Almost 50 colleges set to deliver T Levels from 2021 will share £48.5 million to refurbish their buildings.
Successful projects include a new civil engineering centre at the Lakes College in Cumbria, and a brand new teaching block at Burnley College that will include classrooms, an elite athlete gym and a sports therapy space.
The £48.5 million being dished out today comes from the £95 million capital pot set aside for wave two T Level providers. The remaining funding has been held back to allocate to providers so they can upgrade specialist equipment. The government expect to confirm amounts for equipment for each provider in February.
The government has also today launched a new £135 million capital fund for providers offering T Levels from 2023 (click here for full story).
The first three T Levels – the technical equivalent to A-levels – in construction, digital and education and childcare were launched in September 2020.
A further seven will be available from 2021 in subjects including health, science and onsite construction and subjects including finance, media and legal will be introduced from 2022 and 2023.
A total of 49 colleges have been awarded a slice of the capital funding announced today, which between them bid for 56 projects.
The DfE has not released the values of each allocation.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson has this morning outlined his expectation for how exams will be replaced this year.
In a letter to exams regulator Ofqual, he said that grades should be issued “as late as possible”, with teacher assessments only changed as apart of the moderation process in the “exception”, and wants the idea of externally set exams to be explored.
His letter outlining the process to decided alternative arrangements for exams, which also includes vocational and technical qualifications, can be read here.
Ofqual has also published a responding letter from its chief regulator Simon Lebus, which can be read here.
Teacher assessments should be informed by ‘breadth of evidence’ …
Williamson said he wants to support teachers to assess their students in a “fair and consistent fashion. A breadth of evidence should inform teachers’ judgements, and the provision training and guidance will support teachers to reach their assessment of a student’s deserved grade”.
He’s asked this is “drawn out in the consultation”.
… But plans must ‘minimise additional burden’
Ofqual has been told this need for evidence must be balanced against minimising additional burdens for teachers and schools and colleges.
“It is my view that the consultation should set out proposals which allow students to be assessed based on what they have learnt, rather than against content they have not had a chance to study,” Williamson said.
“This will need to be balanced against the need to ensure good enough coverage of the curriculum for all students to support successful progress.”
Grades to be issued “as late as possible”
Williamson said it is “vital we maximise the remaining opportunity for them to be taught for as long as possible, so they have every opportunity to catch up.
“It is my view that a teacher’s final judgement on a student’s grade ought to be as late as possible in the academic year to maximise remaining teaching time and ensure students are motivated to remain engaged in education,” he added.
Ofqual agrees. Lebus said doing so will “give students a greater sense of agency, which is critical to securing widespread acceptance of the outcomes”.
Ofqual to explore setting external exams
The education secretary has also asked the exams regulator to explore the “possibility of providing externally set tasks or papers, in order that teachers can draw on this resource to support their assessments of students”.
“We should seek views in the consultation on what broader evidence should determine a teacher’s assessment of a student’s grade and whether we should require or recommend the use of the externally set tasks or papers,” he added.
Ofqual is in favour of this. Lebus told Williamson: “We know that the more the evidence comes from students’ performance in externally set papers, the fairer and more consistent teachers’ assessments are likely to be, because all students are given the chance to show what they can do in the same way.”
Warning over results ‘looking different’ to previous years
When exams were going ahead, Ofqual had pledged that results would be as generous as those issued last year. However the new plan seems to have changed that.
Lebus warned it was “important that the consultation makes clear to all, especially those who rely on the results to make selection decisions, that overall outcomes this year will likely look different from 2020 and previous years”.
He said told Williamson this will be “important for your work with the post-16 and higher education sectors to secure orderly progression and to protect the interests of disadvantaged students”.
But definitely no algorithm
As already announced, there will be no algorithm to standardise grades.
Instead, Williamson wants schools and colleges to undertake quality assurance of their teachers’ assessments and “provide reassurance to the exam boards”.
“We should provide training and guidance to support that, and there should also be external checks in place to support fairness and consistency between different institutions and to avoid schools and colleges proposing anomalous grades.”
