England’s first space apprenticeship set for lift-off

Science minister Amanda Solloway explains why England’s first space engineering apprenticeship is set for launch

“Without you Tom, we wouldn’t have gotten to the Moon.”

Those were the immortal words of gratitude expressed by then President, Richard Nixon, in 1961 to British rocket engineer Tom Bacon at a White House reception to mark the successful completion of mankind’s most audacious mission; the Apollo 11 moon landing.

But who was Tom? Well, Francis Bacon, or ‘Tom’ to his friends, was a former apprentice at a Tyneside factory who spent 15 years making a living at CA Parsons, a producer of steam turbines in Newcastle.

Tom emerged from his apprenticeship as a pioneer, imbued with an abundance of ingenuity and a never-say-die attitude that would lead him to make a critical breakthrough in developing the hyper-efficient fuel cells – eventually dubbed ‘Bacon cells’ – needed to help translate the moon landing from an intellectual idea into a practical reality.

Today, in 2020, we are talking a good game about making the UK a global player in space, but if we don’t want our ambition to become tired, off-the-shelf Government rhetoric, we need a new generation of Tom’s.

Fortunately for us, space is one of our most dynamic and fastest growing industries – and I use that word deliberately. Space has established itself as a industry in its own right in the last decade, growing exponentially by 60% since 2010 and creating thousands of good jobs in all corners of the country – satellite engineers in Glasgow, spaceport architects in Cornwall and Earth Observation data specialists in Nottingham.

Across the world a commercial space age is just getting started, and its being shaped by many of the companies that are based on UK soil. These are businesses in need of an army of space talent and in the next decade, they aim to create 30,000 new jobs. That means new engineers, new technicians and new designers.

We know that out of this world jobs like these are not always easy to come by and that to fill high-skilled roles, you need highly skilled applicants. Apprenticeships that can give our young people a leg up shouldn’t be limited to traditional industries, which is why today we are proudly announcing our first ever space apprenticeships scheme.

Currently, apprentices training in space roles gain qualifications as general apprentices and craft apprentices, but that will all change in January next year when the first cohort of budding young space engineering apprentices begin their courses.

Since I became Science Minister last year, the world has changed a fair bit, but during a year in which the normal rhythms of our lives have been enveloped by this pandemic, I have seen first-hand the life-altering power that a well-structured apprenticeship can have – it can hand over the keys to a career, like Tom’s, that many kids growing up may never have thought possible.

This apprenticeship course has been purpose-made in partnership with the University of Leicester and Airbus to offer a longer, higher quality learning experience that will help our young people gain the skills they need to build a career in this sector.

These are going to be jobs that will not only be beneficial for our next generation of space cadets, they will be beneficial for the whole country – building our status as a space nation, attracting investment and encouraging new companies to base themselves here.

I was eight years old when Tom helped make the Moon landing possible. It is one of the defining memories of my childhood – one that I shared with family and one that inspired me to believe anything is possible.

As we look to the future, when mankind plans future trips to the Moon and Mars, our space apprenticeships will tell our next generation that they can make anything possible.

Devolve greater skills funding powers for Covid-19 recovery, government urged

The government has been urged to devolve more skills funding to mayoral combined authorities to allow them to develop “grassroot” recovery strategies from Covid-19.

A new report, Act Now, has today been published by education giant City & Guilds that warns a “top down” approach to recovery puts the UK economy “at risk” as much of the announced government skills support “is simply happening too late”.

Based on a series of roundtables with mayors and local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) that took place over the summer, the report suggests that increased skills devolution is the “only way to coherently address the differing priorities and challenges being faced” the country’s regions.

The Department for Education has so far devolved the adult education budget to eight regions in England since 2019, but the City & Guilds report urges ministers to go further.

“Government should devolve more skills funding to a regional level and give regions more autonomy to implement central skills policy in a way that works for them,” it says.

“For example the Kickstart scheme could be implemented by MCAs and LEPs to better meet immediate, local needs.”

The report also calls for a “more effective reallocation of government funding to ensure more adults have access to Adult Training Allowance Loans to meet employer and labour market demand”.

A series of other solutions have also been put forward by City & Guilds, including the creation of employment and training hubs in areas of high unemployment.

The hubs would act as a “one-stop skills and jobs matching service” for adults in employment who “might need to or want to upskill or retrain and those seeking employment”.

