The government has pushed FE student return dates back by an extra week – but BTEC and other vocational exams will go ahead as planned in January.

Under revised plans announced this afternoon by education secretary Gavin Williamson, providers will open for onsite teaching to only vulnerable students and children of critical workers next week.

Students preparing for exams in 2021 will study remotely and return to campus the week beginning 11 January, with remaining learners studying online until the following week.

Vocational exams, of which there are around 130,000 scheduled to start from the week of 4 January according to the Association of Colleges, will still go ahead.

The new plans are said to give college leaders more time to rollout mass testing. The testing scheme is only currently available to colleges and schools – not other FE provider types.

It comes two weeks after the government announced plans for exam year students to start onsite teaching from 4 January, with face-to-face education starting for all from 11 January.

Today’s changes have been made to tackle spiralling cases of Covid-19.

Meanwhile, primary schools in a “small number” of tier 4 areas with the highest infection rates will be closed to all but vulnerable and key workers’ children (click here for the list of areas this applies to).

You can read Williamson’s speech in full here.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “Exam groups in college, tested and learning face-to-face, after one week? That’s about 1,500 students in an average size sixth form college.

“The delay is welcome, but the revised plan is still a huge ask.

“The plan to delay the start of the January term and focus on online lessons for many young people makes sense and will not faze colleges.”

A spokesperson for awarding body Pearson, which runs BTECs, said: “We will continue to work closely with you to support learners as they undertake their assessments. Our existing guidance on the BTEC approach to adaptation to delivery and assessment in 2020/2021 on our dedicated webpage is available here and an assessment summary is available here (PDF).”

The government will make £78 million available for the rollout of rapid mass Covid-19 testing of students from January 4.

A handbook has today been published by the Department for Education for secondary schools and colleges to use to prepare for the scheme set to launch in just 11 days’ time.

It states that the amount of funding available to a school or college will depend on its size as this will “impact the number of additional staff required to conduct testing”.

A “ready reckoner” has been provided which provides illustrative workforce requirements and associated funding. For colleges it gives the example that a further education college outside London, with 3,000 students and staff will need 30 people working on mass testing and will each receive approximately £35,000.

Schools are likely to receive between £9,000 and £28,000 each.

They will be able to use the funding to cover relevant staffing costs and personal protective equipment will also be directly provided on January 4.

The handbook explains that colleges will need to determine how many staff they need and where those staff will come from, for example existing staff and/or volunteers or agency workers.

There are seven roles that will need to be filled: team leader; test assistant; processor; Covid-19 coordinator; registration assistant; results recorder; and cleaner.

The DfE says military support “will be made available and is designed to make sure that those schools and colleges that require additional help can access it”.

The tests to be administered will be the lateral flow tests – which provide results within 30 minutes. They will be used despite concerns they can miss large numbers of positive cases.

Students will be offered two lateral flow tests spaced three to five days apart, while staff will be offered one test in the first week and weekly thereafter as part of the longer-term routine testing programme.

Anyone with a positive result will need to leave college, take a confirmatory Polymerase Chain Reaction test and follow the self-isolation guidelines – which currently span 10 days.

The handbook includes examples of what a testing site should look like (see image below).

As previously announced, secondary schools and FE providers are currently set for a staggered return to on-site learning for non-exam students after Christmas.

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said today’s updated guidance “doesn’t take us much further forward because it ignores the fact that this plan and timescale are totally unrealistic”.  

“It is frankly ludicrous to think that schools and colleges will be able to recruit and train the workforce needed to carry out this testing programme in the 11 days before term is due to begin on January 4, particularly as it is the Christmas holiday period,” he added.

“The guidance gives an illustrative example of a secondary school with 1,000 pupils and staff needing 13 people working on mass testing. How on earth are schools and colleges supposed to have such workforces in place by the first week of the new term?”

Barton continued: “The government seems to be stuck in some sort of parallel universe in which it cannot grasp the huge scale of the task it is asking schools and colleges to carry out.

“Schools and colleges are very keen for rapid Covid tests to be available to staff and students, but the government’s half-baked plan is simply not deliverable.”

Influential MPs have added their voices to calls for the return of individual learning accounts to help reverse the decline in adult education.

