The Department for Education could be forced to hand back up to £80 million to the Treasury after closing the national retraining scheme pilot, FE Week has learned.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan last week announced that the retraining scheme would be “integrated” into the new £2.5 billion national skills fund to “reduce complexity” in the skills system.

This publication later revealed how the centrepiece of the national retraining scheme – Get Help to Retrain – would be scrapped as part of the move after a number of mayors, including London’s, declined the opportunity to take part.

FE Week has now discovered that any leftover cash from the £100 million earmarked for the retraining scheme will not be added to the skills fund.

Instead, the DfE has confirmed it will go back to HM Treasury.

The DfE refused to say how much of the £100 million remained unspent but the 2018 Budget suggests around £80 million was due to be spent in the next financial year.

The document, published by the Treasury, stated that the retraining scheme’s funding would be spent over a number of years: £10 million in 2019/20, £25 million in 2020/21 and £80 million in 2021/22.

The news comes just weeks after prime minister Boris Johnson announced major plans for a Lifetime Skills Guarantee to help adults retrain.

Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister, said the government continually claims to be wanting a skills-led recovery, but its actions and performance “always achieve the opposite”.

“Like the £300 million of unspent apprenticeship levy money that they sent back to the Treasury, here is another failing government scheme retreating back into its shell whilst the numbers requiring support from the government continue to soar,” he added.

“It’s hardly surprising that so few in the sector have any confidence in their ability to deliver on their rhetoric.”

Perkins quizzed Keegan on the decision to bin the Get Help to Retrain service during a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday.

She said the “learnings” from the service’s pilot would be brought into the national skills fund but then claimed that it “will be called something else but the learnings will not be lost”.

This is despite the DfE adding a note to the Get Help to Retrain website on October 15 that reads: “This service will no longer be available from November 11, 2020. You can continue to access services for support with skills and training through the National Careers Service.”

Perkins told FE Week he was “surprised” to hear Keegan suggest that the service was simply changing its name, adding that she “needs to explain whether she deliberately misled the house to cover up the department’s failure, or whether she didn’t realise what was happening to the centrepiece programme under the national retraining scheme”.

Not much is known about how the national retraining scheme funding was spent, aside from research and the Get Help to Retrain service. Tender documents suggest the firm chosen to pilot the Get Help to Retrain website held a nine-month contract for £1.8 million, which started in May 2019.

Further tender documents seen by this publication show that plans were afoot to roll out the Get Help to Retrain nationally as well as to develop a “find and apply for a job” service at a cost of between £5 million and £6 million. The tender received 28 applications before it was “cancelled” in April.

And according to the national retraining scheme timeline there would be further tenders for the remaining products, which never materialised, at a total cost of £20 million over the next 24 months.

The DfE said it is considering how it can provide further details of the NRS spend in “due course”.

A spokesperson added that it is “normal procedure” for any department-level underspends to be returned to Treasury.

The national skills fund will dish out £600 million a year from 2021/22. The DfE is expected to launch a consultation on how the fund will be spent in the coming months.

The government has moved a step closer to removing funding for applied general qualifications, such as BTECs, that compete with T Levels and A-levels.

The Department for Education will today launch the second stage of its consultation on the future of vocational and technical qualifications at level 3 and below, which will run for 12 weeks.

The DfE claims there is currently a “confusing landscape” of over 12,000 courses on offer to young people at level 3 and below, with multiple qualifications in the same subject areas available – many of which are “poor quality and offer little value to students or employers”.

Today’s consultation will set out “detailed measures” that the education secretary Gavin Williamson will take to tackle this, including removing funding for the “majority” of qualifications that “overlap” with A-levels and T Levels by autumn 2023.

It will also include plans to open T Levels up to adults from 2023, as reported by FE Week earlier this month.

Williamson said the measures will “ensure that whether a student opts to study A-levels, a T Level or any other qualification, they can be confident that it will be high quality and will set them on a clear path to a job, further education or training”.

A briefing document, seen by FE Week ahead of the consultation launch, shows that for 16-to-19-year-olds, the DfE will propose to fund two groups of level 3 technical qualifications alongside T Levels.

The first will be qualifications that “give people the knowledge, skills and behaviours described in an employer-led standard that is not covered by a T Level”.