They would provide “careers advice and guidance, direct people straight into employment in other sectors where possible, direct people into college or university if needed but would also provide short, sharp training interventions to get people back into work”.

The report also urges government to take learning “to the people”. Adult training, for example, should be taken “out of the traditional college / university environment” to make it “more appealing” to older students.

City & Guilds proposes rejuvenating underutilised educational and council owned buildings as well as shop units left empty by the pandemic.

Former skills minister Anne Milton chaired the roundtables and in her foreword of the report she notes how the Office for Budget Responsibility has forecast 3.4 million people out of work this year, an increase of 260 per cent on the start of the year.

“We need to act now to deliver the rapid interventions needed to bring the country back from recession and grow a workforce that is fit for the future with the skills needed to drive up levels of innovation and productivity,” she says.

Kirstie Donnelly, chief executive of City & Guilds Group, said: “We spent the summer talking to local governments and employers across the UK to understand what they need to help the unemployed back into work after the hammer blow of Covid-19. The message that came back loud and clear was we can’t apply a ‘one size fits all’ approach if we want to successfully support people back into jobs.

“The challenges and solutions were often different in each area and Mayoral teams felt that they were not always enabled to act quickly and effectively enough with local solutions.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are committed to open dialogue with MCAs, the Greater London Authority and other sector stakeholders on how best skills provision and reforms can be shaped to fit the needs of local areas.”

Lockdown learners: Could the pandemic lead to a shift in adult participation in learning?

The coronavirus pandemic may have increased the value adults place on learning, for work and their wider lives, writes Emily Jones

This week is Lifelong Learning Week, a chance to celebrate the difference that learning can make to people’s lives. And there may have never been a more important time for adults to engage in learning.

Faced with unprecedented economic and technological change, many adults will need to upskill or retrain to find new work; others will need to develop their skills and adapt to new ways of working within existing roles. But learning is about much more than just work. Evidence on the wider benefits of learning is clear: adult learning has an important role to play in supporting health and wellbeing, in addressing inequalities and ‘levelling up’, and in connecting people and tackling social isolation.

Every year, Learning and Work Institute runs the Adult Participation in Learning Survey, providing a unique and rich evidence base on patterns and trends in adult learning across the UK. The survey adopts a broad definition of learning, that’s not limited to courses, but includes learning at home or at work. 5,000 adults – who are representative of the population as a whole – are asked whether they are currently learning or have done so in the last three years.

This year, the pandemic has had a huge impact on our lives. Following the government’s lockdown in March, many millions of people worked from home or were furloughed, and parents home-schooled their children. Adult learning providers suspended in-person teaching, and where possible, learning was delivered online instead. We therefore wanted to use the 2020 survey to understand whether people used this time at home for learning, and explore the motivations for and barriers to learning.

Many adults (43 per cent) embraced this opportunity to learn through lockdown. This probably reflects reduced barriers to learning associated with time pressures and the convenience of online learning. But the pandemic may have also increased the value adults place on learning, for work and their wider lives. Could this be an indication that lockdown learning may lead to longer-term shifts?

The survey does however highlight stark inequalities in who engaged with learning during lockdown. Younger adults, full-time workers, those in higher socio-economic grades and those who stayed on in initial education until an older age were all more likely to be learning. Among full time employees, those who continued to work during lockdown were more likely to learn than those who were furloughed.

These deep inequalities in participation in learning are of serious cause for concern given the unequal impact of the pandemic on the labour market. We know that workers with fewer qualifications and those in lower skilled or lower paid roles were more likely to have been furloughed or to have lost their jobs. Despite facing a greater need to upskill and retrain to find work in the post-covid economy, these workers are least likely to be accessing learning opportunities.

The government has recently announced a ‘lifelong learning guarantee’ to support people to retrain and upskill, including an entitlement for adults to their first level 3 qualification. While the survey suggests that many adults are ready to engage in learning, it also emphasises the need to ensure these opportunities are targeted at those who are most likely to need to retrain and upskill – but who currently are least likely to take part. Doing so will be vital if we are to ensure that nobody is left behind in the post-covid economy.

We also know that learning is addictive; once adults start learning, they are more likely to continue. Indeed two in three of those who took part in online learning said they were very likely to continue doing so in the future. As we return to ‘normal’, we need to make sure that adults who had a go at the learning during lockdown are supported to continue, helping them to secure rewarding and fulfilling work, and maintain their health and wellbeing.

