The middle tier of managers have become more and more pivotal as roles within FE senior leadership change. But there is “a price to pay” if colleges do not prepare staff for the job, according to the FE sector’s workforce development organisation.

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) spoke up for the leaders it calls “the engine room of a college” while promoting a compendium based on its Leading From The Middle training programme, run by the skills consultancy FE Associates.

The programme trains middle leaders, usually heads of department, in areas such as leading a diverse workforce, understanding college finances and building awareness of how reforms impact upon the sector.

The ETF has run the programme on behalf of the Department for Education since October 2018, reaching more than 350 participants.

It has now published an online compendium that looks into more than 30 issues based on projects completed by the programme’s participants. These include improving attendance in sports academies, supporting ESOL learners, and setting expectations to create work-ready learners.

To mark its publication, FE Week spoke with the programme’s leaders and participants to find out more about the challenges behind middle management and how the course prepares staff to be what one participant called “the sponge of the college, soaking up pressure from every angle”.

The ETF’s director of design and development, Mark Wright, says the programme “emboldens participants to be more confident leaders, and use that confidence as a thrust to apply for more senior roles”.

“This is about impact and effectiveness, so we designed it on the basis of it being the shot in the arm that the sector needs.”

That is in response to what he calls “a delayering of FE” over the past ten to 20 years, whereas “there used to be lots of micro steps taking you up the rungs.

“Now those steps have become more gulf-like.”

The Social Market Foundation’s 2019 paper on policies for strong leadership in FE colleges says middle managers have taken on more responsibilities for managing budgets and management information systems since college incorporation, and are handling pressures from other departments.

Yet the training offer has been “thin”. 

The paper called for the Department for Education to “increase investment in training and development for middle leaders”, adding such programmes should be “expanded significantly”.

Wright agrees that middle managers have taken on more duties, to the point they are “the engine room” of the college.

“It is a really pivotal position and it is becoming more so because of the sector has had a lot of value taken out of it. It’s put more of an onus on to the middle tier.”

He cautions providers that there is a “price to pay if you don’t train people. You can tell the difference between colleges that do invest and those that haven’t been able to”.

FEA’s managing director, Matt Atkinson, says the mounting challenges faced by middle leaders prompted the compendium.

“Participants were dealing with very similar issues and challenges so we wanted to create a resource bank that other leaders, particularly middle leaders, could use.

“What we’re trying to do is put something out into the sector that says ‘we’re all dealing with similar things at this time, a number of people have come up with quite creative ways of solving problems’.

“A lot of the stuff that comes out about leadership development tends to be focused on the senior tier.

“Whereas 360 people have completed this programme … there has been so much learning.”

That learning involves a number of sessions, firstly involving an initial assessment to give participants a baseline of what they need to focus on.

“Primer days” then help them to understand the issues around the programme’s five modules.

But this is blended with online provision, featuring webinars and short videos from leaders to explain what they have done to raise their capacity.

But, Wright says, the ETF recognises that not everyone will feel “comfortable” with the face-to-face element, so it is trialling an online-only version.

Atkinson also highlights the programme’s mentoring from “very experienced” sector managers and “focused learning activities” – the individual projects that have been adapted into the issues covered by the compendium.

And what do the participants make of the programme?

Florence Marfo, a programme manager for languages at Morley College in south London, was one of the first to take the programme in October 2018 after feeling “lost and dumped” at work. She had tried to raise standards in her department but did not know how to make the most of the support from other departments.

The training was “very practical” with “excellent coaching”. But the most useful thing was the chance to get the frustrations of work off her chest: “It was very good to have somebody to sound ideas off. We did not have that in my workplace. It really helped and made a difference.

“Eighteen months later I was contacted by somebody. That was also like another coaching session because I talked to him about some of the frustrations I had. It was just like having a one-to-one session again.”

She says the programme has made her “happier” to stay in her current role. A second cohort of Morley’s middle managers have now done the course, all of them enjoying the experience.

While it made Marfo happier in her current role, it helped Farnborough College’s head of faculty Mark Treagust to boost his career.

When he took part earlier this year he looked at assistant principal roles s part of his study, soon realising “we are capable of going for those jobs and getting them”.

“It was very well-timed for me because I had applied for a new role myself. I feel that if it was not for the course, I would not have had the confidence to go for it – and the knowledge and the ability to get it.”

Treagust becomes assistant principal of Sparsholt College, also in Hampshire, in August and says the course taught him: “There is no upper ceiling, anything is possible.”