The second will be “additional specialist” qualifications that develop “more specialist skills and knowledge than could be acquired through a T Level alone” such as a course in marine engineering, which “builds on the technical qualifications in the maintenance, installation and repair T Level”.

The DfE will also propose to approve for funding two groups of “small academic qualifications” to be taken alongside, or as an alternative to, A-levels where there is a “clear need for skills and knowledge that A-levels alone cannot deliver”.

The first group includes qualifications that would “complement A-levels, for example, if they have more of a practical component, such as health and social care or engineering”. It will also include those that are designed to “enable progression to more specialist HE courses”, such as arts institutions.

The second group will be a “specific, limited group of well-recognised, small qualifications that develop wider skills to support study at higher education, such as core maths, performing arts graded qualifications and extended project qualifications”.

The DfE also plans to fund “large” qualifications that would “typically make up a student’s full programme of study and could be taken as an alternative to A-levels if they give access to specialist HE courses, such as those with high levels of practical content”. Examples might include sports or performing arts courses. The International Baccalaureate diploma will also continue to be funded.

For those aged 19 and over, the DfE says they will “generally need greater flexibility than 16-to-19-year-olds and will also tend to have greater prior experience”. So the department’s starting point for adults is that they “have available to them a similar offer as 16-to-19-year-olds but with some additional technical qualifications to meet their needs and more flexibility built into the design”.

The DfE will also propose three “key principles” for level 3 technical qualifications for adults: “Modular delivery of content; recognition of prior learning and experience; and assessing a student’s competence at the end of a course.”

The level 3 and below review includes applied generals, tech levels and technical certificates. While these cover a wide range of courses, BTECs, awarded by Pearson, are the most popular.

The DfE said it will also shortly publish a call for evidence inviting views on qualifications at level 2 and below, including basic skills qualifications (English, maths, ESOL and digital), to find out “what is working well”.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said there is a “place for both T Levels and applied generals” to “happily and usefully coexist”.

He warned that to remove “too many” applied generals would “significantly impoverish the curriculum, damage social mobility and do nothing to reduce the skills gap”.

The government has been urged by their own researchers to stump up funding for assessing prior learning in apprenticeships, after providers were found to be struggling with the financial viability of complying with the rule.

It comes as the Department for Education launches a recruitment drive for three new apprenticeship compliance officers, who will focus on specific “key” funding rules, such as recognition of prior leaning.

Prior learning refers to relevant skills, knowledge and behaviours gained before starting an apprenticeship, and must be taken into account by providers when negotiating a price with an employer to ensure cash is not being claimed unnecessarily.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency, which warns it may “recover funding” where this does not happen, audited a series of providers last year and found the rule was the “main issue causing funding errors”.

The approval and funding committee at the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has also previously “flagged concerns about how best to ensure that prices for apprenticeship training were being appropriately adjusted to take account of prior learning”.

The DfE commissioned the Learning and Work Institute to research the issue last year, the report from which has been published today.

It highlighted two key issues that affect the extent to which prior learning is assessed “consistently and robustly”, the first being the “financial viability” for providers to carry out “pre-programme assessments” for which they receive no funding – and “no financial benefit if an individual is found to be ineligible”.

The second was that it “may not be in providers’ and employers’ interests to make adaptions that could lower the price because employers are motivated to use up their levy pot and providers want to maximise income”.

Providers also reported that there was a lack of guidance about how much the apprenticeship cost should be reduced in relation to an apprentice’s identified prior learning.

To combat this, the researchers said the DfE “could consider how it can incentivise providers and employers to ensure that assessment of prior learning is carried out properly, for example by making funding available for this”.

In addition, or alternatively, the department “could consider how to improve compliance with funding rules, for example through more visible audit of proof of assessment and adjustments from the ESFA”.

FE Week reported in September 2019 how the Education and Skills Funding Agency was bolstering its compliance and prevention teams by hiring almost 30 individuals to work in the agency’s provider market oversight division, led by Matthew Atkinson.

Three new apprenticeship compliance officer posts are currently being advertised by the ESFA, the adverts for which state their specific “areas of focus” will include “thematic reviews” of off-the-job training and recognition of prior leaning. They will also “increase oversight of employer compliance”.

