Colleges and schools have missed two-thirds of their T Level enrolment targets, with digital proving to be the toughest subject to sell to students, according to early findings from an FE Week survey.

But leaders are still celebrating the initial figures, which could increase slightly as recruitment continues in the coming weeks, considering the impact of Covid-19 and the chaos of this summer’s GCSE exams.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan said the early indications were that recruitment had progressed “well in the circumstances” and produced a “viable cohort” across the country.

The first ever T Levels – which have been five years in the making and described as the “gold standard” in technical education to sit alongside their academic equivalent A-levels – launched this month in three subjects: construction, digital and education and childcare.

In what is believed to be the first analysis of T Level recruitment, FE Week asked each of the 44 colleges and schools set to teach the new qualifications how many learners they had managed to enrol against the target they set in each subject at the beginning of the year.

Twelve colleges and four school sixth forms were able to provide breakdowns and, between them, they had set 28 different enrolment targets. Of those, 19 (or 68 per cent) were under target.

Colleges and schools found construction the easiest subject to attract students, followed by education and childcare (see table).

Digital proved to be the biggest challenge. Eleven of the 16 colleges and schools that spoke to FE Week are teaching the digital T Level, and nine of those failed to meet their “modest” targets.

Colleges said that there was an issue with young people’s understanding of the careers available through a digital qualification.

When combining all of the data provided by the 16 schools and colleges, the figures show that 143 students have enrolled on construction courses against a target of 118 (21 per cent above target), 267 students have enrolled on the education and childcare T Level against a target of 289 (8 per cent below target), and 127 have started a digital T Level against a target of 168 (24 per cent below target).

Some colleges were able to buck the trend, however, with Chichester College Group – which is based in Keegan’s constituency – standing out in particular.

The group set a target of 12 students for digital but ended up enrolling 21. It aimed for 24 in construction but has taken on 43 students and, for education and childcare, it sought 18 students but actually enrolled 39.

The recruitment success at the group, which encompasses five colleges in the south of England, has led to it forming additional T Level classes to cater for the larger than expected cohorts.

A Chichester College Group spokesperson said they were “surprised” at just how well the recruitment had gone in each subject, and put its success down to an “integrated but consistent” marketing approach over the past year.

This included a “dedicated digital marketing campaign” that mostly involved paid-for social media adverts, targeted at 16 and 17-year-olds mainly on Facebook, as well as Google adverts.

The group’s “robust” school liaison team had also made pupils in neighbouring schools fully aware of T Levels over the past year, including virtually when the pandemic hit.

Chichester’s spokesperson added that the extra time that students and parents had to research T Levels over the summer, as well as the achievement of centre assessed grades – which were reportedly inflated in many cases – will “all have contributed to our recruitment”.

While FE Week’s survey offers an indication of early T Level recruitment, a full comprehensive view of demand is unlikely to be available for some months to come.

Bridgwater and Taunton College, for example, said it was staggering its enrolment process this year because of Covid-19 and was therefore not yet able to provide any figures for T Levels.

Many other colleges told this publication that their enrolment processes will continue into late September.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told MPs on the education select committee this week that the early response from his members was that there is “good demand from young people and they’ve got employers wanting to do work placements”.

He added: “It is a good start – but it is very low numbers.”

Hughes continued: “The really important bit is sticking at it and making it work and adapting it over time. It’s very easy just to kick them and say they are wrong.

“Everyone needs to get behind T Levels because we need really good high-status technical education for young people with a sense of a broad programme which helps young people to develop a broad range of skills for their whole career.”

When the timeline for rolling out the first three T Levels was announced, the Department for Education set a target of recruiting around 2,000 students in the first year.

In order to increase interest, ministers launched a £3 million “NexT Level” campaign in October 2019. This was controversially put on hold in the first few months of lockdown following orders from the Cabinet Office to focus adverts on updates about the coronavirus pandemic.

