The Education and Training Foundation is handing out 100 discounts worth £500 each to boost the number of FE lecturers with Advanced Teacher Status (ATS), whilst also softening the scheme’s eligibility criteria.
It currently costs participants £750 to undertake ATS, meaning those that receive the discount will only have to pay £250.
The qualification was first launched in 2017 and recognises lecturers who can demonstrate “mastery” of the profession. It is described as the “gold standard practitioner status in the FE sector” by the ETF.
Around 100 individuals have attained it so far. Those who are awarded ATS are additionally granted with Chartered Teacher Status by the Chartered College of Teaching – the recognised professional body for teachers in England.
Martin Reid, director of the Society for Education and Training (SET), part of the ETF, said the “bursaries” have been made available to make ATS “accessible to a wider group of highly-skilled and experienced practitioners for whom financial barriers may be issues”.
Up to 100 are on offer and preference will be given to those applicants who “present a strong case for requiring a bursary”, which they will have to do by “making a statement explaining how a funded place will support both themselves and their organisation, focusing on three key areas of the ETF professional standards: values and attributes; knowledge and understanding; and skills”.
The eligibility criteria for ATS have also been changed, with the requirement for applicants to already hold Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) status or Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) “no longer a prerequisite”.
Instead, “advanced” teachers and trainers who have “held their initial teaching qualification at level five or above for at least five years – rather than the four required of QTLS and QTS holders – and who meet all of the other eligibility criteria relating to access to teaching and coaching, can also apply”.
All applicants must be members of the SET, which oversees ATS.
The discounts will be available to those joining the next cohort to work towards ATS, which will begin in October 2020.
The ETF said although the eligibility criteria have been updated, the ATS programme “has not been changed in any way” and participants will “carry out the same tasks and portfolios will be assessed with the same rigour they always have been”.
Reid added: “We know from listening to our members that ATS is seen as a highly-valued badge of professionalism that demonstrates a commitment to the highest standards of teaching and learning. It is also an important aspect of the work we are doing to drive up the professionalism of the whole sector, with those who achieve ATS telling us that its positive impacts are not just on them personally, but also on colleagues and their institutions.
“These ETF-funded bursaries, alongside changes to the eligibility criteria, will make ATS accessible to a wider group of highly-skilled and experienced practitioners for whom financial barriers or a lack of opportunity to undertake QTLS early in their careers may be issues.
“We hope that more people in the sector will now be able to embark on their journey to ATS and achieve Chartered Teacher status.”
The window for applications for the next cohort of the ATS programme is open until 13 September 2020.
The Department for Education is drafting in a group of new policy experts as it gears up for “revolutionary” changes in FE.
Job adverts for 16 senior advisers to “craft a wide range of policies” within the department’s “higher and further education group” are currently live with annual salaries ranging from £49,000 to £60,000.
It comes as the DfE continues its work on a new White Paper for the FE sector, to be followed by legislation.
The successful candidates will be deployed to the DfE’s higher and further education group to work in directorates including careers and further education; further education reform; career learning, analysis, skills and student choice; international; higher education, STEM and tertiary providers; transformation and digital.
Responsibilities will include “leading the delivery of innovative policy reforms”.
“In the role you will quickly familiarize yourself with detailed knowledge to enable you confidently brief ministers and manage relationships with the educational sector,” the adverts add.
The chief executive of one of England’s largest college groups has been announced as the next president of the Association of Colleges.
Sally Dicketts, who heads up Activate Learning, will take over the role from Steve Frampton on August 1 when his two-year tenure is up.
She said she was “delighted” to be appointed and pledged to “work hard to promote the FE sector and ensure our learners are given the best opportunities to succeed”.
“As we move into a post-Covid world, we will need to unite as a sector to ensure we have the funding and support we need to continue to help our communities and be the engines of social mobility that we have been for so long, and I recognise both the pitfall and benefits of the proposals set out in the government’s White Paper,” she added.
“The global pandemic has shone a light on a lot of the things we do as education providers, and I think there are lots of opportunities for us to change and adapt our approaches to meet our learners needs in the future.