Revealed: The 68 apprenticeship standards to be overseen by Ofqual from November

The 68 apprenticeship standards which will have the quality assurance of end-point assessments transferred from the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education to Ofqual in November have been revealed.

The standards (see the full list below) all currently use the institute (IfATE) for external quality assurance (EQA), but these duties will be transferred over to the exams watchdog on Thursday 12 November.

This is the first stage in the mass transfer of EQA which was announced earlier this year, with Ofqual taking over EQA duties for all non-degree apprenticeships and the Office for Students (OfS) taking over for integrated degree apprenticeships.

FE Week was the first to report, in September, this process would begin with around 70 standards in November, with a further 54 from January 2021 and the remaining standards by next summer.

IfATE’s deputy director for apprenticeship quality and assessment Nikki Christie called this “the first key stage in transitioning to what will be a stronger and simpler system for EQA”.

Up until this change, Ofqual has split EQA duties with the IfATE and around 20 other employer bodies.

The diversity of bodies has meant end-point assessment organisations have paid wildly varying amounts for EQA, up to £179 per apprentice in some cases.

IfATE, which runs EQA through contractor Open Awards, itself charges a £40 fee per apprentice for EQA, however this will come to an end once Ofqual takes over.

The institute will retain oversight of the framework for EQA which Ofqual and the OfS will operate in.

A new directory of professional and employer-led organisations for Ofqual and the OfS to draw on will be set up IfATE, which the apprenticeship quango says “will keep employers at the heart of protecting quality in apprenticeships”.

The full list of standards having EQA transferred to Ofqual from November:

Actuarial technician
Advanced credit controller / debt collection specialist
Advanced dairy technologist
Advertising and media executive
Ambulance support worker (emergency, urgent and non-urgent)
Animal care and welfare assistant
Animal technologist
Automotive glazing technician
Brewer
Commercial catering equipment technician
Commercial procurement and supply (formerly Public sector commercial professional)
Community safety advisor
Control / technical support engineer (degree)
Credit controller / collector
Crop technician
Cultural learning and participation officer
Curtain wall installer
Custody and detention officer
Dental practice manager
DevOps engineer
Drinks dispense technician
Electrical / electronic technical support engineer (degree)
Electrical, electronic product service and installation engineer
Emergency service contact handling
Engineering manufacturing technician
Facilities management supervisor
Facilities manager
Facilities services operative
Farrier
Financial adviser
Financial services administrator
Financial services professional
Food and drink maintenance engineer
Food technologist
Highway electrical maintenance and installation operative
Highways electrician / service operative
Housing / property management
Housing / property management assistant
Investment operations administrator
Junior estate agent
Junior journalist
Junior management consultant
Mammography associate
Manufacturing engineer (degree)
Metal recycling general operative
Metrology technician
Mortgage adviser
Motor finance specialist
Motorcycle technician (repair and maintenance)
Optical assistant
Paramedic (degree)
Paraplanner
Passenger transport onboard and station team member
Passenger transport operations manager
Probation services practitioner
Process leader
Product design and development engineer (degree)
Propulsion technician
Publishing assistant
Senior metrology technician
Spectacle maker
Stockperson (beef, pigs, sheep, dairy)
Systems engineer (degree)
Tramway construction operative
Veterinary nurse
Waste resource operative
Watchmaker
Workplace pensions (administrator or consultant)

New Careers and Enterprise Company CEO named

The founder and headteacher of a “nationally recognised” school in east London is the new chief executive of the Careers and Enterprise Company.

School 21 leader Oli de Botton (pictured) will officially take over at the head of the government-funded quango next year, replacing Claudia Harris, who left in July.

The company said School 21 had “pioneered new ways of working with employers”, including through extended work projects for year 10s and 12s, and “puts enterprise and work readiness at the heart of its curriculum”.

de Botton, an alumnus of education charity Teach First and former government education adviser, said he had “seen first-hand” the impact of the CEC’s work, “through the powerful relationships it develops between schools, colleges, employers and local agencies, and the real difference it makes to the lives of young people”.

The CEC was set up by education secretary Nicky Morgan in 2014 to improve careers education across England.

It now presides over an extensive network of paid enterprise co-ordinators, trained professionals who work with schools and colleges to develop career plans and make connections with businesses, and enterprise advisers, volunteers from the business world who work with individual schools and colleges.