Answering a parliamentary question from Damian Hinds, a former education secretary, on early T Level recruitment numbers this week, Keegan said: “All indications are that recruitment has progressed well in the circumstances and a viable cohort of young people will benefit from taking these new, high quality qualifications, leaving them in a great position to move into skilled employment or further training.”

The skills minister added that having 44 colleges and schools teaching the first T Levels this September was “testament to the hard work and dedication of staff in these organisations”.

While T Level numbers appear to be getting off the ground slowly, it would appear recruitment of 16 to 18-year-olds across other level 3 courses in colleges more generally are booming, as FE Week found after speaking with seven leaders this week (see page 18 of this week’s FE Week edition).

The first new university technical college to open its doors for two years has been deluged with students, while its licensing body says that admissions across the network have shot up after years of underrecruitment.

Doncaster UTC has vastly exceeded its recruitment target of 160 students, with nearly double that number starting lessons this week.

The Baker-Dearing Trust (BDT), which licenses the UTC brand, told FE Week that this tallies with a significant increase in its colleges’ total student population across England. It shared statistics which showed a 12 per cent increase as of this September compared with the same time last year, from 14,202 in 2019 to just under 16,000.

Technical colleges have struggled with recruitment ever since their inception in 2010, as highlighted in a report by the National Audit Office last year. It found that the 48 open UTCs were operating at 45 per cent of capacity at the end of January 2019.

BDT chief executive Simon Connell (pictured) said this year’s increase was an “excellent achievement” made through awareness campaigns such as online open days and greater publicity of UTC student outcomes.

He added: “It is also clear that, as the impact of lockdown is felt across the wider economy and students digest the summer examinations debacle, more young people are looking for an education which prioritises the skills and aptitudes they will need in their future careers rather than simply ‘teaching to the test’.”

Several UTCs have begun recruiting from the age of 13, rather than their traditional starting age of 14, to try and boost numbers. Doncaster has started with a cohort of 13-year-olds.

Helen Redford-Hernandez, chief executive of the Brighter Futures Learning Partnership Trust, which now includes Doncaster UTC, said its opening “will provide a landmark event which signals the ever increasing importance of a need for high quality, technical education”. The college “will also be one of the first UTCs to open which is heavily oversubscribed”.

Doncaster UTC, the first to open since North East Futures in 2018, will eventually move into a new, £13.5 million building, but at the moment it is teaching students at the nearby National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure.

There are three more UTCs in the pipeline. Last November, Energy Coast UTC applied to open two colleges in Salford and Carlisle, while WMG Academy Trust, which already has two UTCs, has applied for another in Birmingham.

It takes a long time for a new education institution to be widely recognised by parents, students, employers

Energy Coast launched in 2014 and is one of a number of UTCs enjoying an uptick in student numbers. The college said this was because it had now become an established provider.

Cherry Tingle, principal of the Energy Coast, which was rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in July last year, said its overall numbers had risen by almost a fifth, from 301 in 2019 to 352 this year.

She put the rise down to “our now excellent teaching and exam results, the fact the vast majority, 90 per cent in 2019, of our students go on to apprenticeships, and the excellent links we have with employers”.

UTC South Durham, an Ofsted grade 2 provider, has seen an even more impressive increase, with a 56 per cent boost on its 2019 numbers – up from 199 to 314.

After a couple of years of student numbers bobbing around the 200 mark, principal Tom Dower said the increase was because the college had become “established, with a really good reputation for technical learning”.

He added: “It takes a long time for a new education institution to be widely recognised by parents, students, employers.

“This is particularly a factor when UTC catchments are so wide and parents, understandably, don’t think that a UTC is available for their child if they live 40 miles away.”

Students are joining the UTC from 45 schools across nine counties this year.

A cash-strapped college is among more than a quarter of training providers to have had a bid for help rejected as part of the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s second Covid-19 supplier relief scheme.

The news came as the country’s public spending watchdog revealed that the total estimated cost of the ESFA’s financial support scheme for apprenticeships and adult education had dropped by £117 million.

Bradford College, which almost went bust last year, had to make more than 100 staff redundant over the summer after its first application for apprenticeship relief was rejected – a decision the college’s principal branded “short-sighted” in June.