He describes the role of middle management with an analogy used on the course: “You are the sponge of the college, you have to soak up pressure from every area, whether that be your peers, your staff, students, parents, senior leadership. That can become quite laborious.”

Aside from boosting his confidence, he found the course changed his perspective on his own performance. After working in FE for ten to 15 years and being a manager for more than five, he says he was “in danger of having an opinion my management style had been formed, but I’ve learnt it is a very fluid thing”.

The compendium is available on the ETF website at https://tinyurl.com/y7rd2kz9

The government has announced it will provide extra funding for disadvantaged college students to receive free meals over the summer – but they will be given 60p less per day than school pupils.

The Department for Education (DfE) this morning published details on how FE providers can continue to provide free meals over the 2020 summer holiday to students who are eligible under the existing 16 to 19 bursary scheme.

It comes a month after the government U-turned on its decision not to provide free lunch vouchers to school pupils during August, following a public campaign by Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford.

The guidance explains the funding rate for free meals in FE has been calculated at £73 per student, which works out at £2.41 for five meals each week – whereas school students will have £3.

Sixth Form College Association deputy chief executive James Kewin said that “if the department has evidence that college students require less food than school students we would be interested to see it”.

“If not, we would suggest that young people should not be disadvantaged based on where they choose to study”.

There is also a variance between how much students at different provider types will be given – as 16 to 19 schools and academies are able to access the same amount of funding as schools.

Kewin said schools and academies “knew on June 17 they could continue to make free meal payments to students over the summer holidays.

“It has taken almost a month to extend this to sixth form students studying in colleges, with the inevitable catch that they will be funded at a lower rate.”

After education secretary Gavin Williamson said in a speech yesterday “for decades, we have failed to give FE the investment it deserves”, Kewin responded that he ought to “address the range of inequalities that colleges face compared to other providers of 16 to 18 education.

“Free school meals is a classic example.”

This additional funding is being offered due to the “unprecedented nature of the coronavirus outbreak”.

It can only be used to buy meals for eligible students over the summer 2020 holiday period, and the guidance warns any additional funding which is not spent will be clawed back by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Providers which wish to claim this funding must sign and return their contract variations by July 31 to receive the additional funding in their August payment, the DfE said.

Funding will come through “in a later payment” if contracts are returned after this date.

The DfE has said it will also pay the first part of free meals allocations for the 2020/21 academic year to institutions in August, in line with the usual payment schedule.

The guidance also says providers “must continue to provide meals using their existing arrangements over the summer” for eligible students claiming for free meals during the summer term.

Providers must confirm arrangements and support with eligible students before the end of the term.

Last month, FE Week reported on how individual colleges were planning to fund free meals to their 16 to 19 eligible learners over the summer in the absence of additional funding from government.

The Cabinet Office blocked the Department for Education from promoting T-levels during the Covid-19 pandemic, despite first delivery of the new qualifications being just months away.

The decision to “turn off” advertising, which one communications expert for the FE sector said “doesn’t make sense”, was revealed in an updated “major projects portfolio” published today by the DfE.

The document rates the “confidence” of delivering T-levels successfully as amber/red – the fourth lowest on a five-point scale – largely because the “long-term sustainability of the programme has major challenges” and the “strategic landscape for T-levels is not considered to be stable”.

It reiterates that the government remains committed to the delivery of the first T-levels from September 2020 even though the current Covid-19 circumstances “bring additional challenges, particularly for providers and for employers who might offer industry placements”.

Despite these unforeseen challenges, the document states that Cabinet Office and Number 10 have “restricted government comms during the coronavirus outbreak, which has resulted in comms on T-levels being paused” and this will “impact our planned comms and engagement strategy, which is currently under review”.

It goes on to further explain that Cabinet Office “advised our communication campaign colleagues to turn off the social media advertising in March 20, due to Covid-19”, which has “led to an underspend in financial year 2019-20”.

The DfE document adds that due to Covid-19 “we may not be able to engage the employers needed to deliver the industry placements and therefore will not be able to deliver the expected amount of T-levels in September 2020, leading to an underspend”.

Ben Verinder, founder of Chalkstream Ltd and consultant in the FE sector, was perplexed by the move. “This is an odd decision given the circumstances,” he told FE Week.

“Our own recent research on public awareness of T-levels chimes with national studies – low awareness of T-levels among potential students and their influencers persists.

“So pausing online promotion at a time when young people are still finalising their plans doesn’t make sense. Particularly when offline communication opportunities are so limited due to Covid-19.”

Raising awareness of T-levels nationally has proved to be a huge challenge for the DfE.

