Employers should pay for apprentices’ digital devices to continue training remotely, Gillian Keegan said today as she confirmed learners at independent providers will not be offered them for free by government.
Speaking on an FE Week webcast this afternoon, the skills minister claimed that independent providers would not be included in government initiatives to hand out devices to 16 to 19-year-olds during lockdown as most of their learners will be employed and not taking full-time courses.
She said it was ultimately up to employers to give their apprentices the devices.
“First of all, apprentices are employees, so their employers are responsible for their technology,” the minister said.
“I was an apprentice myself, and if I was an apprentice today, I’m sure I would be expecting to get that support from my employer. It seems to me that’s where you would get your technology from, you know.
“It isn’t the government and the state’s job, obviously, to give everybody across the country, a PC. I mean it just isn’t.”
This is despite the fact the Department for Education, in December, announced their programme to deliver free digital devices to education providers to order would be expanded to 16 to 19-year-olds studying at both schools and colleges.
Keegan continued: “That can be looked at and kept under review but to be honest, many of the people in FE colleges are doing full time courses and a lot of people that are in independent training providers will quite often be employed and quite often their employer will be responsible for making sure that they’ve got the right equipment to be able to work from home to study from home.
“But if there are any specific instances where that’s not the case, then you know we always keep things under review, but I haven’t heard, specifically about that issue, within the sector.
After Keegan made her remarks, FE data expert Steve Hewitt highlighted how in 2020-21, there will be 36,213, mainly full time, 16 to 19-year-olds placed with an independent training provider.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers managing director Jane Hickie said they recognised government had to prioritise, but said to “simply pass the buck to the employer is not the answer.
Jane Hickie
“In a normal year, three quarters of a million apprentices are on a programme spread across all parts of the country, half of them work for small, now many struggling, businesses and many of them come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
“How the minister expects firms to be driving down to their local PC World to bulk buy laptops is quite beyond our understanding. Where is the levelling up agenda in all this?”
The webcast was run in partnership with Pearson, was hosted by TV presenter Steph McGovern, and also featured Pearson’s senior vice president for BTEC and apprenticeships Cindy Rampersaud, Learning and Work Institute chief executive Stephen Evans, Barking and Dagenham College principal Yvonne Kelly, WorldSkills UK gold medallist Haydn Jakes, and BTEC adult learner Feven Zeray.
If the long-anticipated White Paper doesn’t recognise the needs of 2021, then it will fail like so many initiatives before it, write Mark Dawe and Tim Blackman
We have both spent our careers working in education and training – from primary schools to PhD researchers – and there is no doubt that the Covid crisis is the biggest shock to education we have ever seen.
Both our organisations are also leading providers of high-quality courses that use technology to enable flexibility for learners.
Because of Covid, never has this flexibility been more important.
So with the FE White Paper due any day, we have agreed a seven-point checklist to measure its suitability for the 21st century world.
1. A joined-up tertiary education system
We are in an age of converging technologies, rapid change and increasingly hybrid job roles.
It is an age when everyone needs to keep learning but often on a climbing frame rather than a ladder, mixing knowledge, skills and levels.
The old world of separate further and higher education sectors is for the last century, not this one.
We need to create a whole system of seamless tertiary education that supports lifelong learning, with common qualification frameworks, standards and funding.
2. Empower the learner
We are more and more used to shopping online and using data to inform our purchasing decisions.
Now is the opportunity to put the system in the hands of the informed learner, whether choosing an apprenticeship, a degree, a technical qualification or short courses.
Selection should be fair and transparent, and for many courses we need far less selection. Many entry requirements are narrow, traditional and ignore the capability of students especially when not demonstrated by formal qualifications.
A lifelong funding or credit entitlement would revolutionise the funding and support system, introducing flexible fee and maintenance support over a working lifetime.
Public policy priorities such as digital literacy should be designed into the system using funding conditions and incentives.
3. Unbundle qualifications
Full qualifications are important when necessary for occupational competency or to demonstrate academic achievement, but how someone gets there and the flexibility of options should not be rigid and time-bound.
That is not how society and the economy work any more.
Instead, learners should be able to build a collection of units over time, each recognised in their own right but contributing towards to an overarching “fully qualified” status, in which constant change means that “fully qualified” will be seen as a moving end-point.
Every year there will be new units, as technology changes the way roles are defined and the skills that are needed. Rather than once-and-for-all training and education, the norm should be to top-up, receive formal recognition and then progress.