The college submitted another bid in round two but this week received the “disappointing” news that it had again been refused.

A spokesperson for Bradford College told FE Week they thought their bid was “unlikely” to be successful. They said: “We submitted our application based on our requirements for support over the coming months, as we work to recover and strengthen our apprenticeships provision and support our staff and students after a very difficult period.

“However, to be successful, the college needed to meet a set of criteria particularly around cash in the bank on the precise date of the application.

“This is again a disappointing result for us. During the year ahead Bradford College, along with other colleges across the country, is going to need that vital support from the government more than ever as colleges bear the costs of taking measures to protect staff and students during the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The ESFA’s second round of supplier relief launched in June and allowed FE providers suffering from reduced learner numbers caused by the pandemic to bid for non-levy apprenticeship and adult education budget funding in advance of delivery for the period July to October 2020.

Data shared by the ESFA with FE Week shows that there were 112 applicants, but only 83 (74 per cent) were successful.

Seventy seven of the total bids came from independent training providers and 20 of those were rejected, while 35 applications came from colleges, of which nine were unsuccessful.

The agency said providers and colleges who failed in their bids did not “meet the ESFA’s ‘atrisk’ financial assessment”.

The ESFA’s first supplier relief round covered the period from April to June. It resulted in 165 applications, a third (58) of which were rejected.

FE Week analysis shows there are 734 providers with a procured adult education budget allocation and/or non-levy apprenticeship contract with the government – nearly all of which would have been entitled to bid for the scheme.

The results of the second round of ESFA supplier relief come in the week when the National Audit Office revealed that the total estimated cost of the scheme had dropped substantially.

The NAO’s “cost-tracker”, which has been published to provide an independent summary of the estimated costs of the government’s response to the pandemic so far, shows that the Department for Education first projected a cost of £144 million – but this dropped to £27 million by August 13.

The DfE told FE Week the original estimates reflected the total funds that “could have been requested from eligible training providers if they all applied for the full amount permitted by Cabinet Office guidance”. 

The revised estimated costs of the schemes “reflect the number of applications for relief received from eligible training providers”.

The government is changing the law to allow more redundant apprentices to complete their course.

A Statutory Instrument (SI) has today been laid in parliament that will allow the Education and Skills Funding Agency to continue to fund apprentices to complete their training if they are at least 75 per cent of their way through their programme at the point of redundancy.

Currently the ESFA continues to fund apprentices to complete if they are made redundant within six months of their final day of training.

The SI will need to be debated in both the House of Commons and House of Lords before it can become law.

Once the law has come in to force it will apply to apprentices made redundant from that day onwards – it will not apply retrospectively. FE Week has asked the ESFA when it expects the debates to be held.

Apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “Covid-19 has had a big impact on the economy, and we know that some apprentices have lost their jobs or are facing redundancy as a result.

“Our redundancy support service is making sure apprentices can get the help they need.

“We are going even further by changing the law so more apprentices who have been made redundant can complete their programmes. We want to make sure that every apprentice has the training and skills they have gained recognised so that they can continue on their track and build their career.”

The “redundancy support service” is new online and telephone support for apprentices who have lost their jobs during Covid-19 outbreak.

It was launched in July alongside another new service that allows employers to share their vacancies with redundant apprentices.

New employer hubs to “turbocharge greater college collaboration” with the NHS have been proposed to fill “significant workforce vacancies” in health and social care. They would be funded by £5 million of government money.

The recommendation was made in a report published today by the NHS Confederation membership body and the Independent Commission on the College of the Future to help tackle the 90,000 and 120,000 vacancies in the NHS and social care sector respectively.

We have an opportunity to unlock their potential to develop strong and sustainable pathways into NHS careers

Amanda Melton, a commission member and principal of Nelson and Colne College in Lancashire, said the Creating the Workforce of the Future report was “an opportunity to unlock colleges’ potential to develop strong and sustainable pathways into NHS careers for local people using tangible steps”. 