“I want to create a united voice for the FE sector, where we collaborate with clear values of respect, empathy, and understanding of different communities we serve.”
Frampton said his two years in the role of AoC president have been “two of the best of my life”.
“It has been a genuine honour to represent the sector I love and I’ve had experiences and opportunities that I will never forget,” he added.
Steve Frampton
Each year a college principal is elected by AoC members to be president. Their term of office runs from 01 August to 31 July, with a maximum two-year tenure.
The AoC said the president “acts as an ambassador” for the membership organisation and the further education sector, “driving policy formation and raising the profile of colleges with ministers and external stakeholders”.
Dicketts has worked in further education since 1985. Since 2013, she has been chief executive of Activate Learning, bringing together in one group, three FE colleges, three university technical colleges, two 11 to 18 secondary schools, a studio school, an apprenticeships provider, and a specialist engineering training provider.
She is a board member of the Education and Training Foundation, Pearson’s board and deputy chair of the LEP skills board.
Dicketts was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Honours List in July 2013.
The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a great deal of disruption across education, including cancelled exams and campus closures to most learners, the impact of which is expected to be felt into the next academic year and likely beyond.
Education leaders and policy experts discussed the anticipated ongoing impact on 16-to-24- year-olds, adult learners and apprenticeships at an FE Week roundtable debate on Tuesday, in partnership with NCFE.
It followed the joint publication of a discussion paper by NCFE and Campaign for Learning, education policy consultant Mark Corney, and director of policy at Holex adult education network Susan Pember, which warns of a “very different September” to the one Whitehall had planned for.
One key area of concern is safe travel and social distancing on transport for younger learners as they move to and from their college or training provider.
Principal of New College Durham, John Widdowson, told the roundtable this is a particular problem for rural areas and he is considering a shortened college day, for example, between 10am and 3.30pm, to lessen pressure on public transport at peak times.
“We know that only half capacity will be allowed on each bus that comes in because of social distancing, we know that they are going to prioritise people coming to work, so we’re thinking about maybe a differently timed college day,” he explained.
Widdowson added that his college is also “thinking about potentially having – instead of trying to plan a curriculum on a linear basis, September through to June-July – to modularise it, so we’ll do complete units of learning, which is something we’ve not really done before, but that then gives them something in the bank”.
David Robinson from the Education Policy Unit touched on the topic of calculated grades being awarded to students this summer following the cancellation of exams. He warned that, as teacher assessment “tends to be biased” against disadvantaged learners, it could prove an additional challenge to post-16 institutions to match them to a programme of study, so there “may be more adjustments needed in those early stages”.
Corney tabled education select committee chair Robert Halfon’s idea of an “apprenticeships guarantee” (see here) after prime minister Boris Johnson said he would “look at the idea” last week and mentioned it again during his coronavirus briefing on Wednesday (see here).
Corney cautioned against this potential “overpromise” and instead recommended the expansion of funding for 19-to-24 full-time places at FE colleges, maintenance support to complete level 3 qualifications and a T-level “guarantee”.
Robinson challenged the latter, arguing the rollout of the new technical qualifications is already “relatively slow”, with capacity concerns within the sector, and that this could put it at further risk.
The Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chief policy officer Simon Ashworth suggested traineeships as an alternative established programme to help young people develop their skills to enter the jobs market, which he said could be a “useful vehicle” if flexibilities are introduced in the long term.
However, Brenda McLeish, chief executive of Learning Curve Group, said there are “big concerns” over the provision of work placements due to Covid-19 and staff redundancies, as well as the ability to recruit new apprentices during this period.
She added: “What we need is definitely a skills training programme, and a funding guarantee for these people.”
Turning to the needs of adults, Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, claimed: “We really need a much bigger scale of ambition and action and urgent action to get proper help and support to [furloughed workers] as well.”
McLeish talked about the success of her provider’s #EducateWhileYouIsolate campaign, which had received 28,000 expressions of interest in online courses within its first six weeks, but lamented that there was “no funding pot there to sustain it… [or] any increase in the adult education budget”.
She added that there will be a “fear factor” for adults returning to work or participating in groups, so believes it will be necessary to offer a “blended model” for the foreseeable future.