The Commons’ Education Select Committee has today published a report following an inquiry into lifelong learning, in which they learned participation in adult education has dropped to its lowest level in 23 years, while funding fell by almost half between 2008-09 and 2018-19.

One solution the MPs have put forward to “kickstart participation and play a key role in enhancing the employment prospects of adults affected by the Covid-19 pandemic” is the introduction of individual learning accounts (ILAs), despite recognising the idea has become “political kryptonite”.

This makes the MPs the latest in a chorus of voices calling for a return of the accounts – FE Week reported last month how further education and skills sector leaders, as well as policymakers and government advisers, have come round to the idea of handing learners a bank of funding to spend on education and training throughout their lives.

The committee believes ILAs, which they say would be funded through the government’s £2.5 billion National Skills Fund due for roll-out next April, should initially be aimed at groups with low engagement in lifelong learning, including those on low incomes, in a pilot phase.

But ILAs should eventually expand, the report envisions, to a system where all adults receive a one-off grant, then two to three top-up investments throughout their working life, in order to “put purchasing power into the hands of the individual, enabling adults to take control over their learning and skills pathway”.

The great spectre hanging over any introduction of ILAs, however, is their expensive and failed introduction under the Labour government in 2000.

Then-education secretary Estelle Morris pulled the plug on the scheme just a year later after abuse by unscrupulous providers led to a reported £67 million fraud.

“The failures of this scheme have meant that ILAs remain political kryptonite for English policymaking,” today’s report notes. “Yet twenty years on, particularly with advances in technology and digital security, this need no longer be the case.”

The model has since been put into practice in others parts of the UK: including in Scotland, where there are grants of up to £200 for individuals who are looking for work or looking to progress in work to spend on training; and in Wales, where a pilot scheme launched in 2019 targeted priority groups, such as adults in employment earning under £26,000.

Other recommendations from today’s report, titled ‘A plan for an adult skills and lifelong learning revolution’, include a community learning centre in every town, as the providers of such training are the “the jewel in the crown of the nation’s adult education landscape”.

The committee said the Department for Education does not “fully grasp the value and purpose of community learning,” after skills minister Gillian Keegan showed at a hearing an “inability to set out a specific strategy and ambition for community learning”.

So the report calls on department to work out an “ambitious” plan for the centres, which could be set up at “colleges, church halls and libraries,” and must also push for a three-year funding settlement for community learning at the next government spending review, after its budget had been “arbitrarily” capped for ten years.

Skills tax credits, similar to an existing credit for research and development, have also been proposed by the committee for employers who invest in training for employees. The tax credits should be tapered so is more generous to employers who provide training for those with lower prior qualifications.

Like ILAs, skills tax credits are also a favoured policy of the prime minister’s skills and workforce policy advisor Alison Wolf, who told the committee the credits would be a “a very good idea,” if a way of doing it could be figured out which was not “open to massive fraud”.

The three recommendations, along with the introduction of grants for disadvantaged learners to study more part-time higher education courses, make up the committee’s ‘four pillars’ approach, which committee chair Robert Halfon MP (pictured left) says: “Would lay the foundation for a coherent long-term adult education strategy that goes some way to fostering a national culture of lifelong learning and allowing everyone the chance to climb the ladder of opportunity.”

Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans, who contributed to the committee inquiry which led to this report, said the recommendations in the “excellent report” could make a “real difference”.

“We’ve long called for a personal learning account to help people retrain and upskill throughout their lives.”

A Department for Education spokesperson, in response to the report, said they will “continue to work with the FE sector to ensure more adults can retrain and upskill so we can unlock even more potential and level up opportunities across the country.

“Our Lifetime Skills Guarantee will make sure everyone has the opportunity to learn and develop the skills they need to succeed at any age,” including through its offer of a free, first, full level 3 qualification for any adult without one. As well as a lifelong loan entitlement “that will make it easier for adults and young people to study more flexibly, which can be used over their lifetime and for modules of a course, as well as full years

The spokesperson continued: “We are investing £1.34 billion in education and skills training for adults through the adult education budget and The Skills Toolkit offers free online courses to help boost digital and numeracy skills that are highly desired by employers.”

 

FE students who are not preparing for exams in 2021 must learn at home for the first week of the next term in January, the Department for Education has said.

But those who are preparing for exams or need access to specialised equipment, as well as vulnerable learners and children of critical workers, should all attend campus in person as planned.