The report also recommends that colleges set up a health and care college council to “raise the voice and influence of colleges across Whitehall and throughout the country”. 

The seven government-funded hubs proposed by the report would be based in England’s seven NHS regions. They would “develop a coherent and navigable interface for NHS organisations”.

Colleges with large health and social care provision would host the hubs, which would feature a dedicated team coordinating an NHS workforce strategy between the health service, colleges and other education providers. 

They would also develop clear pathways and progression routes, and consider ways for schools, colleges and universities to work together on public health strategies for their area. 

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said a relationship between the NHS and colleges in communities “will not only support the efforts for a speedy economic recovery, but also give those people in every community access to vital jobs and training in the health and social sector”. 

The report also proposes that £2 million be set aside by the Department for Education and Department of Health and Social Care for the health and care college council, made up of principals from major health and care colleges, including those hosting the employer hubs. The council would have an elected chair. 

It would work with NHS Employers, a representative body for NHS trusts, to produce a compendium of good practice which recognises “the value of the colleges in sustaining the future of the NHS”. 

Danny Mortimer, deputy chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said government commitments to “levelling up” the country and solving the health and social care workforce crisis would “fall flat without targeted action to improve supply, including investment in colleges to support upskilling, retraining and recruitment into these vital roles”. 

Today’s report follows a roundtable held in November 2019 between NHS trusts in the confederation and colleges.

Health Education England (HEE), which has a sole purpose of developing the health sector’s workforce, was not at the roundtable nor did it feature as a supporter in the report. However, the Independent Commission on the College of the Future said HEE had been involved in discussions about the report and its recommendations. HEE did not provide a comment at the time of going to press.

A government spokesperson welcomed the recommendations and said the report would be taken “into consideration”.

They added that the government would soon “set out plans to build a high-quality further education system that will unlock student’s potential and ensure our colleges continue to meet the needs of their local communities”.

The elite team of skilled young people who will represent the UK at EuroSkills in Austria next year has been revealed.

The 14-member Team UK (see full list below) will compete in the city of Graz between 6 and 10 January, hoping to keep the UK in the top ten of the 27 European nations competing in the event, after they came ninth at EuroSkills 2018 in Hungary.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has told the competitors: “You should all be very proud to have been picked as ambassadors for our country.

“It’s fantastic to see such a talented group of young people selected to represent Team UK.”  

EuroSkills, a companion to the biennial WorldSkills competition, was due to take place this month, but was pushed back to give authorities time to adjust the competition for COVID-19.

Competition organisers are currently considering Formula 1-style safety measures and crowd-less opening and closing ceremonies to keep attendees safe.

Team UK’s presence will be significantly reduced from the 22 members it had 2018, which WorldSkills UK deputy chief executive Ben Blackledge said reflected the COVID-19 environment.

“We had to look at taking a team from a risk point of view, so looking at making sure we balanced the benefit of taking them for the young person, against making sure we mitigate all the risks around it.

“In previous years, we’ve participated in EuroSkills by looking where we’ve got potential to definitely win medals and where we’ve got some development elements to the squad as well.”

But this year, “we wanted a more focused team. So, we are looking purely at those we think have a strong medal hope.”

Participating countries will be reviewing plans for how to run the event later this month, but Blackledge says the opening and closing ceremonies – usually lavish events featuring each country’s team being introduced to a stadium of thousands of roaring fans – will “not be done in the same way”.

There is also an ongoing discussion on whether to allow the usual tens of thousands of visitors milling around the competition, or have guided tours.

Blackledge said EuroSkills’ organisers have been looking at what Formula 1 adopted to allow them to race during COVID-19, which involved social bubbles, testing and strict rules on personal protective equipment.

WorldSkills International is “going to be watching” for lessons they can learn for the next WorldSkills tournament in Shanghai next September, but “there is a real can-do attitude” and “an appetite within the membership to say this is still really important,” Blackledge added.

He said he would be “fairly naïve” to say there is no chance EuroSkills is either postponed again, or even cancelled, but “we are confident we are doing everything we can to make sure it takes place”.