4. Progression and articulation
Along with unitisation we need clear progression pathways through levels of learning, which allow learners to fluidly mix levels and skills.
Occupational standards are helpful frameworks but cannot become straightjackets, artificially creating silos of learning that are detached from the reality of how job content changes and new types of job continually emerge.
It must be possible to mix and match units relevant to what a learner or job needs.
5. Hard skills
We are in the human age, when human skills – what cannot be done by a machine – are more important than ever.
It is time to rename soft skills as hard skills: these are the ability to work in a diverse team, to communicate empathetically, to solve complex problems and above all learnability, which is the ability to find out, evaluate, innovate and improve.
Time and again these skills are sacrificed in the pursuit of exhaustive definitions of industry-specific technical content packaged in a qualification that quickly dates.
We’ve got this the wrong way around: human skills should be the core units of every programme at every level. They are what make people employable and mobile in a dynamic labour market.
6. Diversity as a resource
Everyone is different and a team full of difference is a highly functioning team. Diversity prevents narrow framing of problems, puts more possible solutions on the table, and avoids groupthink.
Education can support diversity by enabling learners to study different topics that create opportunities for innovation and learn how to work with other specialisms towards a common goal.
7. Online and upwards
Mainstream education and training are no longer just about buildings, classrooms, lecture theatres or workshops.
Any policy that favours these over digital technology risks making the publicly-funded system a dinosaur in a digital world.
Of course, there are challenges such as digital poverty to overcome, and blended approaches will always be in the mix.We are not advocating every piece of learning going fully online. But the OU is already using augmented and virtual reality to make practical learning “real” and enabling its students to undertake lab experiments operating equipment remotely.
This transformation will be dramatic, far beyond current virtual learning environments.
If the White Paper can demonstrate that it sets us on this path, we welcome it wholeheartedly.
If it does not, then it will join the failed promise of so many other education and training policy papers.
This is not about being brave or taking risks. It is about how our world is changing and how education and training need to smell the coffee.
The tender for the nationwide rollout of the government’s technical skills “boot camps” has been launched, with £36 million from the National Skills Fund on offer.
The Department for Education has invited suppliers to bid for two lots, both worth £18 million: the first for digital skills boot camps in the nine geographical regions of England to “meet the skills shortage vacancy needs of local areas”, starting this April.
The second will award “a number” of contracts for boot camps in sectors such as electrotechnical, nuclear or green energy, but also for digital skills, at a local or national level, based on “evidenced demand”.
Both will last for one year, with the possibility of a one-year extension for lot one and two one-year extensions for lot two, and start this April, when the National Skills Fund is due to be rolled-out.
People aged 19 and over seeking work, looking to change careers, or already in work looking to retrain are again set to benefit from the up to 16-week-long boot camps, which the tender says will “meet the needs of employers and to address the skills shortages vacancies in different regions of England,” and will include a guaranteed job interview for those seeking employment.
The DfE said it anticipates that at least 75 per cent of all trainees will “move into a new job or role within six months of completing training”.
The department is looking for suppliers with a track record of engaging with employers and delivering training which meets their needs, who can recruit trainees, can flex delivery to meet their needs, can track trainees’ destinations, manage the guaranteed job interviews, and report outcomes for evaluation purposes.
According to the tender, the DfE “strongly encourage local area bodies, employers and providers to come together in consortia” to bid.
These consortiums, which must bid as a single legal entity, should include a lead supplier such as a local authority, local enterprise partnership, or mayoral combined authority, and a guarantor to alleviate the department’s concerns about “the economic and financial standing of such single legal entity, or in relation to the technical and professional ability of the same”.
The lead supplier will have to state which employers are involved with the bid and show how they have helped design and approved the training.
Payment to providers will be on an agreed rate for each learner, and 30 per cent will be earned for a start on the boot camp, for example, if a learner completes their first, full week, or after a set number of guided learning hours.
Sixty per cent will be earned if a learner achieves the boot camp’s required standard, which will be defined by the provider at the bidding stage, including evidence of how learners will be assessed, what quality assurance is in place and whether training is externally validated.
And the final ten per cent will be earned by a learner progressing into a new job within six months, or if there is a change in role for learners who are already employed, or if self-employed learners can find new opportunities.
FE Week has previously reported the national roll-out would be worth £43 million, and as this tender is worth £36 million overall, the Department for Education has said details about the remaining £7 million will be announced “in due course”.
Potential suppliers have until 12 February to submit tenders for both lots.