The company is also responsible for overseeing the government’s network of careers hubs, groups of between 20 and 40 secondary schools and colleges who work together to help each other meet the so-called Gatsby benchmarks of good careers education.

Claudia Harris, a former adviser to Tony Blair who had run the company since its inception, stood down in July to become chief executive of Makers, a firm that supports mid-career switchers to train as software engineers.

John Yarham, the company’s acting boss, will continue to run the organisation until de Botton starts next year.

CEC chair Christine Hodgson said the company was “fortunate to have found a leader and innovator who is anchored in our mission to inspire and prepare young people for the rapidly changing world of work”.

Apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan said the Department for Education “very much looks forward to continuing our partnership with The Careers & Enterprise Company, under Oli’s leadership, and in its important role making sure the next generation fulfil their potential and go on to secure great careers”.

The announcement comes after the government confirmed last year that it would continue to support the company with grant funding, after ministers admitted dropped their ambition for the quango to become self-sustaining.

Figures obtained by FE Week’s sister paper FE Week last year revealed the organisation has now received over £95 million from the public purse.

Independent Commission on the College of the Future releases final UK-wide report

The government should introduce a duty on colleges to deliver an education offer aligned to employer needs, a commission of leading FE figures have said.

But the report does not explain how this duty would be enforced, and does not go as far as a report by think tank EDSK from September, which said colleges ought to be stripped of its decision-making powers over provision, which EDSK say should be handed to new, local FE directors, who would arrange college provision “in line with local social and economic needs”.

The final UK-wide report from the Independent Commission on the College of the Future, titled ‘The College of the Future’, instead says the UK’s governments should introduce national strategies, which would provide a “flexible” framework for colleges to “support the development of the whole workforce, as well as initial education opportunities for everyone”.

College strategies must identify local and regional priorities and be developed with employers and other stakeholders, especially other providers, the report continues.

Aligned to factors such as local industrial structure and employment needs, these strategies will deliver “a coordinated approach to the learning and training offer”. 

Employer hubs, focused on a specific sector or set of skills, should also be established at colleges, with providers playing an expanded role in business support. 

The call for colleges’ provision to be more closely aligned to employers’ needs has fast become one of the major discussion points in the FE sector. 

It is expected the government’s upcoming FE white paper will include measures to give employers a greater say over the provision run by their local college. 

The Department for Education has already launched a Skills and Productivity Board, which they say will provide expert advice on how to make sure courses and qualifications are aligned to skills employers need. 

Universities, schools, independent training providers and adult community learning providers should also be bound by government to collaborate with colleges, the report adds. 

It also calls for three-year block grant funding for colleges, and a ‘Skills Guarantee’ offering free training for employees, including those at level 4. 

The commission has been assembled by the Four Nations College Alliance, a group of college leaders, representative bodies and officials from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The commission was launched in March 2019 with members drawn from across the UK, with a mission to answer: ‘what do we want and need from colleges from 2030 onwards, and how do we get there?’ 

Chaired by former University of Aberdeen principal Sir Ian Diamond, the commission includes Nelson and Colne College principal Amanda Melton; former National Union of Students president Shakira Martin; and education academic Professor Ewart Keep. 

The commission has been heavily supported by the Association of Colleges, one of its supporting organisations, which has provided a base for its secretarial staff and the use of infrastructure, including IT servers.

Melton said “urgent” action is needed to take forward the commission’s recommendations, with the reforms to the system colleges operate in “top of the agenda”. 

“The days of forcing colleges to compete are numbered,” she said, “and people across the English sector recognise what we need now is a coherent, connected education and skills system to deliver for our communities”.  

The much-anticipated FE white paper, due to be published by the government later this year, “represents a phenomenal opportunity to take forward these reforms,” Melton added. 

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said the report was “a positive vision which challenges governments, employers and colleges themselves to build a new system which works better for us all”. 

“Colleges do a great job now, but this report shows that with the right policy, funding and regulation they can deliver so much more.” 

The commission also wants to more diversity in college leadership, saying colleges must be led by those “who reflect the communities within which they are based and the students they serve”. 

Last year, FE Week found just seven per cent of college principals were from black, Asian, or minority ethnic backgrounds. 

“There is a particular challenge too,” the report reads, “in the lack of data collected on representation across executive and non-executive leadership”. 

