There’s much that’s encouraging in the skills white paper – but we can’t wait another decade for the reforms to fully roll out, says Graham Hasting-Evans
The Skills for Jobs white paper is one of the most fundamental initiatives around further education we have seen in the last decade.
It builds upon the reforms kicked off by Professor Alison Wolf’s review of vocational education in 2011 and the subsequent changes to apprenticeships and vocational and technical qualifications.
There are a lot of good ideas in the white paper and I know people will be keen to get into the detail – where the devil always lies.
I want to touch on the need to ensure further education is properly funded, can continually change to meet fast-paced demand, supports all people across all our communities and enables upskilling. We also need to think about standards and timescales.
Personally, I welcome the direction of the white paper and believe we as a sector need to embrace it, whilst improving on some of the detail.
I’m sure there will be lots of debate on a wide range of topics including the “local skills improvement plans” and how to support staff.
A particularly challenging aspect will be employer involvement in delivering the improved system.
Let’s turn first to need.
‘Level 2s are backbone of the workforce’
We have a great academic system and enjoy worldwide recognition for the quality of our education sector and qualifications. Many of our universities are in the global top 100. All this is very positive.
However, the vast majority of people do not go into ‘academic’ occupations. They go into practical jobs.
If our economy is to be highly productive and enable levelling up, we must ensure our FE technical and vocational system is world-class.
And this system must support all the occupations in our economy, not just those at level 3 and above.
We know some 11.2 million (30 per cent) of jobs in the economy are at level 2 and below, with essential pathways at entry and level 1.
We badly need to upskill this part of the workforce – a significant challenge if we want to improve productivity.
In many important sectors such as business administration, construction and hospitality, roles at level 2 and below are the backbone of the workforce.
In some sectors these roles make up three-quarters of all jobs, and this is not going to change any time soon.
So, we should be funding training and qualifications for level 2 and below as part of the whole system in order to truly level up.
However, the white paper does not make mention of this – it only commits to funding for level 3 and above.
So I recommend the government does commit to continue the funding for entry, level 1 and level 2 for 16 to 19 year olds, as well as adults who need upskilling in the workforce.
‘Internationalisation of standards’
Now on to standards.
In the UK we have disaggregated standards across the various nations. For many occupations we now have an English, Northern Ireland, Scottish and Welsh occupational standard.
This flies in the face of what is happening in the rest of the world.
Elsewhere we see an internationalisation of standards, with many countries now seeing the standard at the WorldSkills competition as the bar to aim for.
As we update our skills system we should aim for international standards across the four nations.
Timescales are also crucial.
‘Take big steps more quickly’
I appreciate that at the moment we need to focus on the implications of Covid and the challenge of lost learning.
But afterwards we must focus on making the ideas in the white paper a reality as soon as possible.
We must reflect on the fact that our current programme of reforms kicked off 10 years ago, and we still have around five years more implementation ahead of us to fully complete the current T Level roll-out. It has taken a long time.
When technology is radically changing every three to six months, skills reform must keep pace. We need to make the big steps forward very quickly, in years not decades.
And we must have a system that we can easily and readily update and revise.
If we don’t we will not succeed. With persistent low productivity, we will lag behind our competitors.
Now is the time to embrace the ideas in the white paper to build a world-class, agile FE system.
The cash bonus scheme for hiring apprentices aged 25 and over is set to double to £3,000 and will be extended by six months.
Financial incentives were first introduced by Rishi Sunak in August and currently offer firms £2,000 to take on apprentices aged 16 to 24, while those that employ new apprentices aged 25 and over are paid £1,500.
But take-up has been low. Latest Department for Education data shows that 25,420 employers have submitted claims for the bonus as of 1 February 2021. The Treasury had budgeted for up to 100,000 incentive payments for new apprentice hires.
The current scheme ends in March, but the chancellor has new plans which will be unveiled in his budget next week to extend it until September 2021.
Jane Hickie
From April, the incentives will become more generous with a £3,000 payment per hire, regardless of the apprentice’s age.
This is on top of the £1,000 payment provided for new apprentices aged 16 to 18 and those under 25 with an Education, Health and Care Plan, meaning that some employers could receive £4,000 in total.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie said the financial incentives boost could be a “game-changer” and prove to be “particularly attractive to smaller businesses”.