Any grade changes should ‘be the exception’
After the fallout of last year’s algorithm, where 40 per cent of teacher grades were marked down, Williamson now wants any changes to grades as a result of quality assurance to “be the exception”.
He added: “The process will not involve second-guessing the judgement of teachers but confirming that the process and evidence used to award a grade is reasonable. Changes should only be made if those grades cannot be justified, rather than as a result of marginal differences of opinion.
“Any changes should be based on human decisions, not by an automatic process or algorithm.”
There will also be an appeals route
Williamson said there should be a route for any student who doesn’t believe their grade reflects the standard of their work to appeal, details of which should be “explored fully” in the consultation.
He also said a plan needs to be developed for private candidates – such as home schooled children – to get a grade.
International Baccalaureate ‘should be same’ as GCSEs
Williamson said he believes other general qualifications, such as core maths and the International Baccalaureate, should have a similar approach to GCSEs and A-levels.
Alternative arrangements for BTECs and other vocational quals
External exams scheduled to take place in the next few months for vocational and technical qualifications students that enable a student to demonstrate the proficiency required to enter directly into employment should “continue to proceed with protective measures put in place to ensure they are conducted in line with PHE measures”.
However, for all other VTQs with written exams, including BTECs and other vocational qualifications in league tables, it is “no longer viable for these exams to go ahead” in February and March and views on alternative arrangements for these qualifications “should be sought in the consultation”.
All Janaury VTQ exams can go ahead where providers “judge it is right to do so”, as previously announced.
Williamson added that functional skills assessments can continue to take place online, but if students are unable to access the tests in this way, there “should be alternative assessment arrangements put in place following the outcomes of the consultation”.
Williamson also said that VTQs for April onwards will need to have “alternative arrangements to examined assessments and that we should use this consultation to seek views on the detail of these arrangements and the qualifications in scope of this approach.
“These arrangements may need to be different in some cases to those put in place last year to take account of the different circumstances.”
As reported previously by FE Week, Ofqual has indicated that the grading solution for VTQs is unlikely to be consistent with GCSEs and A-levels. Lebus’ letter today reiterated that “our starting point is that we cannot prescribe a single approach” to VTQs.
Colleges and training providers in the third wave of the T Level rollout are being invited to bid for a slice of £135 million to help upgrade their facilities.
The capital fund, launched today, is being made available to those that will offer the new technical qualifications from 2022. It follows previous funds that totalled £38 million for wave one, and £95 million for wave two.
Winning bidders can use the cash to upgrade classrooms and buildings, as well as to pay for specialist kit that meet industry standards.
The first three T Levels – the technical equivalent to A-levels – in construction, digital and education and childcare were launched in September 2020.
A further seven will be available from 2021 in subjects including health, science and onsite construction and subjects including finance, media and legal will be introduced from 2022 and 2023.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “The successful launch of T Levels earlier this year represents the start of a transformation in our technical education system – giving young people the vital skills they need to get ahead and giving employers the talented workforce they need to thrive as we build back better from the pandemic.
“To deliver world class qualifications providers need to have world class facilities and cutting-edge equipment, this funding will help to make sure students have the skills and knowledge to succeed when they finish their T Levels.”
As previously revealed by FE Week, colleges and training providers will have to keep on running T Levels for at least 20 years if they want to avoid handing back the millions they will receive in capital funding.
Forty four providers are in wave one of T Levels delivery. A further 64 will begin offering the qualifications in 2021, and a further 88 have been chosen for wave three beginning in 2022.
Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will take place remotely until after the February half term, the watchdog has announced.
The inspectorate had been due to begin in-person “supportive” inspections of schools from next week, but had yet to say whether its plans for restarting FE provider monitoring visits would go ahead during the national lockdown.
However, Ofsted said tonight that in “light of a change in emphasis from the government and clear advice to ‘act as if you have the virus’ over the next few weeks, we have decided that all planned inspection activity will be undertaken remotely until after the February half term”.
This applies to schools, early years and further education.