Its £3 million “NexT Level” marketing campaign only launched in October 2019 – around the same time that a survey of more than 1,000 parents of children aged 11 to 18 commissioned by the Chartered Management Institute found that two-thirds had never heard of the qualifications.

The campaign, which involves commercials and adverts on TV and social media platforms, had been scheduled to run throughout the full 2019-20 academic year to help support providers recruit T-level learners.

The Cabinet Office refused to explain the rationale behind their decision to halt T-levels communications during the pandemic but did say the restrictions have now been lifted.

A spokesperson said: “Coronavirus is the biggest challenge the UK has faced in decades, and it is absolutely right for the government to focus communications on providing the public with the information it needs to fulfil its crucial role in tackling coronavirus.

“The T-levels campaign has been given approval and is now live to run over the summer to support recruitment in September.”

The Department for Education did not respond to requests for comment at the time of going to press.

The first three T-levels, in construction, digital and education and childcare, are due to be rolled out from September.

The much-vaunted new post-16 qualifications have been dubbed the “gold standard” of technical education, to match their academic equivalent A-levels.

The Department for Education quietly handed back £330 million of the 2019-20 apprenticeships budget to the Treasury, FE Week can reveal.

The admission comes despite concerns that small employers had struggled to find providers with sufficient non-levy funds to train their apprentices, with some being turned away.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment of Learning Providers, said it will remain “one of life’s great mysteries as to why this was allowed to happen”.

“The department knew full well that there was huge demand from small and mediumsized employers for apprenticeships that was not being met by the non-levy contracting system,” he added.

“Providers could have got the money out the door in an instant at a time when apprenticeship starts were crashing from their pre-levy levels.”

The admission of surrendered funds was made by education secretary Gavin Williamson in a letter to the education select committee this week.

In a series of questions about the DfE’s spending plans for 2020-21, the committee asked Williamson why the apprenticeships budget had increased by 17 per cent to £2.5 billion compared to last year, as noted in the department’s recently published “main estimate memorandum”.

The education secretary explained that the apprenticeships budget is in fact at the same level as the last financial year, and the document “shows an increase of around 17 per cent because the funding in 2019-20 was reduced for unspent funding surrendered to Treasury”.

The DfE then told FE Week that a total of £330 million was handed back to Treasury last year, explaining that where departments are not on course to spend the full amount allocated to them at the start of the year, they can “surrender part of their budget cover back to Treasury to allow them to use these funds for other government priorities”.

A spokesperson said: “Spending on the apprenticeship programme is demand led, and employers can choose which apprenticeships they offer, how many and when. In particular, we do not anticipate that all employers who pay the levy will need or want to use all the funds available to them – but they are able to.

“As is usual practice, any underspends in overall departmental budgets by the end of the financial year are first returned to Treasury as per the consolidated budgeting guidance.”

This isn’t the first time the DfE has handed back lumps of apprenticeship funding to the Treasury. In 2017-18 – the first year of the levy – around £300 million was surrendered.

The DfE claimed it did not surrender an apprenticeships underspend in 2018-19.

As per levy rules, 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 policy was designed so that large employers wouldn’t use all of their funds. The unspent money is meant to be recycled and made available to small businesses who do not pay the levy to use to train their apprentices. Unspent funds are also used to top up levy funds by ten per cent as well as pay for English and maths teaching for relevant apprentices, among other things.

In February 2019, FE Week revealed how training providers’ non-levy funding was running dry and that some had even had to turn apprentices away, with the government insisting it couldn’t offer more cash as it didn’t have any left in the system.

In January 2020, the AELP further warned that training providers are “having to turn their backs” on up to 40,000 small businesses due to the shortfall in apprenticeship levy funds.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency is currently in the process of transitioning all small employers on to the digital apprenticeships system, which has only been used by levy-payers since its launch in April 2017 to spend their funds.

This will bring an end to provider funding allocations, secured through a procurement process, being used to train apprentices with small non-levy paying businesses.

The transition is due to complete by April 2021.

Dawe said: “We can take solace from the fact that the moving of all employers on to the digital apprenticeship service should reduce the chances of this happening again.”

A former chief inspector for the Independent Schools Inspectorate has been appointed as Ofsted’s next chair.

Dame Christine Ryan will replace Professor Julius Weinberg from August 1, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced today.

He said Ryan brings a “wealth of experience in the education sector to her new role”.

“I am confident that alongside chief inspector Amanda Spielman, we have the right team to lead Ofsted in this crucial period as we work together to support schools, colleges, nurseries and local authorities to handle the impact of coronavirus,” Williamson added.