“But if we were in the Treasury’s shoes, we would have channelled the increased incentives to focus on 16- to 24-year-olds only, because that is where the support is really needed and where the stimulus is required,” she added.
The chancellor is also expected to launch a new “flexi-job” apprenticeship on Wednesday.
Under the plans, individuals will be linked to an agency, instead of a single employer, and take on different jobs with multiple businesses in one sector.
This scheme is targeted at industries with more flexible working patterns, such as the TV and film sectors. These industries have struggled to spend their levy funding over the years because most roles are freelance and usually only run for two to three months, rather than the 12-month minimum duration needed for an apprenticeship.
The Treasury said that from July, employers will be able to bid for money from a £7 million fund to create new agencies, with the first “flexi-job” apprenticeships expected to start in January 2022.
Hickie pointed out that the flexi-job proposal builds on a prior announcement about portable apprenticeships which the chancellor announced at the last spending review and “looks like a rebadging of the existing Apprenticeship Training Agency model”.
Sunak is also set to announce in his budget next week an “additional” £126 million to further increase traineeship numbers by an extra 40,000 in 2021/22.
This will include £22 million to continue the employer incentive payment of £1,000. It builds on the £111 million the chancellor set aside in 2020/21 to triple the number of traineeships.
Sunak, said: “Our Plan for Jobs has spread opportunity and hope throughout the crisis – helping people back into work and harnessing their talents for the future.
“We know there’s more to do and it’s vital this continues throughout the next stage of our recovery, which is why I’m boosting support for these programmes, helping jobseekers and employers alike.”
David Gallagher tells Jess Staufenberg how he pulled back from the brink of a reckless life to focus on building progression routes
David Gallagher, chief executive of huge awarding organisation NCFE, got suspended three times during his A-levels. He can’t remember why exactly for two of them, but he does remember the third. He’d finished his exam paper very early, as usual had got bored, and so left.
“I was sitting in the exam, I’d finished the paper in half the time and I thought, I’ve done enough, so I walked out. The teachers weren’t OK with that, I think that really annoyed them,” he laughs, grinning ear to ear.
The thing that seemed to frustrate the long-suffering staff was that no matter how few lessons the young Gallagher turned up to, or for how short a time he sat down for an exam, he did pretty well. He says one of his college reports stated rather snidely: “David seems to revel in non-conformity, but no doubt his natural ability will get him through.”
It’s not unusual for maverick chief executives to be school tearaways, but it does make quite a nice symmetry that Gallagher, so close to being kicked out of formal education for quitting an exam, now heads up the country’s oldest, and one of its biggest, exam boards.
NCFE, once known as the Northern Council for Further Education until a name change in the 1990s, was the first awarding organisation with Pearson to be awarded contracts to deliver T Levels. The charity has been around for about 170 years and has access to some of the top tables for decision-making on vocational and technical qualifications around.
It’s also outside the London bubble, with headquarters in Newcastle, and appointed Middlesbrough lad Gallagher, who had only been with the organisation for seven months, to its top role about two years ago.
‘Totally fed up’
But although Gallagher tells his life story with the smiling charm of a true north-easterner, the disengagement – even, as he puts it, arrogance – needed to actually leave an exam tells a more serious story. The youngest of six siblings, Gallagher recalls his dad working away on rigs in the North Sea and his mum retraining hard as a social worker when he was little.
“Parental responsibility” for Gallagher fell somewhere across them and his five siblings, and his earliest memories are everything from his mum teaching him the Periodic Table before he even went to school, and serving himself breakfast aged four because everyone was at work.
“I learnt how to debate, how to fight, how to look after myself. I did what I wanted from a really early age. I’m pleased: I developed a really strong sense of independence and self-reliance.”
Gallagher with his family
But that was out of step with school, where Gallagher makes an interesting observation I imagine would echo with many bright children not being properly stretched. He’d already taught himself to write from magazines – his ts and ds are still the wrong way round – and he read encyclopedias.
“I never really felt like I needed teachers, I just needed work setting. What I needed was a mentor, not a stand-up teacher, someone who could give me a kick up the backside.” Aged 14, Gallagher was “totally fed up” with school.
Then his beloved mum was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The tumour, which was the size of a grapefruit, was followed by a stroke. She was no longer able to work.