The final discussion point of the roundtable was the impact on apprenticeships. Corney proposed a single education and apprenticeship participation budget for 16-to-18-year-olds to switch between different types of provision.
Ashworth called the idea a “no-brainer” but said it should be funded by government rather than the levy.
Robinson questioned whether there was a need to “triage” sector demands to those which would make the most impact due to the number of industries asking for support, concluding it“needs to be simple and broad, rather than lots of small sector asks”.
In contrast to the view of Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute, that apprenticeships were not “near the top of [universities’] concerns at this time”, Ashworth said some higher education institutions see them as an “opportunity to supplement or refill some of the income they might lose from other traditional streams”.
Pember, who “didn’t want to be doom and gloom”, concluded the roundtable was underestimating size of unemployment in autumn, and doubts that employers will offer apprenticeships to level 2 and 3 learners rather than existing employees at higher levels in the next 18 months.
The sector must be allowed to respond to demands from existing and new students, many of them disadvantaged, says Justine Greening. It must also be ready to help hundreds of thousands of people to reskill
Education transformed my life – and my time in further education at Thomas Rotherham College in south Yorkshire was a crucial part of that.
I studied there for the A-levels that helped me to become the first person in my family to go to university. But it gave some of my friends the chance to take a more vocational route.
FE colleges are the backbone of the education system that helps many young people take the next steps after leaving school. They especially matter for those from more disadvantaged backgrounds and communities.
We already know that the education shutdown has most harmed those young people with the most restricted access to opportunity. They must be the priority for any education catch-up plan – which means that FE must also be a priority. It educates the young people with the least time left in the education system to regain lost time.
With recession looming, FE colleges could play a further crucial role. The steady digital shift of the economy meant there was already a need for the government to focus more on retraining and reskilling, but Covid-19 has turbocharged this shift.
FE has a pivotal role to play for this country over the next two years. It must be allowed to respond to demands from existing students and those arriving into the system – and it must be able to help hundreds of thousands of people to reskill.
“We cannot allow a new generation to have its talent wasted”
Now is the time for the government to truly recognise its importance. It will define how well we handle the challenge of keeping people on track with their careers in spite of everything the economy throws at them.
My father was out of work for a year after he lost his job in the steel industry in the 1980s. It was hard to reskill, especially with so little advice on what sort of role to retrain for. Facing what economic forecasters say may be another crisis of high unemployment, we cannot allow a new generation to have its talent wasted.
Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, said that he would do “whatever it takes” to help businesses and families get through the coronavirus crisis. He must now apply that same ethos to helping our young people, and those needing to reskill, to get their education and future careers back on track. This is no time for penny-pinching on investing in this country’s most important asset – its people.
Ministers must work creatively with the FE sector and business to look beyond simply resourcing, to how they can reshape policies to boost the capacity for reskilling.
The apprenticeship levy is long-known to be overly restrictive for employers to invest in skills. In a deep recession it would be unjustifiable and unacceptable for levy accounts to have millions of pounds of unused funding for skills that employers and colleges could not invest in because of bureaucratic rules long overdue for a reshake.
For example, why not allow employers to roll over and invest unused apprenticeship levy more widely in skills training? This could perhaps help existing staff to retrain to prevent unemployment, or support those being made redundant in refocusing their skills towards a new career.
Only by getting around the table with the sector, including training providers and employers, can the right approach be worked out. But there is no time to lose. Employers who are committed to the Social Mobility Pledge that I founded to spread more opportunity to young people and reach Britain’s much wider talent pool, are also keen to play their role. The government needs to work with them to find out how it can enable them to do so, or at least not get in the way.
We had a national effort to help our NHS as we were hit by the peak of the coronavirus crisis. We now need the same national effort to help our education system cope with its aftermath and the huge disruption to young people.
Apprenticeship providers have been left shocked after the Education and Skills Funding Agency ignored their own coronavirus deferral policy and sent out contract termination letters, FE Week can reveal.
The business-ending intervention for failing the minimum standards for achievement rates comes just weeks after the ESFA wrote to providers claiming they would postpone decisions until as late as October, to take account of the “continuing challenges” relating to Covid-19.