“We are really excited about EuroSkills and think it is even more important to be representing the UK, with Brexit and in terms of how young people will be absolutely essential in a skill-led recovery.”

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Meet Team UK

Phoebe McLavy

A key part of WorldSkills UK’s strategy for winning medals at next year’s EuroSkills is using proven competitors from WorldSkills 2019.

Phoebe McLavy, 21, won bronze for hairdressing at Kazan and is now working alongside her training manager Linzi Weare at Red’s Hair Company in Herefordshire, and will be competing in the category again in Graz.

She says there is “more pressure” this time as “people know who I am, but I am really looking forward to getting back on stage and doing what I love”.

“I missed competing. When I came back from Kazan, there was a real big hype and then going back to normal hairdressing, it was a bit of a downer.

“So when I had the opportunity to do it again, I grabbed it with both hands.”

Competing, Phoebe says, has made her “really experienced, so I feel really confident in what I do”.

“I’m not that worried” about travelling and competing abroad while the virus will still be a danger, Phoebe said, as “we’re in our own area during competing, so it’s not like we’re mixing with anyone”.

 

Kamil Zmich

One competition where the UK is hoping to perform well this year is the new discipline of Industry 4.0.

The name refers to, as UK competitor Kamil Zmich, 22, puts it, “a new standard of automation” – with much greater emphasis on information communication technology and working remotely rather than on the production line itself.

Being a new competition area, Kamil admitted: “We’re not too sure what the competition is going to be, so we are looking to train in pretty much every aspect of what automation is.”

Covid-19 has meant Kamil has not had much practical training using equipment and has instead focused on the programming side, with training sessions done over Zoom.

Now a maintenance team member for Toyota in Derby, Kamil started his WorldSkills career competing in national finals in Birmingham in the mechatronics category.

On his medal hopes for Graz, he struck a hopeful note: “It’s a new competition so it is a level playing field. 

“Whatever the outcome is I’m always happy just for competing and happier if I get a medal.”

 

Mike Watson

A competition as rigorous as EuroSkills takes training which is equally intensive – something made difficult when competitors and training managers could not meet during lockdown.

Mike Watson, the training manager for CNC milling, says from February up until a month ago, all his training has been online, through Zoom calls and Google Classroom.

There are two parts to CNC milling: programming, which can be done over the web, and the physical machining of components.

But “we couldn’t get on machines until last month because colleges have been closed down because of the pandemic”.

To get around that, he called on with a work contact who provided a virtual machine Mike’s two potential competitors could work on.

But online training has not proven to be a detriment to competitors, quite the opposite: “They beat the score of a guy who did EuroSkills two years ago by around 25 per cent and they haven’t touched a machine since February.”

A former competitor at WorldSkills 2015, Mike, 26, eventually chose Abigail Stansfield from BAE Systems to take to EuroSkills.

He says the decision came down to each potential’s “competition mindset” and he chose Abigail, who counts stock car racing as a hobby, as “she has shown she can deal with pressure”.

Here is the full table of Team UK members (click to expand):

 

 

The government has given in to pressure to widen the number of students eligible for 16 to 19 catch-up funding by including those that have already passed their English and maths GCSEs.

The change, announced today by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, means that those students who achieved a grade 4, a pass, can benefit from the extra “catch-up” sessions if their learning was disrupted by the pandemic.

The government previously said that colleges could only spend the funding on learners who had not passed the subjects.

Only those with a grade five or above in English and/or maths are now excluded from the fund.

Today’s updated guidance said: “Providers should prioritise support for students who have not achieved a grade four in English or maths.

“However, further to those students, if providers have funding available within their allocations they should consider whether any young people with a grade four also need catch up support.

“Providers should prioritise students that will benefit most from small group tuition.”

The guidance reiterated that the funding should be used to “support the tuition activity above and beyond the programmes of education already planned for 2020 to 2021”.

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes welcomed today’s decision.

“Really pleased that our ask for the eligibility to be extended on this has been heard,” he tweeteed.