“Before my mum was ill, I’d been bored. But then when Mum was ill, I went off the rails.” He looks frankly into the camera. “I became an arrogant little shit, to be honest.” A decade later, aged 24, Gallagher sounds fairly lost. He had decided against university – certainly the right decision – and was working for BT, which he describes as “brilliant”, although his work ethic still needed improving. But a self-destructive streak was getting the better of him.
“I was a high-functioning lunatic, really. You’d have thought if you’d met me that I was normal, but my whole lifestyle was not conducive to relationships or work.” He says a “natural ability” to solve problems was getting him by, but he was out at night too much and getting into debt.
‘I wanted to make it up’
Then a series of awful events happened in quick succession. He lost his job, a best friend’s dad he was close to died, his girlfriend’s mum died, and then his girlfriend dumped him. “It was a horrific period. I spent a lot of time looking in the mirror, and I didn’t like what I saw.”
It’s not often an education leader tells me guilt drove them into the sector, but Gallagher is refreshingly clear on this. “I thought, I want to be a decent human being again. It wasn’t wildly altruistic. It was almost like a penance thing. I thought, I’ve been shit for ten years. I want to make it up.”
I thought, I want to be a decent human being again. It wasn’t wildly altruistic
The experience seems to have given Gallagher a great belief in training, in qualifying, in progressing. While trying to get himself back on the rails, he got a job as a “personal advisor” on New Labour’s Welfare to Work programme, helping those whose lives had careered completely off them, much more so than his own.
These were people “with the most awful lives: abuse, neglect, in and out of prison, the care system, who’d lost parents, had cancer”, he says, adding the role was “somewhere between social worker and recruitment consultant…My experiences paled into insignificance.”
Determined to do something but unable to progress in the role, his big break came when he was hired by Petrina Lynn, then-head of skills for the north-east at the Learning and Skills Council, the forerunner to today’s ESFA.
“I describe Petrina as my second mum. She was the matriarchal figure in my career who genuinely cared about me. I’d had bosses before, but that was the first time I worked for a real leader.” He got his personal life sorted, and has worked with training providers and employment support organisations since.
Institute of Employability Professionals
But he didn’t forget the frontline of working with those outside the system – people so much in need of support Gallagher had got into the habit of getting up two hours before work to “drag them out of bed” so they’d make their appointment with him.
Some years later he was interviewing for a job at Working Links, a subcontracting company for employment services, and his boss-to-be asked him what one thing he would introduce. “I said I’d love to get professional recognition for those on the frontline of Welfare to Work. I find it baffling people have to have a licence to fix my boiler, but there’s no qualifications for people who can have a massive impact on someone sorting their life out.”
Quite extraordinarily, Gallagher set up today’s Institute of Employability Professionals. Opened in 2011, it now has a level 2 qualification for frontline advisors, through to level 3 and level 4 for management, as well as an apprenticeship standard. “It’s probably the thing I’m proudest of. It was a job that really mattered to me.”
‘Education should be that great leveller’
At NCFE, Gallagher has done a similar thing. He says when he first took the role, the organisation’s purpose had become a bit unclear, as demonstrated by him gathering 13 senior leaders in a room to ask them why they did the job. “I got six different answers, and seven people who didn’t know.”
Gallagher on his 40th birthday
So he launched a consultation across the company, and found a top priority for staff was feeling they were supporting and investing in educators. Gallagher has since convinced the board to pour half a million pounds into a “Centre of Excellence” developed with WorldSkills UK to “share best practice, CPD, masterclasses, even schemes of work and lesson plans”. It’s not a physical centre, but involves supporting staff in 20 colleges this year, with more next year.
Like the Institute of Employability Professionals, Gallagher seems happiest when he’s seeing people gaining confidence and progressing on the ground.
He’s very excited about the world-class expertise that has been poured into T Levels – but deeply critical of a general rhetoric from government in which “the primacy and emphasis is only on technical skills”, knowing from his own experience that a sense of purpose, confidence and joy is the real driver behind life change.
I point out that no one in formal education was able to teach him that.
“But education should be that great leveller. If you don’t have the family, or life experiences, that build those characteristics, education should be the means through which you get that chance.
“That’s where we still go wrong – and we need to get that right.”