Face-to-face education will begin for all learners starting on 11 January. Full guidance for the FE sector can be read here.

Ministers have also confirmed that vocational exams scheduled for the week of 4 January will go ahead as planned.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the government needs to “recognise that it cannot keep making monumental announcements at the last minute, which add additional responsibility and stresses on leaders and staff without the full guidance or resources to fulfil their demands”.

“Things are moving fast on the virus, requiring government to make difficult decisions, and rapidly. But those decisions need to be realistic and pragmatic,” he added.

“The over-ambitious start date of 4 January is unfair on school and college leaders and staff – just one more unrealistic burden and additional stress after what has already been the most difficult nine months imaginable.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders union, added that it “beggars belief that this announcement is being made now, right at the end of term”.

Ministers have also announced that all secondary schools and colleges will be given a “free round of testing” from the first week of January, which will be supported by the armed forces.

This is in addition to the government’s recent announcement that every secondary school and college in England will have access to rapid testing from next month.

Guidance will “shortly be provided” to schools and colleges on how to set up and staff the testing site, and officials reiterated that “reasonable workforce costs” will be reimbursed. 

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “This targeted testing round will clamp down on the virus as students return from the Christmas break and help stop the spread of Covid-19 in the wider community.

“Building on the fantastic actions that schools and colleges have already taken to be as safe as possible, this additional testing will catch those who have the virus but are not showing symptoms to help schools and colleges stay in control of the virus throughout the spring term.”

Health secretary Matt Hancock added: “Testing in schools is crucial for us to break the chains of transmission and keep students, staff and their loved ones safe. That’s why we’re supporting schools and colleges in England to offer testing at the start of January.”

DfE guidance for college testing in the first week of January states: “You will need to contribute some members of staff to support the asymptomatic testing programme – ideally non-teaching staff.

“Identify one or two staff to support the recruitment of volunteers and agency staff and act as liaison with the military and test and trace so that testing can commence from 4 January. Volunteers and other test support staff will not need to have been trained in advance.

“The remaining testing workforce will be made up of volunteers and agency staff brought in for this purpose. Reasonable workforce costs will be reimbursed. Armed forces personnel will support directly through planning with colleges.”

 

The proportion of top grades awarded to students in the Autumn A-level exams is overall lower than the summer centre assessed grades, results published today show.

More than 15,000 students in England will get their results today after sitting exams between 5 and 23 October.

Students who received grade A and above in the Autumn resits series was 29.7 per cent compared to 38.1 in the summer.

However, this is still higher than the 2019 results where 25.2 per cent of students received A or above.

The number of students receiving A* was also higher than 2019, by 2.1 percentage points. However, it was 4.5 percentage points below those who received an A* in the summer.

In the summer, the proportion of A*s awarded to A-level pupils almost doubled.

The exams regulator Ofqual confirmed in October that pupils resitting qualifications this autumn would be handed the same “generosity” in their grades, as awarded in the summer.

The regulator added that the grade boundaries would be lowered for the exams. Results rocketed this summer after the government U-turn to award pupils with their CAG, or standardised grade if it was higher.

The percentage receiving C or above at A-level this Autumn was 71.7 per cent. In the summer this was 87.5 per cent and in 2019 it was 75.5 per cent.

In maths, which had the highest number of entries at 3,519, 29.6 per cent received A or above. This is a significant drop from 49.5 per cent in the summer and 40.5 per cent in 2019.

In English Literature, 35.7 per cent achieved an A or above. This is similar to the summer results, at 37.7 per cent but higher than the 2019 cohort, where 24.1 per cent achieved the top grades.

In chemistry, 29.3 per cent received an A or above, compared to 41.9 per cent in the summer. In 2019, this was similar to the Autumn results, at 28.4 per cent.

At AS level in England, 28.3 per cent achieved a grade A. This is similar to the summer results, at 27.1 per cent, but much higher than 2019 when 20.1 per cent were awarded the top grade.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “Students getting their results today should feel incredibly proud of what they have achieved. The grades they receive today, just like the ones received by so many in the summer, can be their passport to the next stage of their lives.

“Fairness for students has always been and continues to be my priority, which is why we made sure young people could sit an exam this autumn and why we have set out such an exceptional set of measures for students sitting exams next year.”