SPONSORED: How to move your post-16 tutorials online ready for 2020/21

With so much uncertainty and disruption to classrooms, it has been difficult to deliver key post-16 tutorials in recent months.

For many colleges and sixth forms, it’s been tricky to adapt.

Thousands of teachers had to quickly find alternative ways to deliver online lessons, whilst still trying to provide a semblance of routine for students and a support system for parents.

There have been headaches over exam cancellations, battles to keep students engaged, and questions over the value of teaching new content or simply revising prior learning during lockdown.

These challenges have also, naturally, extended to delivering our 16-19 year Study Programme tutorials for personal development, social awareness, and employability skills.

This non-qualification based learning, which is key to delivering your planned post-16 tutorials for Employability, Enrichment, and Pastoral (EEP) hours, and is crucial to underpinning your traineeships, has been very hard to achieve in recent months!

Having relied on face-to-face tutorial sessions, it has been difficult to engage remote students in areas like career development, CV presentation, employability skills, self-development, mental health and safeguarding.

But keeping on top of this learning is crucial for Study Programme students and traineeship learners.

 

Embedding online content into post-16 tutorials and traineeships

With so much disruption, sixth forms and colleges are now using this time to plan and look for online approaches to help deliver their employability and enrichment tutorials for 2020/21.

Embedding online learning material into your post-16 tutorials can really help you to:

  • Navigate any issues you may be currently facing to achieve these learning hours
  • Deliver a more blended approach to these classroom tutorials in the new academic year
  • Allow students to complete learning online between their other sessions (great for traineeships).

The Skills Network (TSN) can support you to deliver online content for your post-16 tutorials or traineeships.

The brand new online ‘Essentials’ study programme from TSN comprises 30 hours of online learning material for post-16 students, covering:

  • Social awareness
  • Employability skills
  • Career development
  • Safeguarding and Prevent
  • Mental health and well-being
  • Study skills and self-development.

This content helps to develop your learners’ employability and development for their career and life, and is mapped to the latest Ofsted framework.

 

 

How can colleges or sixth forms benefit from ‘Essentials’?

The new online Essentials programme can help you in a number of ways as you finalise your curriculum plan ahead for 2020/21:

Catch up with any learning missed during lockdown

Contact time and class sizes are likely to be limited when restrictions ease. ‘Essentials’ can be a really effective way to build-in your employability and development hours, and catch-up with key learning online.

Flexible online content for distance delivery

Essentials is trackable, self-paced and auto-marked, allowing students to complete key learning in between sessions or deliver online tutorials to them remotely (ideal for traineeship students).

Better engage your students

The content is delivered in a variety of ways such as videos, interactive templates and quizzes to also help you keep engagement high and improve student experience in this area.

Manage teaching time more effectively

Teachers’ time is stretched already, this approach allows them to save time with lesson plans and resource prep. Plus, topics like safeguarding and online safety continually updated. Essentials gives both teaching staff and students access to up-to-date online learning content and templates.

Save thousands of pounds in education costs

With 30 hours of online tutorial content for students, teachers’ time can be spent focusing on ‘stretching’ student knowledge on tutorial topics (i.e. interview preparation). You can then recover these hours and better manage overheads regarding your teaching time and timetabling.

 

Find out more

We’d love to have a conversation with you and discuss how ‘Essentials’ can benefit your tutorial delivery.

To find out more information, please click here.

Many providers are already benefiting from embedding ‘Essentials’ into their post-16 delivery.

Chloe Rendall, Assistant Principal for Quality at Askham Bryan College – “With the Essentials package, our students enjoy the online content, and staff are able to plan and deliver innovative and engaging sessions, knowing that the information is relevant and supports learning for 16-19 study programmes. This learning tool allows us to meet our subject specialist needs.”  

Adult apprentices CAN return for face-to-face contact from 15 June, says DfE

The government has confirmed that colleges and training providers can begin face-to-face contact with adult apprentices from 15 June, but reiterated that 16 to 19 apprentices should be “prioritised”.

In updated guidance published this afternoon, the Department for Education repeated their view that providers should include apprentices in their wider reopening plans alongside students on the first year of a two year 16 to 19 study programme.

They said the government supports offering face-to-face contact to any 16 to 19 apprentice, although training providers could offer this to “certain groups” such as those on the first year of an apprenticeship, those who require on-site training to help them complete their apprenticeship, or those who have upcoming “key assessment dates” and would “therefore particularly benefit from face-to-face training”.

The guidance added that although 16 to 19 apprentices should be “prioritised”, there “may be some apprenticeships that include apprentices within a classroom-based training environment that are over 19”.