We need to rethink the implications of the pandemic on wellbeing, writes Stephen Corbett
The costs of the pandemic for the further education sector are at present largely unknown. FE institutions may already be able to identify the initial costs, such as the amount spent on PPE for health and safety procedures and on IT equipment.
However, cost is not limited to the purchase of new equipment. There is the significant cost of staff wellbeing.
The FE workforce is engaging in activities far beyond anything ever expected before the pandemic.
The pressure placed on staff at all levels is significant and further exacerbated by the limited time to ensure equipment, training and support could be put in place before lockdown hit.
‘Wellbeing in the sector already low’
Prior to the pandemic, we already knew that British teachers and educators reported the highest rates of work-related stress, depression and anxiety of all occupational groups in the country, according to Health and Safety Executive statistics.
So it is vital that senior leaders are given the information and support to better understand the potential impact on their workforce.
Otherwise it’s very likely that workforce retention, organisational performance and student experience will all go into decline.
As noted in the 2019 Ofsted report into wellbeing at work, lower levels of staff wellbeing can lead to a demotivated workforce, higher rates of staff sickness and poor staff retention, all of which impact negatively on the student experience.
It is, therefore, rather unsurprising that Ofsted found ‘outstanding’ providers have the highest levels of staff wellbeing.
‘Efforts to tackle the issue’
Leading voices in FE have sought to produce materials to make a difference.
For example, the Association of Colleges’ mental health and wellbeing charter seeks to create work environments that support mental health and promote wellbeing. The AoC also offers training and support for the sector.
Meanwhile, the Education and Training Foundation commissioned research into staff wellbeing in the sector, and put forward three important recommendations.
It firstly called for the supportive supervision of teachers (particularly those supporting students in difficult circumstances) to help them manage work-life balance and student engagement and to share their experiences.
Secondly, the ETF recommended that senior leaders should review workload content with staff to reduce the number of hours needed to fulfil their job.
And thirdly, employers should offer greater flexibility, such as working at home and uninterrupted administration days.
Unfortunately, the sector had insufficient time to fully consider this report. Three months after its publication the world experienced the global Covid-19 pandemic.
‘A new national survey’
The pandemic does not mean that the fundamental need for research into wellbeing of the FE workforce has gone away. In fact, it is likely that it is needed now more than ever.
In part, this is illustrated by the government’s pledge of the £8 million “wellbeing for education return” announced in summer for September 2020.
This initiative provides funding to local authorities, who are expected to use the funds to develop training for staff in schools and colleges to manage the emotional impact of the pandemic.
But it won’t solve the deep-rooted problems.
The pandemic has wrought such changes in our professional and personal lives that we need to rethink the research.
We need to consider the implications of working from home more frequently, diminished workplace social interactions, home schooling, caring responsibilities and more.
It is for this reason that academics at the University of Portsmouth are launching a new national survey of those working in the FE sector. This survey seeks to replicate previous research into work-life balance and wellbeing – but crucially, this time it will be done in the context of the pandemic.
This new research will seek to better understand the extent to which FE staff can balance work and non-work roles during Covid-19.
Have the boundaries between work and non-work roles became blurred? How is work-life balance managed? What is the impact upon the FE workforce’s wellbeing?
These are the questions we hope to answer. Only then will the true cost of the pandemic be better known.
International investors will only help us build back better if the International Education Strategy shows off our workforce skills, writes Neil-Bentley Gockmann
The launch of the government’s updated “International Education Strategy” before the half-term break was very welcome. But there is a missed opportunity in it.
The strategy was updated to include the new Turing Scheme, through which young people will be supported to take up training opportunities overseas. This is good news as we have seen repeatedly the positive impact that periods of training in other countries can have for young people’s confidence and future success.
So we welcome that our international competitions-based training programme is included in the qualifying criteria for funding.
The updated strategy also rightly seeks to boost export opportunities designed to leverage the quality of the UK offer to help improve the skills systems in other countries.
We are keen to leverage our WorldSkills global network in over 80 countries to support these discussions alongside our partners in the UK Skills Partnership, supported by the Department for International Trade.
But the strategy as it stands should do more to demonstrate the quality of skills being developed across the UK, to encourage international investors to finance new ventures here.