After a week at sea like no other, the next big challenge is teacher-assessed grades, writes David Hughes
This week we’ve seen another lockdown, confusion, dismay and anxieties raised – and that’s just in education.
The prime minister’s third lockdown announcement on Monday night incorporated the surprising decision to go ahead with the January series of vocational and technical exams while cancelling the summer exams.
For colleges that meant 135,000 students sitting in exam halls at the peak of the pandemic.
Our immediate public call for those exams to be cancelled was based on a simple assessment that too many students would be nervous about sitting exams – for their health and because of the risk of transmitting the virus to their own families.
That anxiety is not conducive to good performance in any exam and we believed it should have been enough to convince government to cancel. On top of that, the challenge of finding staff to invigilate and steward the exams felt like the clincher.
The response from Department for Education was to make half a U-turn, giving the responsibility to each college and school to decide whether to cancel or not. Many cancelled immediately, others did so after low turnout on the first day of exams, while others still are going ahead.
On Wednesday, education secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed that Ofqual will consult next week on how teacher-assessed grades can be used to replace exams.
The work to pull together that consultation is burning up the midnight oil of lots of officials this week, to hit tight deadlines.
One of the big challenges now is how to take into account the disruptions in learning that students have already experienced. This differs across different institutions, areas and qualification types – but it is also impacted by digital poverty, with around 100,000 16- to 19-year olds in colleges alone lacking digital devices and broadband. And of course, it differs because some students have been ill, had to self-isolate or shield, while others have not.
This is not easy to assess, but those who already faced the biggest barriers to success will be the most affected. The pandemic has widened and deepened the educational disadvantage gaps. How will the promised moderation account for this?
We are working hard to ensure that the consultation offers a coherent, consistent and fair approach to all qualifications for all ages, types of learning and students. The complexity of vocational and technical qualifications will make this harder than for A-levels and GCSEs which are relatively straightforward.
Half a million 16- to 18-year-old students across 239 colleges are taking vocational and technical qualifications.
Meanwhile, 155,000 16 to 18-year-olds are taking A-levels or programmes that combine vocational qualifications and A-levels.
Then there are 200,000 16-to-18-year-olds taking GCSEs in English and or maths and 130,000 taking Functional Skills.
This is in addition to one million adult learners and 250,000 apprentices.
We owe it to all these students to ensure that they know as soon as possible how their hard work over the past year or two will be recognised. Being “fair” to students requires making judgments about what knowledge and skills they have acquired, as well as their achievements in relation to national benchmarks and other students.
For those on licence to practice courses, there will have to be face-to-face assessments of competency before it is safe for students to go into the workplace. For other qualifications there will be banked assessments already.
So fairness is not about the same approach for everyone, it is a consistent approach designed for the specific circumstances – tricky to get right and even harder to communicate.
The prime minister said that by the middle of February and with “a fair wind in our sails” the progress of the vaccination programme would hopefully mean restrictions could begin to be lifted.
But we need to steady the ship now, with rapid, clear and transparent decisions based on trust in those who know students best.
Ofqual’s new interim chief has warned that the solution to replacing this summer’s exams “won’t be the same for all” qualifications.
Simon Lebus, the former Cambridge Assessment group chief executive, offered a message to students to continue to engage “as fully as you can” in education on Wednesday morning ahead of the education secretary’s speech that outlined his plans for grades this summer.
Gavin Williamson announced that it was his desire for teacher-assessed grades to replace GCSE and A-level exams again in 2021, but questions remain about whether the same approach will be adopted for vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs).
Lebus, who only took over from his predecessor Dame Glenys Stacey on Friday, suggested the approaches will differ: “The way ahead is not straightforward: exams and standardised assessments are the fairest way of determining what a student knows and can do,” he said.
“We need to consider a wide range of qualifications – from A-levels and GCSEs to many different vocational and technical qualifications – and the solution won’t be the same for all.”
Centre-assessed grades were introduced for some VTQ learners last year to replace exams, while others were allowed to have their assessments adapted by, for example, using online tests, and the rest had their assessments delayed.
Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief policy offer Simon Ashworth has urged Ofqual not to create a two-tier grading system again.
“Instead of the government and Ofqual talking about different types of solutions for different forms of qualifications, we need a fair and consistent approach between academic and vocational pathways,” he told FE Week.
“Otherwise there’s a danger of reopening a big divide and undoing all the work to bring better parity between the two as part of the levelling up agenda.”