The Learning and Work Institute’s research involved qualitative interviews with 30 levy paying employers, 25 apprenticeship providers, and 25 apprentices.

A DfE spokesperson said: “Assessment of prior learning is an important part of an apprenticeship, ensuring that the training is relevant and valuable to the apprentice and their employer. We continue to consider options that strengthen the assessment process.”

Three other FE-related research reports have been published today by the DfE. You can find links to each one below:

Public sector apprenticeship target reporting: research report, October 2020.

Level 2 and 3 apprenticeships: research report.

Post-16 institutions and providers omnibus: wave 7 survey.

Two well-known sector leaders have been appointed as the new co-chairs of the Federation of Awarding Bodies.

Kirstie Donnelly, chief executive of the City & Guilds Group, and Alan Woods, chief executive of the Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT), will take up the posts at the membership organisation’s next annual general meeting on 8 December.

They will replace Paul Eeles and Terry Fennell, the current chair and vice-chair of FAB respectively, who are retiring from the roles having each served two terms which have spanned across the last seven years.

A joint letter to members from Donnelly and Woods said the decision by FAB’s board to appoint co-chairs was “innovative” and one that was taken because the “breadth of engagement required as we face the future is probably beyond what is possible for one chair and a vice chair”.

The co-chairs, along with chief executive Tom Bewick, will spearhead FAB’s input in the upcoming FE White Paper, level 3 and below reviews, T Levels, apprenticeships, higher technical qualification expansion, as well as the organisation’s “highly complex” relationship with regulators such as Ofqual.

A joint statement from Donnelly and Woods said their appointment comes at a time when further education is “at last centre-stage in our national story about how we build a more prosperous, productive and inclusive economy in future” and their task is to “listen to and work with FAB’s entire membership to chart the best way forward.

“We’re already planning a series of virtual ‘Town Halls’ with members and key stakeholders in the New Year.”

Donnelly, who is a frequent keynote speaker at various FE conferences including FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference, stepped up to the role of chief executive of City & Guilds in January after eight years as managing director.

She was awarded an MBE in 2011 – the same year she joined City & Guilds from the now-defunct Learndirect – for services to e-learning.

Woods joined VTCT in 2016 as chief executive after running his own company consulting on apprenticeships and learning, and previously, leading Skills for Justice – a sector skills council.

He was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to sustainable development and is currently also the vice-chair of Walsall College.

Welcoming the appointments, Eeles and Fennell said: “On behalf of the whole organisation, we would like to congratulate Kirstie and Alan for taking on the baton from us at Board level. As colleagues, we know the real respect they both have across the education and skills sector for what they have achieved. There’s no doubt Alan and Kirstie will provide inspired industry leadership for our part of the education profession during these unprecedented times.

“After our combined tenure on the board of 14 years we both feel that we are leaving FAB in excellent hands.”

Donnelly and Woods thanked both Eeles and Fennell for their “excellent leadership” and “extraordinary” time and energy that they have volunteered for the roles, insisting that the “whole awarding and assessment profession is indebted to them”.

 

The British Army has been named the best apprentice employer in England in a new list of ‘Top 100 Apprentice Employers’ published by the government. 

The Department for Education today released the list, which includes Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the second-place spot, ahead of the Royal Navy, BT, and MTR Elizabeth Line which is constructing the new Transport for London railway. 

The DfE placed itself in 73rd place (see list in full here).

Prime minister Boris Johnson said: “Now more than ever we should celebrate businesses who are driving our efforts to build a stronger, fairer, and more competitive economy. 

“These modern employers are at the heart of levelling up our workforce.” 

The army scooped first place after helping over 8,000 apprentices “gain new skills and progress” in 2019-2020, the Department for Education said. 

Almost a fifth of the army’s workforce are currently on apprenticeship as part of their training – studying areas like engineering, telecommunications, logistics, construction, health and IT. 

The assistant head of learning and development for the British Army, Colonel Kate George said those apprenticeships “play a critical part in developing the skills our soldiers need to succeed in their careers and on operations. 

“Entering the top 100 awards provides an opportunity to reflect on our own apprenticeship achievements, but also it gives employers the chance to celebrate the achievements of their staff and their apprentices, and the vital role we have as an employer in contributing to changing lives.” 