‘Mismatch in skills supply and demand’
This would align with the recent Skills for Jobs white paper, which wants colleges and training providers to work more with employers and so recognises that skills quality and local economic development go hand in hand.
For example, Jaguar Land Rover’s owners in India have recently announced the company will soon produce electric vehicles from its Midlands base. The skills and innovation ecosystem that surrounds their plants, including Warwickshire College Group and Warwick University, made this a good opportunity for more investment.
Yet the opportunity to showcase skills quality of this kind is missing in the strategy.
This is despite management consultancy EY’s annual “Attractiveness Survey”, which assesses a country’s appeal as an inward investment destination, repeatedly highlighting concerns about the UK’s skills pipeline.
In May 2020, EY’s research showed the “skills of the workforce” was deemed more important by international investors than government support and infrastructure.
‘Closer work with local colleges’
To help meet this challenge, we are working with partners in three new ways. EY’s survey showed a clear investor interest in digital potential, so firstly we explored this in our report published in July last year, titled Answering the Call for Digital Skills Excellence.
We identified a geographic mismatch in the demand for, and supply of, high-quality digital skills. We are exploring this further with new evidence due next month and are planning further work to develop the clean tech and advanced manufacturing sectors.
Secondly, we are continuing our work on benchmarking quality against other major global economies. In line with the priority countries set out in the International Education Strategy, we are working on a number of new partnership deals with our WorldSkills peers in major economies, including in Asia Pacific.
These represent a commitment to share global best practice in skills development and enable us to bring innovation back home.
Thirdly, we are working to deliver more impact locally with clear demand from college leaders.
Through our Centre of Excellence, which launched last year in partnership with awarding organisation NCFE, and our new Innovation Network, which we announced in January, we are working with some 160 partner institutions across the country.
The aim is to equip teachers with the knowledge to bring world-class standards and global best practice into the mainstream curriculum. This will support the development of over 40,000 young people and boost economic development.
‘Export the UK’s credentials overseas’
By working on improving skills quality with our partners we are helping to realise the government’s ambitions for recovery.
We must improve the UK’s credentials by exporting our skills know-how and showcasing our high-quality skills base to attract more long-term inward investment.
That’s why we are keen to work with colleagues in government to make sure high-quality skills development is factored into the new International Education Strategy.
It must become a core part of the UK’s strategy for building back better.
Combined authorities and colleges working closely together can help reduce the risk of youth unemployment, write Julie Nugent and Gina Patel
Since the pandemic emerged in the UK last year, the economy has taken an unprecedented hit. National unemployment now stands at five per cent, while one-fifth of people are not economically active or seeking work.
For many people, the government’s furlough scheme has been a crucial life raft during this challenging time. However, what the future holds once this comes to an end is much less certain.
It is likely to mean even higher unemployment rates across many of our local areas. Armed with this knowledge, we have a duty of care to support the communities we serve.
In the West Midlands last month there were 169,835 claimants, either on unemployment benefits or those on universal credit or jobseeker’s allowance – a staggering increase of 79 per cent from the same time last year.
Additionally, almost 7,000 16-to-17-year-olds were not in education, employment or training (NEET) in the West Midlands in 2020 – lower than the national average, but still a lot.
Setting up a ‘Young Combined Authority’
Experience tells us that the most effective solutions to addressing unemployment are those that reflect regional and local contexts, co-designed with employers and local partners.
A regional Jobs and Skills Board has allowed us to work with colleges, providers, local authorities and the Department for Work and Pensions to develop the best responses possible.
Importantly, these responses have been designed with young people, for young people. We know that our careers advice and FE engagement programmes will have much greater reach and uptake if we integrate the views and insights of those they are intended to support.
So last September at the West Midlands we set up a Young Combined Authority (YCA), which is a forum of approximately 30 young people aged between 16 and 25 who are representative of different backgrounds and experiences and can feed into wider policies.
It’s still in its infancy, but we are developing a wider community of 100 young people to drive wider outreach across the region.
It has helped to launch a new online platform, which is a one-stop-shop for young people to find training, employment and volunteering opportunities in their local area.
Youth hubs in colleges
Support for young people has been further bolstered following the Chancellor’s announcement of the creation of Youth Hubs, as part of the “Plan for Jobs”, in July last year.