“I am very grateful to the outgoing chair Professor Julius Weinberg for all his work over the past three and half years.”

Ryan was the chief inspector of the Independent Schools Inspectorate – the organisation that inspects independent schools, which are outside of Ofsted’s remit – from 2005 to 2017.

She also currently serves on the board of exams regulator Ofqual and is chair of TalentEd – an educational charity for disadvantaged young people.

Ryan, who was made a Dame in the 2018 new year’s honours list, said: “I am truly privileged to be invited to serve as chair of Ofsted and recognise the great personal responsibility this role brings.

“I will work tirelessly to support Ofsted in its essential duty of improving education and care for all our children and young people.”

According to the job advert, which launched in March, the Ofsted chair role requires two days a week of work, as well as bi-monthly board meetings, usually in London and “other events throughout the year across the country”. It is paid a salary of £46,800 a year.

The chair’s job is to “support and appropriately challenge the organisation”, and lead the board in setting strategic priorities, objectives and targets for the chief inspector, and “ensure that HMCI’s functions are performed efficiently and effectively”.

The chair also gives advice to the education secretary “on the performance of HMCI’s functions”.

The national college for HS2 is on the hunt for a provider to partner with following a grade four Ofsted report and warnings from the FE Commissioner it was facing “potential insolvency”.

The National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure (NCATI) told FE Week it was “working through a shortlisting process for a new partner” after it was late submitting financial statements for 2018-19.

A spokesperson said a new partner would “help us deliver the NCATI vision and improve quality”, and following the shortlisting process, NCATI plans to “embark on an open public consultation”.

He said they “remain confident” they will be able to “fulfil our ambition to train and upskill a broad and inclusive generation of talent from across the country”.

NCATI refused to go into more detail about what the partnership would mean for the future of the college, or who the potential partners are.

This isn’t the first time a troubled national college has had to partner with other providers. The National College Creative Industries (NCCI) partnered up with two local providers and then dissolved itself earlier this year, having swallowed a £600,000 bailout from the Department for Education to make it through 2017-18 as a “going concern”.

Access Creative College took over NCCI’s apprenticeships provision and South Essex College took over its classroom provision while NCCI restarted as a limited company.

NCATI, then known as the National College for High Speed Rail (NCHSR), took £4.55 million from the DfE to sign off its 2017-18 accounts.

NCHSR was opened in 2017 by then-education secretary Justine Greening with £40 million in capital funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency to purchase equipment and construct facilities.

It became the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure last October.

The college was engulfed in controversy at the start of 2020 when FE Week broke the news it had hired lawyers to stop a grade 4 Ofsted report from November being published, through a judicial review in the High Court.

NCATI eventually dropped its legal challenge at a cost of £73,000 and the report was released last February, revealing that employers were having to teach apprentices skills that were not covered by the college.

The FE Commissioner Richard Atkins intervened in the college in December, finding it would not be able to sign off its 2018-19 accounts as a going concern “without a commitment of 12 months of continued emergency funding”. He had instructed the board on how to operate while facing “potential insolvency”.

Atkins found NCATI had also based its 2019-20 budget on having 761 apprentices and 263 full-time learners, whereas in December 2019 it only had 216 apprentices and 94 other full-time students.

NCATI was placed in supervised status and since then has been undertaking a structure and prospects appraisal (SPA) with the commissioner.

To ensure this SPA process “is thorough and comprehensive”, NCATI agreed with ESFA to not file completed financial statements for 2018-19 until the culmination of the SPA, the spokesperson said.

A DfE-commissioned report published in February criticised how the national colleges were set up as standalone institutions, saying: “More detailed consideration could have been given to other models such as evolving new institutions from existing education and training providers”.

The report found NCATI had struggled with learner numbers due to delays in announcing HS2 contractors, which meant employers were unable to commit to the apprentice volumes they had originally anticipated.

Training providers are “seriously concerned” that wage subsidies as part of the new £2.5 billion Kickstart scheme will displace apprenticeship starts for young people.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced on Wednesday that the government will pay the wages of “hundreds of thousands” of people aged 16 to 24 who are claiming Universal Credit to take newly created six-month work placements with employers, who will have their overheads covered.

For a 24-year-old, the grant will be around £6,500, Sunak said. Participants will be paid the relevant national minimum wage for at least 25 hours a week.

At the same time he revealed that employers will be offered cash incentives of £2,000 to take on apprentices under the age of 25, which can rise to £3,000 for 16-to-18-year-olds, for six months, from August to January.