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes echoed Ashworth’s view: “It is vital that the proposed way forward is consistent and fair to every student because of the worry and confusion that abounds currently, particularly following the mixed message that January exams are going ahead while this summer’s exams are cancelled.”
He added: “As well as young people, there are around 250,000 apprentices and one million adult students studying for qualifications in colleges. Decisions for all qualification types need to be made and communicated as soon as possible, so we welcome the speed at which the government has committed to work on this.
“Not only do the plans need to be fair, comprehensive, inclusive and robust; they also need to be agreed quickly, communicated clearly and be flexible enough to work in practice.”
Arv Kaushal, Equality, diversity and inclusion manager, Milton Keynes College
Start date: January 2021
Concurrent job: Trustee and steering committee member, BAMEed Network
Interesting fact: He is a “massive foodie,” and writes a blog on traditional Indian vegetarian recipes
Ian Pryce, Chair, UTC Silverstone
Start date: December 2020
Concurrent job: Chief executive, The Bedford College Group
Interesting fact: His first job out of university was ensuring Liverpool remained solvent, as part of his work on the city council’s finance team in the 1980s
Ian Bauckham, Interim chair, Ofqual
Start date: January 2021
Concurrent job: Chair, Oak National Academy
Interesting fact: He enjoys visiting medieval churches
Simon Lebus, Interim chief regulator, Ofqual
Start date: January 2021
Concurrent job: Visiting fellow, University of Cambridge Judge Business School
Interesting fact: He is a great enthusiast for Chinese food, the spicier the better
The outcomes for the government’s traineeships tender have been delayed, the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced today.
In a message to bidders at 3pm this afternoon, the agency said the “high volume of tenders received” has “necessitated having to inform you that notifications of award will be delayed slightly”.
The ESFA had planned to notify bidders of outcomes on 11 January, but it will now aim to publish a revised timetable next week.
FE Week has asked the agency if this means the planned contract award date of 1 February will also be delayed. We had not received a response at the time of going to press.
It is being run on an “accelerated” timetable, with a slice of £65 million up for grabs initially to be spent between February and July 31, 2021. The total pot will be split across nine regions in England – ranging from £20.8 million for London providers to just £2.6 million for the south-west.
The £65 million tender is hoped to fund around 20,000 starts in the latter half of 2020/21, while a further £315 million was made available to support continued delivery through to July 2023.
The tender is one way the government plans to triple the number of traineeships starts this year – as pledged by chancellor Rishi Sunak over the summer as part of his plan to combat youth unemployment amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Employer cash incentives of £1,000 have also been made available, as has growth funding for providers to deliver 16-to-19 traineeships.
The Department for Education has finally updated its main Covid-19 guidance document to include details of how FE leaders should handle this year’s partial college and training provider closures.
Many of the instructions on how to keep providers Covid-secure are similar to or the same as they were before, but there are some new instructions.
Here’s what we learned.
Students who have difficulty accessing remote education can attend onsite
Colleges and training providers should only stay open to vulnerable learners and children with at least one parent who is a critical worker during the new national lockdown.
The definition of vulnerable students has now been updated to include those who “may have difficulty engaging with remote education at home”, for example due to a “lack of devices, connectivity or quiet space to study”.
The government has removed a previous rule that students who need access to specialist equipment can still attend.
Providers must now make alternative arrangements for students studying courses that require specialist equipment or facilities.
Remote education expectations
The DfE does not provide set hours for how much remote education needs to be provided like in schools, but rather asks FE providers to “use your best endeavours to deliver as much of students’ planned hours as possible”.
The department “recognises for some students this may not be possible for example where a student is undertaking a course involving practical teaching and training which necessitates the use of specialist equipment and supervision or with respect to work experience and placements”.
Providers are expected to have systems in place to check, at least weekly, for “persistent non-attendance or lack of engagement with remote education and to quickly agree ways in which attendance and participation can be improved”.
They are also told to identify a “named senior leader” with “overarching responsibility for the quality and delivery of remote education”, as well as publish details of their remote education offer on their website by 18 January, as previously announced.
Providers are told to “as far as possible” provide students live online teaching in lieu of face-to-face delivery.
Apprentice assessment can continue face-to-face
The DfE says that “where possible”, apprenticeship training and assessment should be delivered remotely.
But where this is not possible face-to-face end-point assessment and functional skills assessments “can continue in colleges, training providers’ premises, assessment venues and workplaces, where providers and end-point assessment organisations judge it right to do so”.