“We have sought regular advice from Public Health England and we remain satisfied that our planned on-site activity would be safe and appropriate under current restrictions. However, the new government messages and the practical challenges of deploying inspectors across England have prompted this change,” a statement said.
Remote inspections of schools and FE providers will begin from the 25 January.
Ofsted announced in December that monitoring visits, including to those with grade three and four ratings and new apprenticeship providers, would resume in January.
Inspectors were also planning ‘support and assurance’ visits to colleges, which would result in a report, but no grade, similar to the interim visits which took place last term.
The popular level 7 senior leader apprenticeship will have its funding slashed by 22 per cent when a revised version is made available in March and its controversial MBA component is axed.
In a blog post published this afternoon, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education announced that the revision of the standard is now complete following a request for it to be reviewed by education secretary Gavin Williamson last February.
The funding band for the standard had previously sat at £18,000, but will now be lowered to £14,000 when it is launched for new starts on 29 March 2021.
Funding has been cut owing to changes in the content of the apprenticeship. Today’s blog confirmed the “removal of the Masters qualification as a mandated part of the apprenticeship”.
However, it made clear that an employer “would still be free to use such a qualification to deliver the apprenticeship, so long as it aligns to the knowledge, skills and behaviours” that apprentices learn, as previously reported by FE Week.
“Apart from registration and certification costs, these would still be fundable under the levy up to the funding band limit,” the IfATE said.
The institute added: “The knowledge, skills and behaviours apprentices must learn as part of the apprenticeship standard and end-point assessment have been brought right up to date and the apprenticeship continues to align to Institute of Leadership and Management and Chartered Management Institute professional recognition.
“We are confident that this impressive training programme will serve the employers, apprentices and the wider economy well for years to come.”
The MBA component of the programme was set for the chop after Williamson said he was “unconvinced” it provides value for money.
The Department for Education has released a “remote education framework” to support colleges and training providers to identify “areas for improvement” in their online teaching.
The voluntary framework has been designed to be adapted to “fit the context of your provider” and to “signpost them to resources that can help them improve their practice”.
It comes days after the DfE published operational guidance which asks FE providers to “use your best endeavours to deliver as much of students’ planned hours as possible” during the national lockdown.
There are two framework documents: one for schools and another for FE.
The FE document states that it can help providers to meet “basic requirements” using the resources and tools they “currently have (digital or physical) and to take your remote education provision further”.
It encourages FE leaders to allocate a score of between 1 and 5 to a number of “statements”, which involve six categories: leadership, student engagement, curriculum planning and delivery, capacity and delivery, communication and safeguarding.
“Where possible, identify strengths and areas for improvement, and discuss next steps with members of the senior leadership Team and governors,” the framework says.
“The framework offers suggested actions and links to relevant support depending on scores and any gaps identified.”
For example, under curriculum and delivery, the document asks if the FE provider is “working with employers to ensure continuity of off-the-job training, assessor reviews and planning for end-point assessments”.
There are boxes for the provider to then explain their ‘strengths’ and ‘gaps’ in this area, and directs them to the DfE’s guidance on how to deliver apprenticeships during the Covid outbreak.
Providers are encouraged to work through the entire framework with the senior leadership team, which should take approximately one hour to complete, or “focus on specific sections that have been previously identified as priorities”.
Students and staff are being encouraged to keep their bodies and brains active throughout lockdown by walking, running and cycling their way to the moon with their colleges.
AoC Sport, an arm of the Association of Colleges, has launched the ‘Lunar Challenge’ to keep the FE active by travelling 238,855 miles, roughly equivalent to a one-way trip to the moon.
This is not just in aid of fitness; the main focus is on supporting mental health and wellbeing and linking to AoC Sport’s ‘5 ways to wellbeing’ initiative, which covers the themes: get active; give; take notice; connect; and keep learning.
“We want as many staff and students to get involved as possible to encourage physical activity and maintain a positive relationship to physical and mental health during the lockdown,” a post on AoC Sport’s website reads.
Having launched yesterday, the Lunar Challenge already has colleges signed up, and all AoC Sport and Natspec members can get involved by completing an online form.