Providers “can choose to allow” apprentices who are over 19 to attend, but “should continue to prioritise 16 to 19 apprentices”.

“If older apprentices attend on site delivery, the maximum number of 16 to 19 year olds attending on site at any one time must be reduced to ensure the setting remains within the overall limit.”

The guidance follows prime minister Boris Johnson’s announcement last week that plans for the wider reopening of schools, colleges and providers this month are moving forward after the government’s five tests for easing lockdown measures were being met.

Wider guidance for the reopening of FE settings was published on Friday and confirmed that from the week commencing 15 June, providers can broaden the number of 16 to 19 learners attending on-site delivery.

To help reduce the coronavirus transmission risk, the guidance asks that the number of FE learners attending at any one time is limited to a quarter of those on the first year of a two year 16 to 19 study programme.

Vulnerable young people and children of critical workers, within this cohort, are to be counted within the attendance limit. However, vulnerable young people and children of critical workers outside of this cohort who might already be in full-time attendance do not count towards the attendance limit and can continue attend.

Redundancies planned at massive apprenticeships provider to government

A huge training provider that delivers hundreds of apprenticeships for the civil service is planning to make major redundancies.

Training giant QA Limited, which currently employs over 2,250 staff, is bracing itself for business to plummet following recent conversations with their clients as a result of Covid-19.

FE Week understands that hundreds of those jobs are now at risk but the company would not be drawn on a figure. It is preparing to launch a consultation on the losses in the coming weeks.

A QA spokesperson said that since the start of the pandemic, the firm has taken “extensive measures to ensure that it can continue to serve its customers and provide critical training virtually, while its training centres have been closed”. 

“Due to the severe economic recession however, it is now clear that activity in our sector will be reduced for some time and this has been confirmed in recent conversations with clients,” they added.

“As a result, the group needs to reduce costs and this will involve all areas of the business and is likely to result in a number of redundancies.”

The spokesperson said these steps will ensure that QA “weathers the current crisis well and is then able to play a key role in the economic recovery that will follow by providing skills to help businesses grow and create new jobs”.

QA is one the largest apprenticeship providers in England and one of the first to announce redundancy plans as a result of coronavirus.

It offers commercial training and apprenticeships to the technology sector and recorded a £181 million turnover in its most recently published financial accounts, for 2018.

The firm already made 90 of its staff redundant in January 2020 after taking a strategic decision to refocus its apprenticeship division to more technology focussed programmes, according to the spokesperson.

QA has 19 training centres across England and was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted following a visit in January this year when the firm had 6,500 apprentices. Around 2,700 of those were studying IT, around 2,500 on business administration and law apprenticeships, and 2,000 were on business management apprenticeships.

It is also an approved provider of apprenticeships to the Crown Commercial Service and a subcontractor to KPMG – training hundreds of apprentices for the civil service in departments such as the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. KPMG was rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted in March 2020 in a report that criticised the provision offered by its subcontractors.

QA came under new leadership in September 2019 when former RBS and Direct Line Group boss Paul Geddes took over as chief executive from William Macpherson.

Macpherson retired two years after he helped strike a deal for private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to buy out QA from previous owners Bregal Investments. The deal as reportedly worth £700 million.

Free recording: Latest FE policy response and requirements to Covid-19 outbreak

The sixth webcast in FE Week’s series – further education sector’s response and requirements to coronavirus pandemic – was broadcast yesterday.

This week, FE Week publisher Shane Mann was in conversation Christian Kaye, the senior regional business development manager at insurance firm Gallagher, who provided an overview of what organisations should consider in terms of risk assessments and insurances.

Dame Ruth Silver also spoke about FETL’s latest report – Voices of the shamed: The personal toll of shame and shaming in further education.

And to finish off the broadcast we had FE Week editor Nick Linford talk us through the latest guidance and requirements for the FE sector published last week, including the extension to the furlough scheme.

You can watch it back for free by clicking here.

Another webcast will take place next Monday at 14:00-15:30. Register here.

Why a ‘right to retrain’ is essential for an inclusive recovery

The outbreak of coronavirus will permanently change the shape of our economy. In adapting to this change, we must minimise the number of people locked out of the labour market by introducing a turbo-charged ‘right to retrain’. This should be locally led and focus on those most at risk of losing their jobs as a result of the current crisis, writes Andy Norman

It is difficult to overstate the scale of the economic change seen over the last three months. 8.4 million private sector workers are having their salaries paid by the government, whole industries have been mothballed, and the UK has seen its biggest monthly fall in GDP since comparable records began. Change on this scale inevitably means the shape of our economy will never be the same again, even if we do find a vaccine. The Job Retention Scheme (JRS) has so far limited the extent to which this has fed through into structural employment. But with the chancellor starting to wind down the JRS by introducing employer contributions from August, a comprehensive system of retraining is crucial if we are to limit unemployment and eventually thrive in our new economic landscape. 

