to July 2023.

The tender is one way the government plans to triple the number of traineeships starts this year – as pledged by chancellor Rishi Sunak over the summer as part of his plan to combat youth unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Employer cash incentives of £1,000 have also been made available, as has growth funding for providers to deliver 16-to-19 traineeships.

The Department for Education has finally updated its main Covid-19 guidance document to include details of how FE leaders should handle this year’s partial college and training provider closures.

Many of the instructions on how to keep providers Covid-secure are similar to or the same as they were before, but there are some new instructions.

Here’s what we learned.

 

Students who have difficulty accessing remote education can attend onsite

Colleges and training providers should only stay open to vulnerable learners and children with at least one parent who is a critical worker during the new national lockdown.

The definition of vulnerable students has now been updated to include those who “may have difficulty engaging with remote education at home”, for example due to a “lack of devices, connectivity or quiet space to study”.

The government has removed a previous rule that students who need access to specialist equipment can still attend.

Providers must now make alternative arrangements for students studying courses that require specialist equipment or facilities.

 

Remote education expectations

The DfE does not provide set hours for how much remote education needs to be provided like in schools, but rather asks FE providers to “use your best endeavours to deliver as much of students’ planned hours as possible”.

The department “recognises for some students this may not be possible for example where a student is undertaking a course involving practical teaching and training which necessitates the use of specialist equipment and supervision or with respect to work experience and placements”.

Providers are expected to have systems in place to check, at least weekly, for “persistent non-attendance or lack of engagement with remote education and to quickly agree ways in which attendance and participation can be improved”.

They are also told to identify a “named senior leader” with “overarching responsibility for the quality and delivery of remote education”, as well as publish details of their remote education offer on their website by 18 January, as previously announced.

Providers are told to “as far as possible” provide students live online teaching in lieu of face-to-face delivery.

 

Apprentice assessment can continue face-to-face

The DfE says that “where possible”, apprenticeship training and assessment should be delivered remotely.

But where this is not possible face-to-face end-point assessment and functional skills assessments “can continue in colleges, training providers’ premises, assessment venues and workplaces, where providers and end-point assessment organisations judge it right to do so”.

The guidance also confirms that providers can continue with the BTEC and other vocational exams that are due to take place in January, where they “judge it right to do so”.

Specific guidance for delivering apprenticeships can be found here.

 

Face coverings in communal spaces

Under national lockdown, face coverings should be worn by adults and students when “moving around the premises, outside of classrooms, such as in corridors and communal areas where social distancing cannot easily be maintained”.

 

New advice for clinically vulnerable staff

According to the DfE, clinically extremely vulnerable FE staff and students are “advised that they should not attend the workplace”. These individuals will be identified “through a letter from the NHS or a specialist doctor”.

Clinically vulnerable staff can continue to attend work, but should follow sector-specific measures to “minimise the risks of transmission”.

Pregnant staff are considered clinically vulnerable, but if they cannot work from home, they and their employers should follow the government’s advice for pregnant employees.

 

Special settings should continue as normal

The DfE says that special post-16 settings should “continue to welcome and encourage students to attend full-time (or as per their usual timetable) where the student wishes to attend”.

 

Unclear if Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will go ahead from this month

Ofsted had 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.

But the DfE said today that for FE and skills providers inspection activity “remains under review and more guidance will be published in due course,” the DfE said.

However, Ofsted will “continue to have the power to inspect in response to any significant concerns, such as safeguarding”.

 

Support for remote education

The DfE reiterated that the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund provides financial support to help students access devices and connectivity support.

The department also announced in December that their ‘Get Help with Technology’ scheme will be extended to provide support with devices and connectivity for 16 to 19 year olds. Schools with sixth forms, colleges and other FE institutions will be “invited to order laptops and tablets during the spring term to further support disadvantaged learners to access remote education”.

For adults aged 19 and over “we introduced a change to the ESFA adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year to enable you to use learner support funds to purchase IT devices and/or internet access for disadvantaged students to help them meet technology costs, where these costs are a barrier to accessing or continuing in their training,” the DfE added.

The January vocational exam series descended into chaos at the start of the week as the government passed the buck to colleges to decide whether they go ahead, while telling the rest of the nation to “stay at home” as the new variant of Covid-19 causes cases to spiral.

In a live TV broadcast on Monday, prime minister Boris Johnson announced a third national lockdown and that schools, colleges and training providers in England will now be closed to most students until at least mid-February, with this summer’s exams also cancelled.