The guidance also confirms that providers can continue with the BTEC and other vocational exams that are due to take place in January, where they “judge it right to do so”.
Under national lockdown, face coverings should be worn by adults and students when “moving around the premises, outside of classrooms, such as in corridors and communal areas where social distancing cannot easily be maintained”.
New advice for clinically vulnerable staff
According to the DfE, clinically extremely vulnerable FE staff and students are “advised that they should not attend the workplace”. These individuals will be identified “through a letter from the NHS or a specialist doctor”.
Clinically vulnerable staff can continue to attend work, but should follow sector-specific measures to “minimise the risks of transmission”.
Pregnant staff are considered clinically vulnerable, but if they cannot work from home, they and their employers should follow the government’s advice for pregnant employees.
Special settings should continue as normal
The DfE says that special post-16 settings should “continue to welcome and encourage students to attend full-time (or as per their usual timetable) where the student wishes to attend”.
Unclear if Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will go ahead from this month
Ofsted had 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.
But the DfE said today that for FE and skills providers inspection activity “remains under review and more guidance will be published in due course,” the DfE said.
However, Ofsted will “continue to have the power to inspect in response to any significant concerns, such as safeguarding”.
Support for remote education
The DfE reiterated that the 16 to 19 Bursary Fund provides financial support to help students access devices and connectivity support.
The department also announced in December that their ‘Get Help with Technology’ scheme will be extended to provide support with devices and connectivity for 16 to 19 year olds. Schools with sixth forms, colleges and other FE institutions will be “invited to order laptops and tablets during the spring term to further support disadvantaged learners to access remote education”.
For adults aged 19 and over “we introduced a change to the ESFA adult education budget funding rules for the 2020/21 academic year to enable you to use learner support funds to purchase IT devices and/or internet access for disadvantaged students to help them meet technology costs, where these costs are a barrier to accessing or continuing in their training,” the DfE added.
The January vocational exam series descended into chaos at the start of the week as the government passed the buck to colleges to decide whether they go ahead, while telling the rest of the nation to “stay at home” as the new variant of Covid-19 causes cases to spiral.
In a live TV broadcast on Monday, prime minister Boris Johnson announced a third national lockdown and that schools, colleges and training providers in England will now be closed to most students until at least mid-February, with this summer’s exams also cancelled.
But in a move that caused outrage across the FE sector, the Department for Education swiftly confirmed that BTEC and other vocational exams planned for the next three weeks and which involve around 135,000 students would still go ahead.
While college leaders scrambled to try and make sense of the decision, membership and awarding bodies were lobbying behind the scenes for ministers to cancel the exams altogether amid safety fears.
But they were only met with further confusion on Tuesday night when the DfE backtracked and said that schools and colleges can now cancel the assessments, but left it up to leaders to decide.
“In light of the evolving public health measures, schools and colleges can continue with the vocational and technical exams that are due to take place in January, where they judge it right to do so,” was the official line.
While the education secretary Gavin Williamson was slammed in parliament for the move, with MPs accusing him of “failing to show leadership”, college bosses were left with decisions to make in the most difficult of circumstances.
After speaking with many of them, FE Week has found that leaders have taken a variety of decisions: cancel all exams; cancel some but not all; continue with all exams as planned, with some offering students the choice. The majority cancelled, and some even had students sitting exams on Tuesday before scrapping the rest following the DfE’s halft U-turn that night.
Here are some examples of colleges in each of the categories and their reasons for the decision they made.
All exams cancelled
The Sheffield College made the decision to postpone all of its January exams on Monday, ahead of the DfE’s backtrack, insisting that this was “not a decision we have made lightly, but student and staff safety must come first”.
Around 950 students were due to sit exams at the college over the next two weeks in curriculum areas such as animal care, aviation, science, carpentry, hairdressing, health and social care, information technology, motor vehicle, and painting and decorating.
Principal Angela Foulkes said that in stopping the assessments during this national lockdown she is calling for them to be “postponed and rescheduled to a later date which would be safer for our students and staff”, rather than being scrapped altogether.
Angela Foulkes
Loughborough College made the same call, explaining that with a surge in local infection rates and due to the volume of learners who “travel from outside our area to sit exams”, postponing is the “safest option”.
Capital City College Group, which has campuses scattered across the Covid-19 hotspot of London, said that it also took this decision as cases in the capital worsen.