The coronavirus isn’t the first cause of intense structural change in our economy

The crisis will have permanent impacts 

A range of economic studies have shown that even short, sharp shocks can permanently change people’s behaviour in meaningful ways. A study of London’s public transport data by economists at the University of Oxford found that as a result of a 48-hour tube strike, a significant proportion of people permanently changed their commuting behaviour. The theory behind this finding is that shocks shake us out of our habits and force us to reconsider the alternatives. 

It’s easy to imagine the ways in which the current lockdown could permanently change our behaviour. Will people go back to paying £3 for a coffee on the way to work every morning, having managed without during lockdown? Will companies continue to rent expensive office space in big cities after their workforce has adapted to home-working? 

Shocks can also speed up existing trends that had been happening more gradually. For example, a recent survey by EY found that nearly half of all business leaders are planning to accelerate plans to automate their operations in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. Even absent these types of changes, the short term damage done by the current lockdown could well leave some sectors – such hospitality and aerospace – permanently smaller. At the end of May, Easy Jet announced it would be cutting staff numbers by 30 per cent. While some sectors may shrink, others will grow, including the information and communication sector as more of our society moves online.

Adapting to change

The key question then concerns not how we can return our economy to normal, but rather how we can adapt to the structural economic changes that are coming our way. The goal for policymakers must be to limit structural unemployment, a key mechanism through which short term economic shocks translate into permanent damage to livelihoods. The latest research here at the Centre for Progressive Policy shows the devastating scale of long run economic scarring that awaits if we fail to act. 

The government was right to introduce the JRS as soon as the scale of the crisis became clear in order to prevent an explosion in unemployment and economic hardship. However, the Chancellor has now begun the process of withdrawing the scheme by requiring firms to pay National Insurance and pension contributions from August. When this happens, the changes to our economy over the past few months will unfortunately mean some of the jobs covered by the scheme will no longer be viable. There’s a real risk of a spike in structural unemployment. 

To minimise unemployment and limit long term scarring, effective retraining of the workers most at risk will be vital. Unfortunately, we haven’t been very good at retraining in the past – partly because it’s hard to get right, but mostly because it has never been given the status and funding it deserves. However, in recent years some decent groundwork has been laid. The early stages of a National Retraining Scheme are now being rolled out in pilot areas, guided by a collation of government departments, businesses and unions. The government has also pledged to introduce a new National Skills Fund worth £600 million a year, as a first step towards a “Right to Retrain”.

A turbo-charged right to retrain

Now is the time to deliver a turbo-charged right to retrain in order to reduce potential long-term unemployment and support growth industries as we emerge from the crisis. This right to retrain should follow four high level principles:

  1. Be directed at those most at risk of structural unemployment. This means those who have already lost their jobs as a result of coronavirus, but also workers currently protected by the JRS.
  2. Support effective matching of old skills to new industries. For example, the Brookfield Institute in Canada has built a model that uses big data to link ‘origin jobs’ (those in decline) to ‘destination jobs’ (those experiencing growth) based on how closely the sets of required skills and knowledge match up. These types of models could be scaled up so that local leaders can use retraining to guide their economies from ‘origin sectors’ to ‘destination sectors’, smoothing the transition.
  3. Harness the power of local and national government to drive new demand for skilled labour. One possible source is our transition to a greener economy, with the National Grid estimating that the UK will need to fill 117,000 new green jobs by 2030 to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Local areas should also look to capitalise on their existing economic assets as a source for new skilled jobs, adapting work done for their local industrial strategies.
  4. Focus on upskilling the workforce rather than simply moving people into poor quality jobs. It is becoming increasingly clear that the current outbreak is hitting low paying, insecure jobs the hardest, with high skill jobs proving to be the most resilient. According to recent research by McKinsey, half of all jobs currently at risk pay less than £10 per hour. And so, by upskilling people whose jobs have been wiped out during this crisis, we can increase resilience and move our economy onto a more inclusive footing. 

The coronavirus isn’t the first cause of intense structural change in our economy, and it won’t be the last. But let it be the catalyst for finally getting retraining right, helping us move towards a more sustainable and inclusive economy in the future. As the former Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel once said, ‘You never want a serious crisis to go to waste’.