But in a move that caused outrage across the FE sector, the Department for Education swiftly confirmed that BTEC and other vocational exams planned for the next three weeks and which involve around 135,000 students would still go ahead.

While college leaders scrambled to try and make sense of the decision, membership and awarding bodies were lobbying behind the scenes for ministers to cancel the exams altogether amid safety fears.

But they were only met with further confusion on Tuesday night when the DfE backtracked and said that schools and colleges can now cancel the assessments, but left it up to leaders to decide.

“In light of the evolving public health measures, schools and colleges can continue with the vocational and technical exams that are due to take place in January, where they judge it right to do so,” was the official line.

While the education secretary Gavin Williamson was slammed in parliament for the move, with MPs accusing him of “failing to show leadership”, college bosses were left with decisions to make in the most difficult of circumstances.

After speaking with many of them, FE Week has found that leaders have taken a variety of decisions: cancel all exams; cancel some but not all; continue with all exams as planned, with some offering students the choice. The majority cancelled, and some even had students sitting exams on Tuesday before scrapping the rest following the DfE’s halft U-turn that night.

Here are some examples of colleges in each of the categories and their reasons for the decision they made.

 

All exams cancelled

The Sheffield College made the decision to postpone all of its January exams on Monday, ahead of the DfE’s backtrack, insisting that this was “not a decision we have made lightly, but student and staff safety must come first”.

Around 950 students were due to sit exams at the college over the next two weeks in curriculum areas such as animal care, aviation, science, carpentry, hairdressing, health and social care, information technology, motor vehicle, and painting and decorating.

Principal Angela Foulkes said that in stopping the assessments during this national lockdown she is calling for them to be “postponed and rescheduled to a later date which would be safer for our students and staff”, rather than being scrapped altogether.

Loughborough College made the same call, explaining that with a surge in local infection rates and due to the volume of learners who “travel from outside our area to sit exams”, postponing is the “safest option”.

Capital City College Group, which has campuses scattered across the Covid-19 hotspot of London, said that it also took this decision as cases in the capital worsen.

“To continue with these exams would disadvantage students who, for whatever reason, can’t come to college to sit an exam, and would place those students who do come in – and the members of our staff who must be present at exams – at a greater risk of infection,” a spokesperson said.

“We know that our students have worked so hard to prepare for their exams. We are very sorry for the distress and annoyance caused by cancelling them at short notice.”

A spokesperson for Harlow College, meanwhile, said Covid-19 case rates in young people and adults in its area are “high” and, given the prime minister’s instruction to “stay at home as much as possible”, they “felt it was only safe and fair, to both our students and staff, to cancel the exams in order to protect our community’s health and safety”.

NCG chief executive Liz Bromley, who runs seven colleges across England, added that while her group “recognises that there are many benefits to continuing with exams” they “do not feel it is right to ask students to travel to attend exams” in light of the “national lockdown, a new strain of Covid-19 and high transmission rates across the localities of our colleges”.

All of those that have cancelled the exams have promised that students will not be disadvantaged, and they will work with Ofqual and the relevant awarding bodies to implement “fair” solutions.

 

Some but not all exams cancelled

Central Bedfordshire College has decided to cancel the majority of its exams but to go ahead with some where it would be “advantageous” for students.

Principal Ali Hadawi said his team “considered in detail whether it is possible to run these exams safely for students, invigilators and teachers and whether any student or a group of students would be disadvantaged by not completing them”.

“The guiding principle for the college is that students must not be disadvantaged, including the considerable additional emotional and mental pressure as well as the safety of students and staff,” he added.

Exams that will not go ahead include, for example, BTECs in engineering, where students missed a chunk of learning last month owing to either student or staff self-isolation and still had some way to go to complete the course.

But BTECs in IT, for example, will go ahead in “enhanced safety arrangements” as learners had already completed some modules and needed to sit this month’s exams to complete. All exams offered by exam board AAT will also go ahead.

Dudley College is taking a similar approach. A spokesperson said they have cancelled “any BTEC exams in favour of delivering these later in the year once the awarding body confirms arrangements” but they will continue to offer “other exams, such as AAT and electrical”.

The assessments continuing to be on offer involve those that need to be sat because they lead to immediate career options.

“The college has safe arrangements in place and is therefore happy to offer exams in January, but will focus these on priority areas where it supports students due to achieve,” a spokesperson said.

They added that the college does however “recognise that some students may be unable or unwilling to attend at this stage due to issues with travel, concerns about Covid-19 or family vulnerabilities”.

So anyone who does not attend exams in January will be “entered for a future date as soon as we are advised of these by the awarding body”.