Physical “youth hubs” have been established across the region to engage more young people and give them access to localised advice and support, including support from a DWP work coach. These youth hubs provide co-located support for young people in youth-friendly spaces such as Sandwell College.
During Covid-19, many of these have moved to providing support online through webinars, as well as supporting young people via text and email.
There are other initiatives that we think can add to a national blueprint of increasing employment and decreasing economic inactivity among younger people.
Strengthening the combined authority’s connections with colleges and local authorities is important, to effectively track and reduce the number of those young people at risk of not being in employment, education or training.
This is achieved by working closely with colleges and their respective local authorities to share data on young people which helps identify those who are at risk of disengaging.
Colleges can then provide enhanced engagement and recruitment activities for specific students to ensure they start and stay on course.
The youth voice is an important piece of the puzzle for the country going forward. It should be amplified when decision-makers are thinking about jobs of the future, the Covid-19 economic recovery and employment support.
Creating the YCA forum, and linking it up with colleges, will help to make sure local employment and training initiatives can be regionally focused and more effective.
Just 10 days after the official return to learning, the AELP Spring Conference 2021 on Thursday, 18 March has all the up-to-date information and guidance which a provider practitioner needs. The only thing we can’t guarantee ITP delegates is a home testing kit for covid!
There is so much to do to ensure a safe return to learning and enable apprentices and other learners to catch up on what they have missed over the past few months. Tens of thousands of learners have now passed the planned end dates for their programmes and further education and skills providers are keen to support them, even if there is no additional government funding to assist this monumental effort.
In addition to the end of the lockdown, a shaft of light has appeared in the form of teacher assessments for functional skills testing, but one glance at the conference agenda will identify some of the challenges ahead. This year may also be fundamentally different from any before in that far more teaching and assessment will take place online as a now permanent feature of the learning landscape.
As usual, AELP’s spring event primarily takes the form of workshops and we have another excellent line-up this year which can offer an assessment of the new Plan for Jobs measures in the Budget and the sector reforms are still going on with the publication of the FE white paper. Above all, our presenters know that delegates will be eager for information which will help them maximise learning opportunities available after the latest lockdown.
Four major themes are covered by our workshops: Regulation, Technology, Teaching & Learning and Quality. Some of the eye-catching workshop topics include:
Using emerging technologies to deliver immersive learning experiences
Increasing transparency in apprenticeship funding: An update
Adult Education Budget and the New Adult L3 offer
How to facilitate complex dialogues with learners
Collaborating to Engage with BAME Communities
Supporting learner skill development with maths and English through engaging virtual delivery.
I will begin the conference, sponsored by Learning Curve Group and NCFE, with a headline policy update before we launch into a policy roundtable discussion with a great set of sector leaders who will offer their insight on how the next few months will unfold:
Rob Colbourne, Performance Through People
Dominic Gill, Intequal
Brenda McLeish, Learning Curve Group
Philip Le Feuvre, NCFE
AELP Spring Conference 2021 takes place online and we will be using the breaks to run service promotions and during lunch, there is a further roundtable discussion with apprentices from BAME communities.
The practical and theoretical elements of work based learning mean that providers are eager to resume face-to-face learning as soon as possible and I can’t wait to go and see some of the excellent work they do. But I would like to think that the AELP Spring Conference will help set delegates up to hit the ground running. We look forward to meeting you online!
A troubled college is set to merge with one of the biggest college groups in the country this summer.
Ruskin College will become part of Activate Learning in June 2021 after getting sign-off from skills minister Gillian Keegan.
An Activate spokesperson said the decision was “unanimous” and “will ensure the unique identity of Ruskin College and its values as a college, as well as its long tradition of working with the Labour movement, are preserved in perpetuity.”
Activate’s group chief executive Sally Dicketts said she was “truly delighted” to be chosen as the merger partner.
Sally Dicketts
She said there was a vision for Ruskin to be a “national centre of excellence for adult learning,” and she was “very excited” about working together.
Originally founded in 1899, the Ofsted grade two Ruskin College, based in Oxford and with “close links” to the city’s university, has historically educated working class people, especially those in the trade union movement.
Its curriculum currently focuses on adult learners and includes Access to HE diplomas, English for speakers of other languages courses, and trade union courses accredited by the TUC.