What do we need to know? Apprenticeship quango surveys employers

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has launched an online survey to find out what impact coronavirus has had on recruitment and what more they can do to support employers.

Apprentice employers are being asked to forecast how their recruitment over the summer will compare to the same time last year and for “key messages” that should be “heard by the institute.”

The survey also asks when employers will “next have an apprenticeship start” and whether there is “anything preventing your organisation from starting apprentices”.

The research comes after skills minister Gillian Keegan said in April that her “biggest worry” during the Covid-19 pandemic is the “recruitment of new apprentices”.

She acknowledged that “potentially businesses and others are not going to have this top of mind right now” but was concerned about “how to keep the whole pipeline going with all this uncertainty”.

On Friday, the DfE published statistics that showed the immediate impact of Covid-19 on apprenticeship starts. From 23 March, when lockdown started, to the end of April, a total of 13,020 apprenticeship starts had been reported so far – half of the 26,330 reported for the same period at the same point last year.

The IfATE’s survey goes on to ask employers for the “key message you would like to be heard by the institute”. One message that is bound to be popular with some is a call for an extension to apprenticeship frameworks, after the Department for Education confimed last month that the 31 July 2020 cut-off date for starts is still going ahead despite sector-wide concern.

Robert Nitsch, the IfATE’s chief operating officer, said: “We are really keen to hear from you about anything further you think the Institute should know.

“We will also be running this survey again in future to make sure we are listening to your changing needs.”

The closing date for the survey is 15 June and can be found here.

DfE to tackle ‘fake news’ with its own rapid rebuttal unit

The Department for Education is setting up its own “rapid rebuttal unit” to tackle so-called “fake news” in the media.

It is said to be one of the first department-specific teams in government to challenge “misinformation at the source” and rebuff “misleading content” before reaching the mainstream.

Two DfE job adverts for media officers to work in the unit are currently live and state that this work is “more vital than ever” in making sure the public aren’t “deceived by so-called fake news”.

They add: “The department is one of the first in government to be looking to tackle misinformation at the source with a team that will aim to make sure misleading content running in the media or on social media is corrected in the shortest period possible time before it reaches the mainstream and misinforms the public.

“The department’s new rapid rebuttal unit aims to spot and counter misinformation on social media at its source, making sure it doesn’t make its way into mainstream media and mislead the public. This is one of the first teams of its type across government.”

A similar but government-wide “rapid response” unit was set up in the Cabinet Office in 2018 by former prime minister Theresa May to counter fake news, and then by minister Michael Gove in August 2019 which specifically targeted Brexit half-truths.

In March, the Cabinet Office announced this unit would now combat misinformation about Covid-19.

There do not appear to be any other similar teams across Whitehall, meaning the DfE’s could be the first department-specific rebuttal unit.

Fake news was a problem raised by former education secretary Damian Hinds just before he was sacked in July 2019. Speaking at a social media summit, he spoke about the specific problem of the “spread of misleading content on vaccinations” in schools but added this “issue goes much further than that, and without firm action it is set to get a lot worse”.

The concern has not been raised by Hinds’ successor Gavin Williamson since he came into post, but there have been recent cases of his department publicly rebutting stories published by the media.

On 18 April, a preview of the Sunday Times’ front page revealed reports that senior ministers had drawn up plans for schools to reopen as early as 11 May.

But the DfE tweeted that evening: “No decision has been made on a timetable for re-opening schools. Schools remain closed until further notice, except for children of critical workers and the most vulnerable children. Schools will only re-open when the scientific advice indicates it is the right time to do so.”

Just today the DfE has also published a blog entitled “addressing misleading claims about department guidance” following two stories in the media from Sunday.

It said that one, from the Independent, reported on claims made by National Education Union joint general secretary Mary Bousted who suggested the department’s guidance to schools on how to open to more pupils have been updated 41 times since it was posted on 12 May.

The DfE claimed this is “untrue” and the guidance in question has been updated “just once since it was published last month”.

Another article, published this time by The Mirror, reported that celebrity fitness expert Joe Wicks was due to lead a review of the PE curriculum, which the DfE said again is “not true”. 

The government’s existing anti-fake news units have however come in for criticism, with the Liberal Democrats’ former Brexit spokesperson, Tom Brake, describing them as “shameful spin machines” last year.

A DfE spokesperson said: “In line with wider work by the Government Communication Service, we want to identify and counter misinformation and disinformation online, whether it is shared inadvertently or maliciously.

“That’s why we’re looking for talented individuals to join our team, helping us dispel myths and explain education policies to the public using straightforward, easy-to-understand social media content, blogs, and more.”