“Gives more flexibility to colleges to meet needs for catch up with students. Well done and thanks ESFA.”

Really pleased that our ask for the eligibility to be extended on this has been heard. Gives more flexibility to colleges to meet needs for catch up with students. Well done & thanks @educationgovuk @ESFAgov https://t.co/OvW6gCcesp

— David Hughes (@AoCDavidH) September 9, 2020

 

Ministers unveiled plans for the £96 million one-off fund for 2020-21 in July, following a U-turn on their unpopular decision to exclude 16 to 19 providers from the £1 billion Covid catch-up fund for schools.

The £96 million comes from a £350 million pot originally allocated for the government’s National Tutoring Programme.

At the time, the government said the fund was to “provide small group tutoring activity for disadvantaged 16 to 19 students whose studies have been disrupted”.

Although ESFA’s initial guidance stated that funding would be allocated on the basis of the number of learners without an English or maths pass, there was no stipulation that the money be spent only on those learners.

But updated guidance issued by the ESFA in August controversially said that “although the actual tuition does not need to be for GCSE English or maths, the students supported all need to be those who had not achieved grade 4 or above in at least one of those subjects at this level by age 16”.

The change was not welcomed by college membership bodies and was branded “bureaucratic madness”.

The FE sector should judge the quality of their training programmes on the jobs that learners end up in, skills minister Gillian Keegan has said.

Her comment comes a day after Association of Colleges boss David Hughes told the education select committee that college funding should shift to be based on outcome for students, rather than getting “bums on seats”.

Both Keegan (pictured) and Hughes made their remarks after being asked what they were looking for in the upcoming FE White Paper, due for publication this autumn.

After delivering a keynote speech this afternoon during the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ virtual conference on business recovery from Covid-19, Keegan was questioned on the role of independent training providers in the White Paper and about the importance of level 2 provision.

The minister said private providers are a “vital part of the infrastructure” of the sector, adding that there is “no limit” to what they can get involved in when it comes to technical education, but made clear that “quality is what counts”.

AELP chief policy officer Simon Ashworth pointed out that it is “important not to correlate low quality with low level”, to which Keegan hit back: “It is only you and your sector that do that. I did a level two, level four and six as part of my apprenticeship. I more than anyone know that if the first rung is not there you cannot move onto the second rung.

“There is this thing within the sector where people do sometimes equate levels with quality.

“Going to a comprehensive school I have a peak insight into what you leave school with isn’t your capability. We know there is a great unevenness in opportunity.

“I just want to make sure that when somebody does and gets a level 2 that it is valued by business. What we have seen, and this is something I have said in the past, we did see too much low level provision that didn’t actually fit a business need and that is where we need to focus and change.

“But how do we judge quality? That someone can get a decent job.”

Quality in the FE sector has traditionally been judged based on qualification achievement rates and Ofsted grades.

Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman has previously criticised the sector for focusing on enrolling students rather than where they end up, saying in January a minority of colleges were trying to “fill their rolls and attract funding”, whether or not the programmes they offer “open doors for the students that take them”.

Keegan’s comments today mark the first indication from the government that a shift to an outcomes-based funding model could be on the cards in the FE White Paper.

The Greater London Authority, which controls the capital’s adult education budget, has already made plans to switch its funding model towards payment by results, rather than for the delivery of qualifications.

Speaking during yesterday’s education select committee hearing, which focussed on the FE White Paper, Hughes said colleges “are accountable for bums and seats” but not for outcomes, which the association wants them focus on, such as “are they delivering the right things to the right people to deliver the right outcomes”. 

Committee chair Robert Halfon said “surely” moving the focus to outcomes was what the government’s upcoming FE White Paper should cover, and suggested potential outcomes like: “Are the students getting good outcomes when they leave the college? Are the colleges meeting the skills needs of the nation, are they helping the socially disadvantaged?” 

Hughes said there was a whole “basket of outcomes”, but “the funding should be supporting the delivery of those outcomes, not bums on seats” which he said can deliver “good outcomes, but not always”.