One provider that did not wish to be named, with hundreds of apprentices, shared with FE Week a letter it received this week that said the agency was providing “notice of termination” on July 31. Access to all funding would then end and the training firm would be removed from the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers.
The letter went on to say all new starts must cease immediately and the provider must “do its utmost to minimise disruption caused to apprentices”.
The provider shared the reasons for their underperformance with the ESFA in February and thought the matter was closed as they had not received the deferral letter sent to other providers last month.
When FE Week challenged the Department for Education on the unexpected interventions this week a spokesperson said there had been no change relating to deferrals but that in a small number of cases contracts are being terminated at this stage.
The DfE refused to comment further on why the ESFA was ignoring their own published deferral policy by taking action during the global pandemic.
As previously reported, overall national apprenticeship achievement rates dropped 2.2 per cent points last year to just 64.7 per cent.
The achievement rate for the new apprenticeship standards were particularly low, averaging just 46.6 per cent compared to 68.7 per cent for frameworks.
Providers have to have more than 40 per cent of their cohort on frameworks and standards above a 62 per cent achievement rate to achieve the minimum standard.
The contract termination letter said that in coming to their decision the ESFA had taken account of the evidence submitted by the provider along with “the scale of underperformance against the minimum standard threshold for 2018 to 2019 and your organisation’s track record relative to the minimum standard in previous years”.
In an FE Week webcast at the end of April, apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan expressed concern at historic “low-quality” apprenticeships delivery.
She said: “I was quite shocked at some of the lower quality delivery that happened in the first stages of the levy being introduced and I never want to go back to those days…I’ve met people on the doorstep who’ve actually said to me this is a load of old rubbish. We have to make sure that every apprenticeship is quality.”
Once a notice of contract termination has been issued, the DfE said the ESFA works with the provider to ensure that the apprentices and their employers receive advice about how to successfully complete their learning. This, they said, could include finishing with the same provider or transferring to a new provider, and that in practice, this depends on the time left to complete the learning activity.
The spokesperson went on to say that the ESFA will continue to talk to and monitor all providers who have failed minimum standards for all aged apprenticeships in 2018 to 2019, as part of their management of further education.
Two regular commentators on vocational education policy who now work at the same consultancy firm take opposing sides over whether it is in the government’s gift to guarantee a young person an apprenticeship…
Possible? No Jonathan Simons, Director of education, Public First
An apprenticeship is a protected term in law. It means that someone undertaking one must be following an approved programme of study; must be eligible for off-the-job training for a proportion of the week; and must be employed.
That last element is crucial. It’s what makes an apprenticeship different from college-based learning, which can be done in or out of employment.
Jonathan Simons
The government is very keen on apprenticeships, mostly because of the link to employers. As well as hiring the apprentices, groups of employers have also set the standards that apprentices work towards. And it is employers who choose which apprentices to take on in their company, and how many, and where to deploy them. All of this activity is covered under the much-used phrase “an employer-led system”.
And it’s because we have an employer-led system that we simply can’t have an apprenticeship guarantee: because it’s not within the government’s gift. Unlike university places, or college places, which can be more or less expanded as far as the government would pay for them, apprenticeships also need employers willing to offer them.
And all the data suggests that this is going to be very difficult. Many current apprentices are having their training paused, and new starts are plummeting, as companies furlough their staff and wait out the Covid storm. Sadly, it looks as if the economic recovery will be slower than first thought. It’s unlikely that many companies will be returning to pre-crisis levels of training, let alone offering more.
Of course, there is more that government can and should do to promote high-quality apprenticeships – and I’m all in favour of those things that John sets out. But to offer a guarantee to young people, when it can’t be met, isn’t just semantics – it’s misleading, and poor policy.
Possible? Yes
John Cope, Deputy director of education, Public First
In normal times, employers should lead the apprenticeship system, as ultimately there needs to be a real job at the end. We are not in normal times though – as the prime minister’s “apprenticeship guarantee” for young people rightly recognises.