“This must be addressed as a point of real urgency.” 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan has said she is “committed” to a new, mandatory annual data collection in FE, covering workforce characteristics including ethnicity. 

The three-year block grant funding, the commission says, would “ensure colleges can take a long-term strategic focus and reinforce strategic investment”, and should be based on “high-level strategic” outcome agreements. 

The commission also proposes a statutory entitlement for adults to study up to level 3. Prime minister Boris Johnson announced last month the government would fund adults aged over 23 to complete a first, full level 3 qualification, as part of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee. 

Education secretary Gavin Williamson welcomed the report, saying the white paper will “ensure our colleges are at the heart of every community so we can unlock even more potential and level up skills and opportunities across the county”. 

Reports for each of the four nations, covering specific recommendations relevant to their individual circumstances, will be published later this year.

The commissioners will then decide if there are any subsequent steps they can take, but it is unclear if the commission will come to an end this year.

Mark Dawe, CEO, The Skills Network

The new head of the Skills Network reveals the family and personal influences behind his career to JL Dutaut

Mark Dawe is a hard man to pin down. Just 18 months ago, the then boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) was opening the FE Week apprenticeships conference with critical comments about subcontracting. “Its use as an income source for the lead provider with little benefit to the employer or learner certainly shouldn’t be accepted,” he then said.

Since this August though, Dawe finds himself at the head a large and well-established subcontractor. The Skills Network works, he tells me, with over 300 colleges, some 40 of them on subcontracting terms. The rest are buying in blended learning solutions, among other services.

But there is no dissonance in that for Dawe. He still holds his long-standing policy positions, advocating for a national cap of 20 per cent on management fees and clear sector guidelines. “I’m a great believer that if what’s expected is clearly defined – the quality mechanisms that should be in place, the monitoring, as much for the prime [the college] as the subcontractor – you can get really, really good delivery for those learners.”

But Dawe stops short of calling for regulation beyond the management fee cap. “When we’ve had issues like Brooklands College, that absolutely shouldn’t have happened, but under any rules, it should never have got to that place.” 

If there was a more flexible approach to the funding, you wouldn’t need subcontracting

Brooklands was placed in “supervised college status” by the ESFA and underwent an FE commissioner review a year ago after it was revealed by FE Week that it had handed over £20 million to shadowy subcontractors who had failed to deliver the goods. For Dawe though, it seems, supply and demand should bring about the improvements needed to prevent another Brooklands-type scandal.

“I worked with The Skills Network when I was at AELP, helping put together what good practice looks like in subcontracting.” He goes on to list a number of ways the organisation holds itself accountable to the colleges it works with. It’s clear from his answer that he feels that if more subcontractors held themselves to higher standards, an element of self-regulation would make providers such as SCL Security Ltd, the company that received the £20 million from Brooklands, unmarketable to colleges.

But that’s the system as it is, and Dawe is more inclined to push for a substantial rethink of that system – one that sees colleges hold the purse strings and relies on their procurement acuity to deliver for students. Picking up on Boris Johnson’s announcement last month of a lifetime skills guarantee, extending to all adults the free first level three qualification that was previously restricted to under-23s, Dawe says: “If there was a more flexible approach to the funding, you wouldn’t need subcontracting. Something like 80 to 90 per cent of the national AEB [adult education budget] is grant-funded. Boris’s announcement is the beginning of skills accounts, as far as I can see. That puts the purchasing power in the individual’s hands, and then lets them choose which provider gives them what’s best.”

Two months into his new role, Dawe is already looking past the status quo – not just to a realignment of its priorities but of the sector as a whole. No doubt, his far-sightedness about the sector’s direction of travel was an attractive proposition for The Skills Network. So must his track record have been. Yet his appointment surely involved a calculated risk too; the very traits that make him a leader with vision also make him something of a non-conformist.

Doing these VAT returns. That was the moment I thought ‘This is it. This is me.’

Raised in Bromley in Kent and educated at the private Trinity School in Croydon, Dawe had a privileged upbringing. From Trinity, he hopped to Cambridge for a degree in economics and then to KPMG. Already, the choice of degree and profession was something of an act of rebellion. Dawe’s grandfather was a headteacher. His father was a senior civil servant with the DfE and Harold Wilson’s private secretary at Number 10. His uncle was a lecturer in FE. And if education hadn’t percolated, his mother was a nurse who today still volunteers in hospices. The family was ostensibly well embedded in the public sector, an ethos that can’t have failed to permeate the home environment.