 

All exams continue (but giving students the choice)

East Kent College Group said it has already supported around 500 students to sit their exams this week after receiving “overwhelming feedback” from students who were keen to attend.

They told their students it was up to them if they attended and have achieved an average turnout of around 80 per cent so far this week.

For those who choose not to sit the exams, the college has pledged to do “everything to ensure that future opportunities for sitting the examination are made available” and that “alternatively, the government may offer alternative forms of assessment”.

A spokesperson said it was important to allow students, who have been preparing for the exams for years in some cases, the opportunity to sit them in order to progress.

London South East Colleges, which has campuses across the capital and is also in a Covid-19 hotspot area, has made the same decision. Deputy chief executive David Lambert told FE Week the college group had a 50 to 60 per cent turnout on Thursday – its first day of exams. Around 800 exams are scheduled to take place over the coming weeks.

In a letter to students, the college said: “After very detailed consideration, we have decided to let our students have a choice.

“We know how hard so many of you have worked for these exams, that you will be disappointed not to take them and that you would like the exams to take place.”

Weston College, based in Weston-super-Mare, has taken a similar approach. “We appreciate that some learners are reliant on completing exams to secure licence-to-practice status or a professional status that is important to their career or advancement in work. Where our learners are able and want to take the exam they have prepared for, we will allow them the opportunity to do so. The college will therefore continue with the agreed timetable of exams in January,” a spokesperson said.

FE Week asked the college what the turnout had been like for the exams that had already taken place this week, but the college did not respond at the time of going to press.

Additionally, Telford College has around 20 different vocational exams taking place over the next fortnight. Construction exams went ahead on Wednesday and saw nearly 90 per cent attendance, while music assessments ran on Thursday and had a 100 per cent turnout, according to a spokesperson.

Principal Graham Guest said: “We recognise that it is going to be particularly important to press ahead where we can with exams for vocational training qualifications which can only be fulfilled through practical assessment.”

 

Another flagship national college is set to dissolve after facing insolvency and requiring government bailouts to stay afloat.

The National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure (NCATI), formerly known as the National College of High Speed Rail, is consulting on plans to dissolve its FE corporation and reform as a subsidiary company of the University of Birmingham.

The college’s two campuses, in Birmingham and Doncaster, will transfer if the greenlight is given to the proposal. This is being led by the university but supported by partner organisations, including City & Guilds, Trafford College Group and railway training overseers the National Skills Academy for Rail.

A consultation document published on the college’s website says this new model is “expected to enable financial sustainability to be achieved in order to meet the future needs for the rail, transport and infrastructure sectors”.

It would be the second of the five national colleges to dissolve, following the National College Creative Industries.

NCATI needed £4.55 million from the Department for Education to sign off its 2017-18 accounts and was placed in formal intervention in December 2019.

An FE Commissioner report published last February told how NCATI’s board had been advised on how to operate while facing a “potential insolvency” and that “radical change” was “urgently required”.

The college, the report said, needed a commitment of 12 months of continued emergency funding for the board to sign off their 2018-19 financial statements as a going concern.

The college’s 2018-19 accounts are yet to be published. A spokesperson told FE Week this week that the financial statements are currently with the auditors.

When the FE Commissioner’s report was published, DfE ministers placed NCATI in supervised status and a structure and prospects appraisal was launched to find organisations to partner with NCATI, which led to the proposal to become part of the University of Birmingham.

The consultation document also confirms NCATI has lost its place on the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP), meaning it cannot start any new apprentices.

An Ofsted inspection in November 2019 rated the college as ‘inadequate’ and slapped the same grade on its apprenticeship provision. According to Education and Skills Funding Agency rules this usually means that a provider is removed from the register.

This has had an impact on the college’s attempts to improve its finances, with the consultation document admitting the removal from RoATP was one of the reasons “it has been unable to secure the growth in income that it needed to be sustainable”.

NCATI is planning to resume recruiting apprentices by regaining its position of RoATP but says it will be able to do so “in the meantime via the university’s registration”.

NCATI has had a torrid time since being opened by then-education secretary Justine Greening in 2017 (pictured, left) as the National College for High Speed Rail. It has struggled to recruit learners due to delays in announcing contractors for the High Speed 2 railway project, which meant employers were unable to commit to the apprentice volumes they had originally anticipated.

FE Week exclusively revealed in February 2020 that NCATI had taken Ofsted to court over the grade four report, blowing £73,000 on the legal challenge, which it eventually abandoned.