 

AELP drops Covid-19 supplier relief legal challenge

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers has decided to not pursue legal action against the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s Covid-19 supplier relief scheme.

Lawyers have advised that the only challenge they could now take would be to seek a judicial review, which the board of the membership organisation believes would come “at a significant cost”.

A statement released today added that while a positive result from a judicial review would be to review the supplier relief process, there would still be “no guarantee of substantial support from the Department for Education for suppliers even after that” and this would also “take time, to a point where it might be too late for many AELP members”.

A legal letter was sent from law firm Veale Wasbrough Vizards LLP on behalf of the AELP on 27 April after the ESFA excluded the majority of apprenticeship providers – those funded through the government’s digital system – from their supplier relief scheme.

It argued that the ESFA’s claim that apprenticeships funded through the digital system, mainly with levy-paying employers, are a contract with the employer and provider was “an abuse of power” and makes their supplier relief scheme “unlawful”.

The Government Legal Department (GLD) responded on 14 May and concluded that it is “not accepted that the relief scheme is unlawful on any of the grounds alleged by the AELP (or on any other grounds)”.

AELP said their lawyers have indicated that the GLD’s response does not make a case for defending the DfE’s position on the application of PPN 02/20, and that the AELP’s board feels “strongly” the letter is simply one of “rebuttal and it avoids addressing the key issues such as the legal agreement between the Education and Skills Funding Agency and a provider for levy-funded apprenticeships constituting a contract”.

The Labour Party’s shadow education team wrote to education secretary Gavin Williamson last week and accused the government of failing to make a “serious attempt” to answer AELP’s claim.

They also called for officials to abandon their “very flimsy case” for the majority of apprenticeships from the supplier relief scheme.

Click below to read the letters from the relevant parties in full

Veale Wasbrough Vizards LLP challenge

Government Legal Department response

Labour letter to Gavin Williamson

Speed read: DfE publishes guidance for colleges on June 15 reopening plan

The Department for Education has published updated guidance for colleges and other FE providers about the return of more students next month.

It comes after the prime minister, Boris Johnson, confirmed the government was pushing ahead with plans to start to provide face-to-face support for year 12 and equivalent students from June 15.

The original wider reopening date for colleges was set at June 1 but Johnson announced a two-week delay to this last Sunday.

Here’s what we learned from today’s updated guidance.

 

  1. Only welcome back 25% of students at a time

To help reduce the coronavirus transmission risk, the guidance states the number of learners attending at any one time will be “limited to a quarter of those on the first year of a two-year 16 to 19 study programme”.

This is in “addition” to vulnerable young people and children of critical workers outside of this cohort who might already be in full-time attendance.

 

  1. Remote learning ‘should remain the predominant mode of learning’

The DfE said they recognise that for some programmes, remote education will be working “effectively with a high degree of learner engagement”.

Colleges and other providers will have “flexibility to decide the appropriate mix of online and face to face content for each programme, within the constraint of limiting those on site at any one time, reflecting what will maximise learner engagement as well as supporting more vulnerable learners, and enabling the provider as a whole to minimise transmission risk”.

They added that remote education “should remain the predominant mode of learning during this time”.

 

  1. FE providers have ‘flexibility’ over which learners can return

From the week commencing June 15, FE providers “should offer some face to face contact for 16 to 19 learners on the first year of a study programme” alongside the current provision offered to vulnerable learners (including those at high risk of becoming NEET) and the children of critical workers.

This will “primarily” impact colleges, but will also include a “small number of local authority providers, special post-16 institutions and independent training providers”.

While the DfE’s “overriding principle” is that the focus should be 16 to 19 year olds on the first year of a two-year programme, there is “flexibility” to bring back four other types of learners.

This includes classes where there are students aged over 19 on the same 16 to 19 vocational course, as well as 16 to 19 learners who were due to finish this academic year, but have not been able to because their assessments have been deferred.

Apprentices aged 16 to 19 can also be brought back for face-to-face contact.

The last group that can be brought back are learners who “may be on extended programmes, for example because they are studying part time, alongside caring responsibilities or had to retake exams or part of their programme”. If they are part way through a study programme, and have “key” exams and assessments next year, they “can be included”.

 

  1. Range of protective measures should be implemented but funded from own budgets

The DfE said they “will ask settings to implement a range of protective measures” including increased cleaning, reducing ‘pinch points’ (such as at the start and end of day), and utilising outdoor space.

Any additional costs arising from wider opening, such as personal protective equipment (PPE) must be funded “from existing college budgets”.