The proposal has already been met with a barrage of doom-mongers and scepticism. Some justified, given the pace of apprenticeship reform, and from a policy purist point, you can never 100 per cent “guarantee” anything. Such thinking, though, would have vetoed the furlough scheme as “too expensive” and flinched at helping the self-employed as “too hard to administer”.
John Cope
More than any politician, Boris Johnson understands that to govern is not about patching up the status quo. Politics is the art of the possible – the attainable. Are we saying young people don’t deserve the same exceptional support our economy has received? I hope not.
So how could it work?
Cash incentives for the private sector
The UK is an outlier internationally. We pay high apprentice salaries (much more than Germany) and employers pay a levy and all the costs of taking on an apprentice. In normal times, a reasonable expectation. But now?
We should flip this on its head, like in Australia. The government should pause the levy and actually pay employers to take on an apprentice (on the condition there is a job at the end).
Fire up the public sector
The public sector is already a huge apprenticeship provider. We should crank this up even more. And not just for the sake of artificially keeping NEET figures down – this is an opportunity to fill critical shortages. We need more nurses, more teachers, more police. There is an apprenticeship route ready for each.
So there we go – how the PM’s “apprenticeship guarantee” could be delivered with political will, new money, and vision. Young people deserve nothing less.
Hate crimes in colleges have almost tripled in four years as leaders seek to raise awareness in light of a national spike since the coronavirus outbreak.
The data obtained via Freedom of Information requests by FE Week from 23 of the 39 police forces in England reveal that 460 offences were recorded in colleges between 2015 and 2019.
There were 50 hate crimes five years ago, a figure that jumped to 72 and then 92 in 2016 and 2017 respectively. The number of offences in colleges rose to 106 in 2018 and increased again to 140 last year.
The Crown Prosecution Service describes hate crimes as offences “motivated by hostility” towards someone’s disability, race, religion, sexual orientation or transgender identity.
They can include verbal abuse, intimidation, threats, harassment, assault, bullying and damage to property.
There has been an upward trend nationally, with the number of offences recorded by the police having more than doubled in 2018-19 compared to 2012-13, according to the Home Office. It claimed that increases have been “mainly driven by improvements in crime recording”, but also noted that there have been spikes after certain events, such as the EU referendum in 2016 and terrorist attacks in 2017.
Last month, Home Office minister for countering extremism Susan Williams told the home affairs select committee that hate crime directed towards South and East Asian communities had increased by 21 per cent during the Covid-19 pandemic. Police have also estimated a threefold increase in such incidents against Chinese people between January and March 2020, compared to the previous two years.
Exeter is one area that is experiencing the spike: at least six reports of coronavirus-related attacks were received by Devon and Cornwall Police by March 6.
Exeter College has since committed to using its influence among young people to condemn such acts. Although no Covid-related hate crime incident has taken place at the college, it signed a joint open letter on tackling the issue and racism in its community in the same month, calling recent attacks on people in relation to Covid-19 on the basis of ethnicity “cowardly and ignorant”.
It said: “As leading organisations in our community we wanted to send a message of unity and partnership so that everyone knows that we will stand together to tackle hate crime and hateful people.”
While each police force has different methods of recording the data, the most common motivator of hate crimes in colleges provided each year was racism.
For example, graffiti of swastikas was painted in the car park of West Suffolk College in January, according to the Bury Free Press. Xenophobic leaflets, telling people to “go back to their homelands”, were also found at Oaklands College in Hertfordshire last year, according to the Herts Advertiser.
The need to educate perpetrators on reliable sources of information and embed raising awareness into curriculums and enrichment programmes was cited by college leaders who spoke to FE Week.
TOWIE’s Bobby Norris (centre) after speaking to learners at South Essex College about his #EndTheTrend2Troll campaign
Jane Belcher, head of safeguarding at South Essex College, said some staff and students had in recent months received support in how to make reports, how to keep safe and what to do if they did not feel safe after expressing concern about hate crime in their community following Covid-19. The college was also “very proactive in making sure that there was information on our Moodle pages”.
She added there had been three incidents at the college in 2019 and estimates there are under five a year. “All of our staff are told [they’re] not bystanders. If we hear it, we step in, we readjust that view and have a conversation.”