Using the free Strava app, there will be a national leaderboard for cycling and running/walking, as well as a cumulative activity mileage total, so colleges can compete against one other for prizes, and there will be weekly spot challenges.
Three prizes will be on offer for the colleges which contribute the most miles towards the national total, and there will be a random prize for all participating colleges which complete 300 activities during the challenge.
On top of those, there will be prizes for the weekly spot challenges.
AoC Sport said: “All activity contributes to the college and national total, so whether this is a walk around the park, a 5km run or 15-mile cycle, everything has a positive contribution to the total, so get out and get moving!”
Winners of the leaderboard challenge will be announced by Tuesday 2 March.
The Strava app is available on Apple’s App Store or the Google Play outlet, and the Lunar Challenge is running until the end of February.
AoC Sport previously ran an ‘Around the World in 30 Days Challenge’ in November, which tasked staff and students with travelling the equivalent of one lap around the world, or 46,975 miles.
This was achieved in just 11 days and colleges ended up travelling 154,310 miles in the 30 days.
Jess Staufenberg meets a leader bending the UTC model to build the pipeline of post-16 technical learners
In March 2016, Polly Lovell was standing in front of 20 people pleading for the life of UTC Plymouth. It wasn’t even officially hers yet – the leader had departed, she’d only been in the place for three years and was now “caretaker principal” of an institution that had just got the worst exam results in the city. Sat in front of her were representatives from the Department for Education, the Baker Dearing Trust and the Royal Navy, a big employer in the port city. Nothing like a rear admiral staring at you to focus the mind.
The challenge facing Lovell, an English and drama teacher from near Liverpool, will be familiar to FE Week readers. One-third of learners at the UTC had behavioural issues, with many nearby schools using the institution as “an opportunity to move on challenging students”, she explains. There had been changes of leadership, the 2015 exam results were a “disaster” and the pressure from the DfE to close was growing. The student roll – that anxiety-inducing measure for all UTCs – was dropping. “I had to present what I was going to do with this school,” laughs Lovell, who is a mass of glorious hair and dark eyebrows. “There was me, the drama girl from the Wirral, surrounded by all these STEM people…”
After her presentation, then-national schools commissioner David Carter took Lovell outside. “We went for a little walk around the UTC, and he asked, ‘What do you need?’,” she says. “And I said, ‘Well, I really need to know if I’m going to be head, because I’m happy to do this and I’ve got ideas for it. But I just need to know.” Carter went back to the governors and called for her to be made the substantive head.
Lovell with staff in the UTC’s uniform
Two weeks later Ofsted rolled up and promptly awarded a grade 4, placing the UTC in special measures. By 2018, Lovell was again facing a cliff edge. Since 2015, when there were 220 students, following the Ofsted report she was down to just 70. Looming large nearby was City College Plymouth, also offering an engineering- and technical- focused education.
“At that point, it looked like the DfE was going to close us. We didn’t take in a year 10 group because I thought it was going to shut.” But Lovell did not give up. After speaking to her local MP, she secured an appointment with schools minister Nick Gibb and travelled to see him. “We did a begging meeting with him,” she laughs. “We explained, we’re in Plymouth – this is the home of STEM! We worked tirelessly.”
The UTC remained open and, extraordinarily, today has 320 learners on roll. Given the timeframe, it’s nothing short of a miracle. Of course, the UTC has capacity for 650 students and so remains significantly under capacity, and Ofsted has yet to return – but it’s a rise from the ashes nevertheless. How has Lovell done it?
To understand, it’s worth understanding Lovell. The daughter of a travelling salesman, she appears to know how to take risks, pull them off and sell them to others.
“My parents had missed out on their education because of the Second World War, but they were very aspirational. My dad in particular was a big influence on me around my work ethic,” explains Lovell. “He was really determined for me and my sisters to be independent and have a profession. I’d go on work experience with my dad, helping out with sales.” Her mum, meanwhile, was a “taskmaster – you went to school even if you were sick or didn’t want to. That’s influenced the way I am and my values.”