The Treasury was quick to confirm that young people who take part in the Kickstart scheme cannot also be apprentices.

Providers have since questioned why an employer would opt for an apprentice, whose training has to last at least a year, with 20 per cent of their time spent off the job, when they can benefit much more financially from the Kickstart programme.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers Mark Dawe said: “Apprenticeship providers are seriously concerned that with programme starts and vacancies in the basement, as well as the worry about furloughed apprentices being made redundant, the Kickstart wage incentives are going to lead to employers choosing Kickstart over apprenticeships.

“The obvious answer is to allow a young person on Kickstart to transfer on to an apprenticeship at any time during the scheme and for the employer to retain the scheme’s wage incentives for the reminder of the scheme’s duration.”

In an attempt to rebut provider fears, the Treasury explained that the subsidised work placement scheme for a young person “who otherwise might not have got into work, or be able to get an apprenticeship”.

Those benefiting will be identified by Department for Work and Pensions work coaches as “at risk of long-term unemployment, once they have assessed the individual’s needs”.

A Kickstart job “must” include some element of training or jobsearch support, to help the participant find unsubsidised work beyond the placement. Further guidance on eligibility will “come in due course”. 

The Treasury added that those benefiting from apprenticeships will be “chosen by employers, and are likely to be closer to the labour market”.

Addressing an FE Week webcast on Thursday, skills minister Gillian Keegan insisted the Kickstart is focused on “different people” to those who would take an apprenticeship.

They will be those individuals who are “furthest from the jobs market” and “at risk” of not ever entering it.

Dawe said that while the government’s thinking is that Kickstart is aimed at young people mostly in the NEET (not in education, employment or training) group and furthest from the labour market, AELP is “not sure at all that employers can and will distinguish between this cohort and potential level 2 apprentices”.

“The potential is often assessed by the provider before the young person starts work, or by the employer and provider after they start, and the real concern is that the differing financial incentives for the employer will override this process,” he added.

“It’s great that the prime minister and the chancellor are championing apprenticeships and traineeships in an unprecedented manner but if this crowding-out issue isn’t rectified before September, then we could see the takeup of Kickstart far outstrip the restoration of apprenticeship starts.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, welcomed the raft of actions announced by Sunak but admitted “we need to see more of the details and vitally how this all fits together”.

Alex Khan, chief executive of Lifetime Training – one of the largest apprenticeship providers in the country – said the apprentice incentives will be a “great boost” for the sector, and while he welcomed the Kickstart programme “we can’t understand why individuals on the scheme can’t also be apprentices”.

“Whilst we recognise and respect the intention of the Kickstart programme, surely a combination of this and an apprenticeship programme, which lasts a minimum of 12 months, must be better for the individuals, employers and the overall economy,” he told FE Week .

“We believe that the two schemes should go hand in hand rather than either/or, as we do run the risk of employers moving toward the Kickstart scheme to the detriment of apprenticeships.”

Some providers do not share the AELP’s concerns. Alex Ford, chief executive of CT Skills, said: “I’m really not worried about displacement. I actually think it will bring new employers into the apprenticeship market.

“I think young people who have been NEET and on universal credit for more than six months will get mandated to the KickStart programme. Where it works, those employers will look to progress the kickstarter onto an apprenticeship.”

Sunak said there will be no cap on the number of Kickstart placements and the scheme will be open to funding applications from August 2020, with the first jobs expected to begin in the autumn.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency’s first overall director of funding – appointed just last year to oversee a new ‘centre of excellence’ – has been poached by the Cabinet Office. 

Kate Josephs will leave the ESFA to take up a director general role in the Cabinet Office to deal with the government’s Covid-19 response. 

She will be replaced by John Edwards, the regional schools commissioner for the East Midlands and the Humber, who will take up the role next week. 

Josephs had been overseeing the creation of a single funding operations centre of excellence responsible for schools, academies and post-16 funding. 

Plans for the new team and role, the first to preside over the DfE’s entire £63 billion budget, were first revealed by FE Week.

Josephs had also been the lead director for the ESFA’s Covid-19 core team.

Eileen Milner, ESFA chief executive, said Josephs had “expertly balanced two very demanding roles and has done so with great skill and capability”.

But she said Edwards brings a “wealth of experience as an RSC and in local government. I know he is very much looking forward to working with the directorate team and stakeholders to continue to develop an efficient and user-centred approach across the agency’s funding responsibilities.”

Carol Gray, the current deputy director in the East Midlands and Humber team, has agreed to become interim RSC pending a full recruitment process in the autumn.