But another influence came to bear on Dawe’s teenage years. Washing cars and gardening for pocket money, one day a neighbour and family friend invited him in to help him with his tax return instead. “And so I went indoors, was given a cup of tea and a Kit Kat, with Big Daddy wrestling on the telly, with a calculator doing these VAT returns for him. That was the moment I thought ‘This is it. This is me’.”

Warmth, tea and a pay rise helped, but Dawe still says he was “destined to be an accountant”. He remembers with evident excitement when his new employer got one of the first spreadsheet programmes to run on a personal computer – SuperCalc. “I learned how to use it and taught him, but then I used to do all his projections for all his clients when I was aged 14 and even then earning £5 an hour!”

But the family influence ran deeper than perhaps the rebellious young Dawe had realised, and it wasn’t long after joining KPMG that he changed tack. “I had a look up above me and it was ten years of tedious work to become a partner and I thought ‘Time to get out’.” It was 1993. Colleges were being incorporated and looking for accountants. Dawe made the jump. “I cut my teeth down at Canterbury College for seven years working for Sue Pember. We did all sorts of exciting stuff: building new colleges and prison education and a whole range of things like that.” Ironically, it wasn’t until he received a funding letter for Canterbury with his dad’s signature at the bottom that he realised the import of the work he did. “I genuinely had no idea. That was the first time I realised the connection between the job I just got and what my dad was doing.”

When I joined, AELP was known but not listened to as much as it should be

From Canterbury, Dawe moved on to his first dalliance with e-learning as group education director for eGS, a company founded by Labour MP Liam Byrne. Three years later, he found himself working with Pember again, this time at the DfES on the adult basic skills and further education strategies. Another three years later, he turned his back on national strategy to get stuck into local implementation as the principal and chief executive of Oaklands College in Hertfordshire. 

“To be fair to the governors, they took a risk with me,” he says. “I think I was against four other existing principals.” That risk paid off. Within five years, Oaklands had gone from ‘unsatisfactory’ to “solid ‘good'”. That mission accomplished, Dawe sat down with the governors to talk about his vision for the next phase. “I wanted to bring Hertfordshire together as one college. We had very open discussions, but they weren’t really up for it.”

A pattern emerges, and Dawe is frank about his “five-year cycle”. He joins with a vision, delivers the goods, stays long enough to be held accountable and then: “I have a view on how I could stay on in a role,” he says, “and if not, I agree to move on.”

Five years at Oaklands were followed by five years as chief executive of OCR at the time Ofqual was being created and “sharpening its teeth and claws”. Of the current exam travails, he says: “You can never do an excellent job in the exam board, because everyone just expects you to perform well. But anything that goes wrong is a massive negative because it affects people’s lives.”

After OCR, a short stint working with the FE commissioner’s office under Sir David Collins led him to the AELP job. “When I joined, membership was down about 500. AELP was known but not listened to as much as it should be. It was just a year before the levy was being introduced and the board was very keen to have someone to drive the AELP agenda.” He describes a period when “the employer was king and the provider was pushed to one side” and “public battles because we weren’t getting anywhere in private conversations”. 

I had people calling me who had refused to take my calls for the previous four years

In August, he left an organisation with a renewed membership and a reinvigorated voice in the sector. But for all the battles over that period, the real breakthrough, he says, came with Covid. “It was like a 180-degree shift almost overnight. I had people calling me who had refused to take my calls for the previous four years.”

The calls came because AELP had grown into its position and was ready to receive them, testament to another transformative half-decade. 

It’s a truism to say that nobody knows what the sector will look like post-Covid and post-Brexit. And it’s probably not even all that true. Taking Dawe’s far-sightedness and his move to The Skills Network into account, it’s clear that blended learning and independent provision are likely to be key battlegrounds.

And Dawe is ready for those fights. You won’t pin him to a clear career trajectory, but you can certainly pin him to that.

Colleges applying for bailouts will NOT be automatically placed in formal intervention, DfE says

Colleges which apply for government bailouts will not automatically fall into formal intervention from now on, the Department for Education has said. 

The department’s ‘College oversight’ policy was today amended to say they reserve the right, where a college makes a request for emergency funding to continue running, to place the college into formal intervention or not. 

A DfE spokesperson confirmed the amendment means colleges will not “automatically” be placed into formal intervention if applying for exceptional funding. 