Lovell at home in the Wirral as a young child
Lovell is that rare mix of creative, curious and restless – she says she’s lived in about “56 places” – alongside a disciplined, tightly organised approach, qualities that together have likely got her to where she is. Having got poor GCSEs, she attended an FE college in Cheshire and blossomed under good lecturers within the drama department. During her degree Lovell spent a year in Portland, Oregon, enjoying “the freedom of America” so much that after graduating she “bought a one-way ticket to New York” aged 22 and didn’t look back. She moved to Chicago to work in music festivals and for a theatre company. But aged 29, it could have looked a bleak scene. Her father had passed away and she returned home from the US with two young children, disillusioned with the “life of a starving artist”, some sales experience and no maths GCSE.
Again, Lovell turned to FE colleges. “I did night school courses, in A-level psychology and computer courses, and I did my maths GCSE, whilst working a full-time job with two children.” An application to a primary school PGCE was turned down on the basis her degree was not in a “core” subject; but undaunted, Lovell used the Monday she had off from her retail job to volunteer in a school. She was eventually accepted on to a secondary PGCE, going on to work under Dame Sue John in west London, became head of year at a secondary in Exeter, a deputy head at an emotional and behavioural difficulties school in Devon and an assistant head at a pupil referral unit. At the same time, she trained as a special educational needs co-ordinator.
Lovell’s acting headshot in Chicago
Then, just when everything was getting “very parochial”, Lovell moved back to Chicago with her teenage children to take a role with publishing company Pearson, setting up online learning for schools, years before Covid-19 arrived and when everyone was still using Webex. Did she know much about online learning, I ask?
“I had no experience in online learning. It was scary at first!”
Time and again, Lovell has taken risks. She speaks often about making a “sales” pitch to convince others to get on board with her, whether it’s the importance of drama studies for all students (in one school she increased uptake from 40 per cent to 90 per cent); or, as with the UTC, the case for its continued existence. Despite having had her Scouse accent elocutioned out of her in her drama degree, she retains all the charm of a Liverpudlian. Also, it turns out, all the no-nonsense.
I blink rapidly when Lovell tells me, only half-jokingly, that she believes in the “militarisation of the UTC” – a smart, disciplined workforce of learners who are expecting to meet their prospective employer any minute. “I gained a lot from the Royal Navy on ideas of how to turn around a school. If you look at recruits in a passing out parade, there’s three sets: the ones who have just arrived, the ones in training and the ones passing out. The ones passing out present themselves and stand differently.” She looks at me. “What I want to know is, what did the Royal Navy do that we can do?”
Lovell, her husband and their dog
Now Lovell has applied this mix of entrepreneurialism, risk-taking and strategic focus to the very model of the UTC itself. To start with, in October 2018 UTC Plymouth joined the Reach South Academy Trust. This was the very same year in which Lord Baker said he didn’t want UTCs “watered down, and that is the danger if they get into a MAT”. But just a year later Baker had revisited his position, saying instead that “membership of a MAT is an important way to help UTCs succeed”. The interesting point is that Lovell and her headteacher, Jo Ware, now have a direct line of access to other schools in the same group. As Lovell puts it, “I’ve got eight Reach primaries around Plymouth.”
Her second move was to begin accepting year 7s for the first time in 2020, breaking with the UTC model of accepting entrants in year 10, aged 14. There are currently 94 year 7s, and 96 are expected next year for a year group with capacity for 120 – fairly healthy numbers. Her student roll today reads like a history of the UTC’s fortunes: year 9 has 92, year 10 has 50, year 11 has 42, year 12 has 30 and year 13 has just 17. But if Lovell and Ware can keep it up with the younger years, they’re developing a formidable pipeline for post-16 technical and vocational education. These are learners who, by the time they reach year 12, will have been embedded in the industry-focused, skills-based ethos of UTCs since they were 11 years old.
And although Lovell was not the first to do this (Leigh UTC in Kent was an early pioneer), others are following. Engineering UTC Northern Lincolnshire, for instance, welcomed year 7s this September.