Ruskin College chair Doug Nicholls said the merger with Activate “with its breadth of resources and scale of delivery” would help “to safeguard the future of the college for the 21st century”.
He said the college has “recognised operating as an independent college is increasingly challenging”.
College faced clawback and ‘sharp’ decline in enrolments
The Education and Skills Funding Agency first issued Ruskin College with a financial health notice to improve in 2014, which was reissued in November 2020.
This was due to a “sharp” decline in higher education enrolments, combined with “substantial overclaiming” of adult education and bursary funding thanks to it misapplying funding rules and “poor” record-keeping.
The commissioner found range of board vacancies and a lack of local governors, as well as “barriers to entry” may also have contributed to the situation.
As of July 2020, the report reads, enrolments were just over 50 per cent less than in 2018/19.
The college was also highly geared “relative to turnover,” and had “limited” room to reduce this quickly without selling off property.
At the time, the college was facing having the adult education and bursary funding overclaims for 2018/19 clawed back by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
Funding for previous years was also in scope for recovery, which had “potential implications for the college as a going concern”.
However, the agency agreed to defer any decisions on that until a sustainability review by an independent practitioner had been completed.
The college has yet to publish either its 2018/19 or 2019/20 financial statements.
The commissioner recommended the college consider undertaking a structure and prospects appraisal led by him, which has now led to merger.
The future of another university technical college (UTC) hangs in the balance despite receiving emergency funding.
East London UTC was slapped with its second financial notice to improve last month, after getting a £375,000 government bailout last year when it also chalked up a £1.8 million deficit.
Its latest accounts for 2019/20 show the Department for Education warned governors last month it was “minded not to approve” the 14-to-19 institution’s requests to expand and take on students from age 11 in order to improve its sustainability.
“Although negotiations are continuing, the outcome of these is inherently uncertain,” say the accounts, adding that without extra cash the UTC won’t be able to “meet its liabilities”.
The college is rated grade three by Ofsted and has 111 students on roll this year.
Questions raised over government support
The situation raises the question as to whether the DfE would rather allow struggling UTCs without good Ofsted results go to the wall rather than change their business model.
Principal Kim Donovan told FE Week there were currently no plans for the East London UTC to close but declined to comment on the ongoing uncertainty over its future.
Eleven UTCs have closed since the first technical institutions were created by former education secretary Lord Baker in 2010.
The UTC does not have adequate resources to meet its liabilities […] without further financial support from the ESFA
East London UTC, which was first issued a financial notice in January last year before a second was published this month, hoped the DfE would agree to expand their starting age after it exited special measures in June 2019, say its accounts.
But “after making enquiries on the level of support from DfE and ESFA”, governors concluded it “does not have adequate resources to meet its liabilities […] without further financial support from the ESFA or elsewhere”.
Buckinghamshire UTC, whose financial notice was issued in 2016 and lifted the following year, also faces an uncertain future.
Its accounts reveal the Ofsted grade three institution recorded a £336,000 deficit last year, adding “the long-term financial sustainability of Bucks UTC depends ultimately” on increasing its 135 students through expanding the starting age to 11 or joining a multi-academy trust.
A proposal to join the Merchant Taylors Oxfordshire Academy Trust has been resubmitted after the DfE rejected the first application. The UTC did not respond to a request for comment.
David Robinson
David Robinson, director of post-16 and skills at the Education Policy Institute, has said “one-on-one bespoke funding responses are not enough” to save the UTC model.
“In terms of the transition at 14, I don’t think any amount of Baker Clause reinforcement is really going to save that,” he added, referring to the legal duty on schools to make pupils aware of vocational study routes.
UTCs “either need to start from age 11, or at age 16”.
Better to transfer UTCs to colleges
Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told FE Week that “it might be better to transfer a UTC to a neighbouring college” rather than a multi-academy trust in some cases but this was currently “more difficult than it should be”.
Meanwhile Simon Connell, chief executive of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust charity, which supports UTCs, said the “raised profile of employer-led technical education through the FE white paper” means “many high-quality MATs wish to have a UTC”.
Twenty-three UTCs are in academy trusts, while four now start from age 11.
A DfE spokesperson said “strong UTCs” play an important role in skills education and it “continues to work with UTCs to address any individual challenges”.