What is now being proposed by NCATI and the university, whose bid was announced in August as the preferred one for taking over the college, is very similar to what happened to the National College Creative Industries.

The college dissolved having only made it through 2017-18 as a going concern thanks to a £600,000 bailout from the DfE.

After dissolving, the National College Creative Industries reformed last year as a limited company, NCCI Ltd, which licensed provision to Access Creative College and South Essex College.

This process was overseen by NCCI’s interim principal, Sue Dare – who now works as interim principal of NCATI.

A spokesperson for NCATI told FE Week any potential job losses will not be decided until at least mid-February, after the public consultation has ended and NCATI’s board has approved its outcome.

The consultation is running until 5pm on Friday January 29, and more information is available at www.nchsr.ac.uk/consultation

The Labour Party has called for the wages of 85,000 young apprentices to be subsidised this year, by using the £330 million apprenticeship budget underspend handed to the Treasury in 2019.

The opposition party has put forward the policy in order to boost apprenticeship starts, following a drop of a quarter over the past decade, and the rise of competing skills initiatives.

It is hoped paying the wages of apprentices will “incentivise employers to create new opportunities despite the impacts of the pandemic”.

We need a level playing field and the government should seriously consider what Labour is proposing today

Under the proposal, subsidy would operate on a sliding scale, so employers would receive a full wage grant for employing a new apprentice aged 16 to 24 for the first three months.

The subsidy would then drop to 50 per cent for the next six months, then 25 per cent for the final three months.

Money would be dealt out on a first come, first served basis, and Labour estimates it would save each employer around £3,500 per apprentice hired.

The scheme would be funded through the underspend of the Department for Education’s apprenticeship budget in 2019-20, which, as FE Week revealed last July, totalled £330 million and was quietly handed back to the Treasury.

Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister, told FE Week the 85,000 figure is based on the number of starts by 16- to 24-year-olds in 2018-19, of which there were around 210,000, according to official government statistics. It takes into account a decrease in starts owing to the pandemic, then taking half of the annual number as the proposal will cover recruitment over six months.

“Our initial proposal is based on a six-month incentive, which would need to be reviewed based on the developing health situation and its impact on employment numbers.”

He said the wage subsidy should be in addition to the long-standing £1,000 incentive that employers receive when they take on a new 16-to-18 apprentice, but not in addition to the other bonus incentives announced in chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Plan For Jobs which end in March so as not to blow the underspend pot.

Perkins added that the wage subsidy would also mean employers look more in favour of hiring apprentices, rather than using the new Kickstart incentive, by which businesses can receive grants of around £6,500 but which do not lead to a qualification.

“Apprenticeships offer longer term employment, have a far greater learning input than the alternatives, last longer, offer a recognised qualification at the end of it and have more established delivery networks,” Perkins argued.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said providers have been calling for wage subsidies since the start of the first lockdown, so her organisation has “no hesitation” in supporting Labour’s proposal.

She said apprenticeships offer skills for sustainable employment, but are being displaced by the Kickstart scheme, which does not require any training. 

“We need a level playing field and the government should seriously consider what Labour is proposing today.”

Jon, Graham, chief executive of training provider JTL, supports Labour’s proposal, as he believes “action is needed now” to reverse the decline in apprenticeship starts, as the “thousands” of apprentices his company trains across the country are “vital for supporting a long-term economic recovery”.

A Department for Education spokesperson did not directly respond to the call for wage subsidies but said: “Apprenticeships will continue to play a vital role in growing our economy and as we build back better after the pandemic. In recognition of the benefits apprentices bring to businesses across the country, we’re offering payments of up to £2,000 to employers who hire new apprentices.

“More than 10,000 employers have already taken up this offer, which has now been extended until March 2021, giving more people the chance to get ahead in a range of exciting industries, from cyber security to accounting.”

Under rules for the apprenticeship levy, businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more pay each month into the pot and have a rolling 24-month deadline to spend the funds.

The levy was designed so large employers would not spend all of their funds, and unspent money could be made available to small, non-levy-paying businesses to train apprentices.

Unspent funds also provide a ten per cent top-up to levy funds, and they pay for English and maths teaching for relevant apprentices, among other things.

Yet FE Week reported in July that the Department for Education had handed back £330 million from the apprenticeship budget to the Treasury, to allow it to be “used for other government priorities”.

Perkins said the subsidy proposal is a “specific approach” to the issue of the drop-off in starts, but would look at the situation nearer to the next general election to see if it should be brought in as a permanent policy by a Labour government.