In many ways, Lovell herself encompasses the UTC model – having failed GCSEs, taken unusual paths, been career- rather than academically focused and suiting FE more than school life, she understands these learners. She breathes pride in the model, describing how one of her most challenging students has just been taken on as an apprentice technician at the UTC, or how other students developed an app that is now in regular use by the Royal Navy.
I gained a lot from the Royal Navy on ideas of how to turn around a school
But to prove the model, Lovell has also had to change it – she is in a multi-academy trust of schools, and the pretence that recruiting at 14 works has been dropped. When I ask if year 7 recruitment is the future for UTCS, she says, “If you’re in a large area where you’ve got a number of students who can come to you, it’s fine. But if it’s a smaller town like ours, it makes sense.” I suspect more UTCs will follow her example, and recruit in year 7.
In which case, won’t UTCs arguably be schools rather than colleges? The way they have evolved is unlikely to be what Lord Baker anticipated when he proposed them in 2010.
But as a route to technical education post-16, it’s got legs. Lovell is seeing to that.
FE staff should be moved up the priority list for Covid-19 vaccines so that providers can reopen to all students safely, college principals have said.
Ministers have been under pressure to vaccinate teachers, with a petition being debated in parliament this evening and education secretary Gavin Williamson saying he “hopes” those working in education get priority.
Earlier today the government published its “vaccine delivery plan”, which explains how doses will be provided to those most at risk before deciding on how “phase 2” will be delivered.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has asked the Department of Health and Social Care to consider occupational vaccination in the next phase of vaccine rollout, in collaboration with other government departments including the Department for Education.
While most of the talk has been about school staff being given priority in phase 2, Ali Hadawi, principal of Central Bedfordshire College, said FE “needs to be part of” the discussion.
“I am not saying our staff should be prioritised above NHS staff or the police, but we can’t just be run-of-the-mill depending on our age,” he told FE Week.
“We have got a sector that needs to be fully operational. College staff need to be part of this priority so that we have a chance to reopen them safely.”
He added that it would be a “massive insult” if school but not FE staff were given vaccine priority.
“We have had examples of where we have had to send a whole site home after three members of staff tested positive,” Hadawi continued.
“If we can get over the issue of vaccination where people feel confident that they could come in because they have had the vaccine, then we can facilitate a much closer to normal college operation than we are now.”
Mike Hopkins, principal of South and City College, echoed Hadawi’s view.
“Like schools, college staff need to be a priority for vaccination to ensure that they can maintain staffing and remain open,” he said.
“Vaccination will remove the serious difficulties that there are currently with contact, infection, and requirements for self-isolation, all of which are shared with schools.”
Yiannis Koursis, principal of Barnsley College, said getting students physically back in class is “hugely important” and treating staff as a priority group would “speed up the process”, while NCG chief executive Liz Bromley added it is “only fair that FE is treated with parity and added to the priority vaccine list alongside schools”.
Independent training providers with onsite staff are also calling for their workforce to be given vaccine priority.
Sue Pittock, chief executive of Remit Trianing, which operates two automotive academies for apprentices in Derby, told FE Week: “The tutors in our academies are key workers and need vaccine and testing priority so that we can reopen our academies safely.
“This should not just be about teachers in schools, but about protecting teaching colleagues and those they teach in any place of learning where teaching takes place face to face.”
Last Wednesday, health secretary Matthew Hancock said teachers had a “very strong case” for priority after clinically vulnerable groups.
As reported by FE Week’s sister title FE Week, this could mean that teachers who did not fall under existing priority categories could be moved up the queue above the last five groups set out by the JCVI for the first phase (see table below).
Under the priority groups for the first phase of vaccine rollout, those over 50 years of age, and all those 16 years of age and over in a risk group, would be eligible for vaccination.
The government plans to deliver “at least” two million vaccinations per week with over 2,700 vaccine sites across the UK.
Priority Risk group
1. Residents in a care home for older adults and staff working in care homes for older adults
2. All those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
3. All those 75 years of age and over
4. All those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals (not including pregnant women and those under 16 years of age)
5. All those 65 years of age and over
6. Adults aged 16 to 65 years in an at-risk group (see below)