Over 400 applications were received for the list, and the results were announced at a special online event broadcast earlier today. 

The rankings were developed by the National Apprenticeship Service in partnership with student and graduate research company High Fliers Research. 

Employers were marked on their overall commitment to employing apprentices, their creation of new apprenticeships, the diversity of their new apprentices, and the progression of their apprentices onto further apprenticeships and employment. 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan gave a “huge congratulations” to all of the companies who took part, but said it was “fantastic” to see the army recognised “for its incredible support for apprentices and the apprenticeships programme”. 

You can see the top ten list of employers, and download the full list of 100 companies, here. 

The Department for Education is assembling a new team of legislators to implement education secretary Gavin Williamson’s “ambitious vision” for reform in the upcoming FE white paper.

Job adverts went out earlier this month for two officers, one senior officer, one lead and one manager for a parliamentary team to work on the new Bill that has been labelled Williamson’s “top priority” and one that will have “a lot” of interest from Downing Street.

Under the auspices of the department’s Higher and Further Education Group, successful applicants, the adverts read, will have an “exciting, challenging and high-profile new role” working with senior leaders “on an ambitious reform programme”.

“You will work with and support the department, special advisers and ministers through the parliamentary handling of a Bill with a lot of interest from No10,” it continues.

Salaries will range from £29,363 for Bill officers to £61,014 for the Bill manager. All of the roles are on fixed term contracts, set to end in August 2022.

Responsibilities for the roles will include briefing ministers to take the Bill through Parliament, overseeing parliamentary intelligence and communications, and coordinating the FE Reform Parliamentary Ambassadors – MPs who were appointed by education secretary Gavin Williamson earlier this year to champion his reform plans.

Criteria for the Bill team ranges between roles, but the lead and manager adverts are looking for applicants “adept in influencing colleagues and negotiating solutions to problems” and with “expertise in building influential and trusted relationships across Whitehall and Parliament”.

The much-anticipated FE white paper is set to launch this autumn and is expected to include major changes to government powers over colleges and to how provision is arranged across the sector.

The Department for Education confirmed today that the white paper will be published “later this year”, despite concerns it could be delayed following the Treasury’s decision to hold a one-year, rather than multi-year, spending review in November.

Prime minister Boris Johnson has often highlighted further education reform as one his government’s top priorities, and brought in sector expert Professor Alison Wolf earlier this year from King’s College to advise Number 10 on FE policy for three days a week.

Wolf was appointed by Michael Gove in 2011 to run an independent review of vocational education, and she also served on the Sainsbury Review – which laid the groundwork for the government’s flagship T Levels – and on the panel for the Augar Review.

The DfE’s Higher and Further Education Group is led by a director general, a member of the department’s leadership team, whose responsibilities include overseeing further education provision, quality, restructuring and intervention, the adult education budget, and 16 to 19 funding.

The DfE began gearing up for major FE reform earlier this year by hiring a team of 16 senior advisers to “craft a wide range of policies” within the department’s higher and further education group, as reported by FE Week in June.

Applicants for all of the new legislative roles have until 11.55pm this Sunday (25 October) to apply. Video interviews will likely be conducted a fortnight after applications have been sifted through.

Ofsted has this morning published the letters from its first 10 “interim visits” of FE providers that are taking place this autumn.

The five-page letters include inspectors’ findings from interviews with both leaders and learners about the provider’s response to Covid-19, but do not include a judgement grade.

They include information about what actions leaders are taking to “ensure they provide an appropriate curriculum that responds to the reasonable needs of learners and stakeholders and adapts to changed circumstances”, as well as what steps  staff are taking to “ensure that the approaches used for building knowledge and skills are appropriate to meet the reasonable needs of students”.

Inspectors also explore how leaders are “ensuring that students are safe and well informed about potential risks, including from online sources”.

Eight of the visits were to providers judged as ‘requires improvement’, while one was to a ‘good’ provider and the other was ‘outstanding’.

Ofsted announced in July that it would carry out these “interim visits” as part of a phased return to routine inspections, following a pause to this activity as result of Covid-19 in March.

The full inspection regime is currently planned to resume in January 2021, but this is being kept under review.