“To continue with these exams would disadvantage students who, for whatever reason, can’t come to college to sit an exam, and would place those students who do come in – and the members of our staff who must be present at exams – at a greater risk of infection,” a spokesperson said.
“We know that our students have worked so hard to prepare for their exams. We are very sorry for the distress and annoyance caused by cancelling them at short notice.”
A spokesperson for Harlow College, meanwhile, said Covid-19 case rates in young people and adults in its area are “high” and, given the prime minister’s instruction to “stay at home as much as possible”, they “felt it was only safe and fair, to both our students and staff, to cancel the exams in order to protect our community’s health and safety”.
NCG chief executive Liz Bromley, who runs seven colleges across England, added that while her group “recognises that there are many benefits to continuing with exams” they “do not feel it is right to ask students to travel to attend exams” in light of the “national lockdown, a new strain of Covid-19 and high transmission rates across the localities of our colleges”.
All of those that have cancelled the exams have promised that students will not be disadvantaged, and they will work with Ofqual and the relevant awarding bodies to implement “fair” solutions.
Some but not all exams cancelled
Central Bedfordshire College has decided to cancel the majority of its exams but to go ahead with some where it would be “advantageous” for students.
Principal Ali Hadawi said his team “considered in detail whether it is possible to run these exams safely for students, invigilators and teachers and whether any student or a group of students would be disadvantaged by not completing them”.
“The guiding principle for the college is that students must not be disadvantaged, including the considerable additional emotional and mental pressure as well as the safety of students and staff,” he added.
Ali Hadawi
Exams that will not go ahead include, for example, BTECs in engineering, where students missed a chunk of learning last month owing to either student or staff self-isolation and still had some way to go to complete the course.
But BTECs in IT, for example, will go ahead in “enhanced safety arrangements” as learners had already completed some modules and needed to sit this month’s exams to complete. All exams offered by exam board AAT will also go ahead.
Dudley College is taking a similar approach. A spokesperson said they have cancelled “any BTEC exams in favour of delivering these later in the year once the awarding body confirms arrangements” but they will continue to offer “other exams, such as AAT and electrical”.
The assessments continuing to be on offer involve those that need to be sat because they lead to immediate career options.
“The college has safe arrangements in place and is therefore happy to offer exams in January, but will focus these on priority areas where it supports students due to achieve,” a spokesperson said.
They added that the college does however “recognise that some students may be unable or unwilling to attend at this stage due to issues with travel, concerns about Covid-19 or family vulnerabilities”.
So anyone who does not attend exams in January will be “entered for a future date as soon as we are advised of these by the awarding body”.
All exams continue (but giving students the choice)
East Kent College Group said it has already supported around 500 students to sit their exams this week after receiving “overwhelming feedback” from students who were keen to attend.
They told their students it was up to them if they attended and have achieved an average turnout of around 80 per cent so far this week.
For those who choose not to sit the exams, the college has pledged to do “everything to ensure that future opportunities for sitting the examination are made available” and that “alternatively, the government may offer alternative forms of assessment”.
A spokesperson said it was important to allow students, who have been preparing for the exams for years in some cases, the opportunity to sit them in order to progress.
David Lambert
London South East Colleges, which has campuses across the capital and is also in a Covid-19 hotspot area, has made the same decision. Deputy chief executive David Lambert told FE Week the college group had a 50 to 60 per cent turnout on Thursday – its first day of exams. Around 800 exams are scheduled to take place over the coming weeks.
In a letter to students, the college said: “After very detailed consideration, we have decided to let our students have a choice.
“We know how hard so many of you have worked for these exams, that you will be disappointed not to take them and that you would like the exams to take place.”
Weston College, based in Weston-super-Mare, has taken a similar approach. “We appreciate that some learners are reliant on completing exams to secure licence-to-practice status or a professional status that is important to their career or advancement in work. Where our learners are able and want to take the exam they have prepared for, we will allow them the opportunity to do so. The college will therefore continue with the agreed timetable of exams in January,” a spokesperson said.
FE Week asked the college what the turnout had been like for the exams that had already taken place this week, but the college did not respond at the time of going to press.
Additionally, Telford College has around 20 different vocational exams taking place over the next fortnight. Construction exams went ahead on Wednesday and saw nearly 90 per cent attendance, while music assessments ran on Thursday and had a 100 per cent turnout, according to a spokesperson.
Principal Graham Guest said: “We recognise that it is going to be particularly important to press ahead where we can with exams for vocational training qualifications which can only be fulfilled through practical assessment.”