They said the department is providing “maximum support” to colleges during the Covid-19 pandemic, and “we will continue to intervene where colleges are at financial risk”. 

However, they added, “we want to make sure our action fits the college circumstances,” based on “thorough” assessment. 

Colleges which are placed in such measures are usually published online, with the subsequent assessment by the commissioner explaining if it was because they had applied for emergency funding. 

However, if colleges do not automatically enter intervention following an application for emergency funding, it could lead to the public being left in the dark as to which colleges requested bailouts. 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan told the House of Commons last month five colleges had needed emergency funding due to the Covid pandemic – the department has refused to reveal the names of the providers. 

This comes after the number of colleges entering formal intervention rose by two-thirds in 2018-19, according to FE Commissioner Richard Atkins’ annual report from February. 

An application for emergency funding was what brought formal intervention down on Hadlow and West Kent and Ashford colleges, the first two FE providers to enter the insolvency regime. 

And earlier this year, Greater Brighton Metropolitan College was put in formal intervention after it applied for emergency funding. 

The amended oversight policy does warn that if a college is placed into formal intervention, it will trigger a notice to improve from the government.

Here’s what we learnt from running digital bootcamps

Bootcamps are a step in the right direction – but lessons need to be learned from pilots like ours, writes Clare Hatton

The prime minister’s recent funding announcement for digital skills “bootcamps”, which will deliver short IT courses to boost employability, forms part of the government’s commitment to improve the UK’s digital capabilities and to “build back better” from coronavirus.

These bootcamps are being built on pilot programmes run in my combined authority, which represents 12 local authorities and three local enterprise partnerships, as well as in Greater Manchester and other established providers.

But there are lessons that should be learned from our “Beat the Bots” programme in the West Midlands Combined Authority, especially around responding to regional demands.

Introduced in 2019, Beat the Bots was designed for two groups: unemployed people in need of skills and training, and employed people in low-wage markets and at risk of automation.

We have worked with 20 providers, including colleges, training providers and new organisations such as School of Code and refugee help organisation ACH.

Through full- and part-time bootcamps we covered everything from coding, software development, data engineering, web design and infrastructure with learners.

The first bootcamps have engaged 800 residents, of whom about half were unemployed when they came to us. The majority are still in training, with the aim of getting 70 per cent into jobs upon completion.

So far we have supported 100 of the 107 previously unemployed people who finished the bootcamps into meaningful employment and directed more women and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds into the sector.

We have supported 100 out of 107 previously unemployed people into meaningful work

We are now considering how to use the additional £1.5 million funding to expand our offer and hopefully share what we have learnt.

For those authorities introducing bootcamps, here are some words of wisdom:

1. Work with diverse organisations to attract different groups of people. This will enable you to engage more people with special educational needs, BAME communities, refugees, older people and women.

2. Develop an employer-based approach. Employer-led projects and masterclasses allowed us to look beyond qualifications to develop the training to deliver the skills employers actually need. The result is a programme that employers can reliably recruit from.

3. Focus on your region. Co-designed programmes aren’t feasible if you use a national one-size-fits-all approach. Working with local employers provides a clearer route to employment and reflects regional nuances.

4. Warm the market. Leverage existing relationships by involving both training providers and employers in conversations about the programme’s development to create a more cohesive offering. But also take care to avoid conflicts of interest, given the competitive procurement landscape.

5. Attract expertise. Trainers must be experts in their field and have up-to-date market experience. The additional money to hire these trainers may pose a challenge for some colleges.

More broadly, we would also recommend undertaking reviews of contracting models used. Because we were in a pilot phase, we were able to experiment with smaller grants rather than contract for service and sub-contracting models, in order to minimise and share delivery risk.

But the recently announced funding is limited to using a more standard contracting model, so it would be worthwhile considering joint ventures to provide a degree of flexibility for providers.

At the WMCA, meanwhile, we need to roll the bootcamp into our education budget, to ensure these bootcamps don’t end with the pilot.

Finally, these bootcamps can only be successful through a regional and skills-based approach – and that’s why we are calling for the devolution of the National Skills Fund.

Rather than funding being distributed nationally through the DfE, we believe it needs to go directly to combined authorities in the same way as the adult education budget.

The digital bootcamps are a step in the right direction, but the bootcamps must be managed and funded at a regional level. Then they can really help create a talent pipeline for the 21st century.