You can find links to each of the 10 interimn visit letters below.

Beacon Education Partnership Limited

Birmingham Metropolitan College

Blackburn College

Blackpool and the Fylde College

Bradford College

Catch 22 Charity Limited

Intuitions Limited

Lean Education And Development Limited

The Autism Project – CareTrade

WS Training Ltd

The billion-dollar market for competitive video gaming is continuing to rise, with new jobs requiring fresh talent. And it’s not just about playing – like sports, the sector requires those with transferable skills in marketing, sales, coaching, commentary, editing and lots more. To facilitate this, new esports BTECs from Pearson and the British Esports Association aim to foster the workforce of the future, writes Pearson and the British Esports Association.

The worlds of education and esports are colliding.

Over the past few years, UK universities and colleges have begun offering courses in the space to help people get the skills to land a job in the burgeoning field.

Esports is a hugely popular recreational activity that offers many job and career opportunities around the world. It’s different from standard video gaming in that esports is competitive, it’s human vs human and usually has an engaging spectator element to it, like traditional sports. Viewers typically tune in to watch matches live streamed on platforms like Twitch and YouTube, as opposed to standard television channels.

Esports tournaments see amateur or professional gamers compete against one another for a cash prize. There are more than 40 esports games, including 5v5 battle arena game League of Legends, 1v1 sports game FIFA, 4v4 shooter Call of Duty and more. Some tournaments have prize pools of more than $1m, with the biggest reaching $30m and beyond.

Overall, it’s estimated that the global esports market will generate revenues of more than $1bn in 2020, with almost 500m viewers around the world.

Like sports, esports requires a host of talent across a range of disciplines, from commentary to coaching, marketing to management, broadcasting, production, PR, journalism and everything in-between. These skills are transferable, leading to a wide network of career pathways crossing into other sectors, for example sports, broadcasting, cybersecurity and the wider digital sphere and beyond.

Pearson and the British Esports Association recognise and welcome this, and are leading the way in esports education to create pathways for young people seeking careers in esports and other closely linked digital industries.

In April 2020, the pair linked up to develop the first esports BTEC qualifications of their kind in the world. Institutions in the UK and around the world now have the opportunity to offer these new level 2 and 3 qualifications to students as of September 2020, with funding confirmed in the UK from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Aside from this, British Esports has been developing a wealth of esports careers advice, and Pearson has been producing useful content for students, teacher resources and others to educate them, including this piece busting common myths around esports.

Today, there are a host of colleges and universities running esports courses in the UK, including Staffordshire University, The Confetti Institute of Creative Technologies, part of Nottingham Trent University, the University of Chichester and more. You can see a full list of colleges and universities involved in esports here.

The education sphere is also embracing esports’ competitive side as a recreational activity, too. More than 130 school, college and alternative provision teams take part in the British Esports Championships, a series of tournaments for students aged 12 and above. Matches usually take place in classrooms after school each Wednesday, but students are now also allowed to play from home in light of the covid-19 situation. 

Teachers and students have reported a raft of benefits from the Championships, including increased attendance, behaviour and concentration levels. Other benefits of esports include the promotion of communication, leadership and social skills, greater reaction times, confidence, making new friends, having fun and more.

One such activity promoting the benefits of competitive gaming is World Esports Day. Taking place on October 24th, this will help increase awareness of the activity, with companies, teams, players and others getting involved with livestreams, gaming sessions, discussion panels and more, all whilst raising money for charity at the same time.

Kalam Neale, Curriculum Lead at Barnsley College, commented: “Esports education is providing a brand new, creative, digital learning environment where students are exceeding expectations, achieving high grades and developing personally, socially and holistically to become more confident individuals. They are employment-ready with the added opportunities for learners to progress onto Higher Education at university.

“The esports qualifications allow us as educators to continue to realise our vision for our learners, in order to transform lives, ensure learners have a great time, achieve their aims and progress onto their chosen destination in employment or Higher Education.”

For teachers and those in education who are looking for more information on how to get involved in esports, there’s the Esports in Education Summit, taking place online on November 10th, held by AoC Sport and British Esports and sponsored by Pearson. It’s free for teachers and leaders in education and registration is open now.