According to Belcher, tutorials are South Essex College’s “linchpin” for open discussions and to highlight individuals who might be at risk or need more support. Staff focus on where potentially harmful student views have come from and what their sources of information are. “It’s our job as educators to [develop] those critical thinking skills in our young people… It’s just providing that safe space for them to start understanding why that view isn’t accepted.”
The safeguarding head has previously used conversation-starters such as a radicalisation storyline on teenage soap opera Hollyoaks, a Buzzfeed article illustrating a double standard between media coverage of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, as well as news that Facebook banned far-right groups. The college has also brought in outside speakers to engage learners, such as The Only Way Is Essex’s Bobby Norris, who came to its Southend campus in October 2019 as part of his campaign to make online homophobia a specific criminal offence.
Similarly, East Coast College has a number of initiatives in place to tackle hate crime. Nikki Lane, assistant principal, student wellbeing and support, told FE Week a partnership with Norfolk Constabulary began after the Brexit vote, when students and staff raised an increase in incidents in the community. “The idea was actually to look at prevention.”
The college uses a tutorial programme of around six interventions a year as well as additional enrichment activities as a “springboard” for groups to understand what a hate message is and to discuss where they are seeing them.
Lane added that apprentices also consider hate crime as part of discussions about equality with assessors, while adult learners are addressed on the topic as part of their induction.
East Coast College said it has seen “reasonably low” increases of hate crimes in recent years. Most incidents at the college have been verbal. However, social media, and accessing the rhetoric of figures such as Tommy Robinson and Katie Hopkins (whose Twitter account has previously been suspended for violating the platform’s anti-hate policy), was also blamed.
“[Students] are kind of feeling like maybe it’s OK to say those things, and then the conversation that we’re having is helping them understand the impact of that.”
Students from Stockport College’s Equalities Council (part of Trafford College Group) presenting Sylvia Lancaster (centre) with a £640 cheque after fundraising for the Sophie Lancaster Foundation last year. Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, also pictured on her left.
Trafford College Group hosted its own annual Hate Crime awareness event in March, reaching 1,000 students. Speakers included a victim of an attack outside a mosque, the mother of Sophie Lancaster – who was killed after being targeted because of her Goth subculture identity – as well as members from Remembering Srebrenica, the Bosnian town that was the site of a genocidal massacre in 1995.
Michelle McLaughlin, student engagement and student voice lead, recommended that other colleges reach out to their community and ensure they have representatives that “serve the diversity of the college cohort” and to “keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on in your local area”.
While the FOI figures obtained by FE Week are specifically for incidents in colleges, other types of FE providers have also implemented policies to combat the issue.
Bedford-based private provider Firebrand Training receives specialist guidance and a hate crime “heat map” from its designated regional Department for Education FE/HE Prevent coordinator. Ben Hansford, managing director of apprenticeships, said that the company was advised to look out for unacceptable stickers in communal areas and behavioural signals, such as lower-level hate crime and bullying, damage to belongings and “jokes”.
Hansford added: “It’s critical to train and support your trainers to spot the indicators early, educate learners through good safeguarding material, have a zero tolerance of bullying and provide proactive welfare support.”
Stop Hate UK representative, Angela Wright, at Trafford College Group
A statutory duty for further education providers to “prevent people from being drawn into terrorism” was introduced into government legislation in 2015, after the controversial anti-radicalisation programme (Prevent) was first created in 2003.
Mike Ainsworth, director of London services at Stop Hate UK, a national organisation that supports education providers through its helpline and training services, said their work has shown that racism, homophobia, religious intolerance and disability hate “remain problems in places of further education”.
He added that the number of cases reported are a “significant underestimate”, with many students (particularly foreign nationals, those with disabilities and members of the LGBTQ community) reluctant to come forward.
Such experiences can have a significant effect on learners. A survey by the National Union of Students in 2010 revealed that victims reported resulting mental health problems in almost a quarter of hate crimes. This included depression, loss of confidence as well as feelings of vulnerability, isolation and being alone.
A government spokesperson said: “There is absolutely no place in our society for hate crimes and we will continue to work across government and with the police to bear down on offenders, support victims and irradiate this prejudice.”
