Are lifelong learner accounts back on the cards?

The government is flirting with the language of learner power reminiscent of an old New Labour policy. Jess Staufenberg looks at its chances of making a comeback

For old hands in FE, Boris Johnson’s announcement in September of a “Lifetime Skills Guarantee”, resourced through a “National Skills Fund”, has echoes of an older, more ambitious New Labour policy too traumatising in its failure to seriously consider reintroducing – perhaps until recently.

The language of Johnson’s announcement pricked ears: the government wants to help people “train and retrain, at any stage in their lives”; “end the bogus distinction between HE and FE”; and, perhaps most importantly, “move to a system where every student will have a flexible lifelong loan entitlement”.

There will be “change, radical change”, thundered Johnson.

Ring any bells? For years, ministers have tinkered with the idea of handing choice and power to the student by giving them access to a “bank” of the loans and grants they can spend on tertiary education.

The idea has had various names – Individual Learning Accounts, as they were under New Labour in the early 2000s, as well as personal learner accounts, individual education budgets, skills accounts, skills wallets – you name it, it’s been floated within all three political parties. But a software system open to fraudulent abuse under the ILA system, launched in 2000, caused a horrified Estelle Morris to end them just a year later. Since then, mention of them has largely led to head-shaking.

But alongside the promising language, other moves in the highest echelons of government have not escaped notice. The biggest is, of course, the appointment of Alison Wolf, seconded from her public sector management professorship at King’s College London to be skills and workforce policy advisor to Number 10 at the start of the year. In 2008, during a financial crisis not as bad as the one hitting us now, Wolf wrote plainly about New Labour’s ILAs, asking: “As we free-fall into recession, could we please have them back?”

More recently, she told MPs this year: “You have to put far more of the power and decision-making in the hands of the individual.” She said the simplest thing would be to “take a flame-thrower” to the many and confusing funding pots for adult education.

Other appointments have also been telling. Keith Smith, the architect of the apprenticeship levy system, which operates digital accounts for employers, was moved from the ESFA to the Department for Education in April, bringing with him expertise in setting up a big new IT system.

Alison Wolf

Meanwhile, the Augar review in 2019, which the government shows every sign of largely following, examined the failed ILA scheme and recommended the “gradual” implementation of a similar system that might be “overseen by the established Office for Students and the Student Loans Company”.

Could a single, unified place for the post-18 learner to access education be on the cards?

There have been tentative, but piecemeal, moves in that direction. The current “entitlement” to free English and maths courses has been extended to basic computing skills with new “essential digital skills qualifications”.

Then in September, adults over the age of 23 were “guaranteed” access to a limited number of first, free, level 3 qualifications, from April next year, and modular level 4 and 5 qualifications are going to be designed with employers.

And last month, unspent money from the closed national retraining scheme was folded into the growing arsenal that is the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund.

Many now wait with baited breath, not for the one-year spending review next week (which can’t promise much, a multi-year, comprehensive spending review having been postponed), but for the FE white paper this year – will it provide proper detail on the Lifetime Skills Guarantee?

And the question they barely dare whisper – might it even include a pilot of personal, cashable accounts?

Jonathan Simons, head of education at think tank Public First, says one recent shift has been a willingness among policymakers to discuss learner accounts as a real possibility again. “Even just five years ago, people were too scarred by ILAs. My guess is that’s not the dealbreaker now.”

Jonathan Simons

Accounts policies now widely exist, he explains, whether via the Student Loans Company for higher education or for apprenticeships. “The technological advancements have happened, and we’ve gone over the ILA stuff so much now that the institutional knowledge is there too. And of course, Alison has been writing about this for years.”

The scars of the failed ILAs, which provided a modest £150 per learner and could be topped up, ran deep, says Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges.

“They almost became a poster child for bad government. There was no control on what courses could be done or on what organisations could claim the money.”

High-street banks, such as the Post Office, refused to run the accounts and so digital services company Capita was allowed to set up a “separate system” for the accounts, says Gravatt. “That’s why it was so open to abuse. It didn’t use an existing system. But we have those systems now.”

A series of reports followed. A 2002 inquiry by the then-Commons education and skills committee, chaired by Labour MP Barry Sheerman, blasted the fact that of the 2.6 million accounts opened, the government couldn’t say how many had been genuine – and therefore how much of the scheme’s £268 million had been wasted. But Sheerman reminds FE Week that the committee also recommended that the scheme “be rebooted without the fraud […] it was a brilliant concept”.

A National Audit Office report the same year criticised the lack of proper monitoring, but again praised the scheme’s ambition and said, “The government is committed to introducing a successor scheme as soon as possible.” A public accounts committee report in 2003 said the government had reassured MPs lessons had been learned.

But it was never to be. Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, who helped draft the ILA policy as a Labour advisor, says Treasury civil servants weren’t quite comfortable with the idea of handing money directly to people instead of institutions, and so were “happy to hit it on the head”. Either way, the ILAs, beloved of Wolf, died.

Yet more recently, the calls for their return have become insistent. In 2016, the Learning and Work Institute (LWI) published a report called Power to the People: The Case for Personal Learning Accounts which called for every citizen to have such an account by 2022, allowing five years for implementation and piggybacking on the existing “lifelong learning accounts” run by the National Careers Service.

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the LWI, points out similar initiatives are already running in Scotland (where they are called Individual Training Accounts), being piloted in Wales, and exist in high-performing systems such as Singapore.

“Our skills-funding system is so complicated, people don’t understand it and quickly lose the will to live. This is a much simpler way to communicate those things. There’s an important communication point here.”

Our skills-funding system is so complicated, people don’t understand it and quickly lose the will to live

Evans sat on both Labour’s 2019 commission on lifelong learning – which, rather against the grain of everyone else on this issue, says it won’t “risk” a return to accounts – and the Liberal Democrats’ commission too. The latter party currently has the most comprehensively thought-out policy around: Daisy Cooper, education spokesperson, confirmed to FE Week the Lib Dem proposal for “skills wallets” worth £10,000 over a lifetime. Evans adds the account could be topped up by the Job Centre, employers or the government, according to someone’s circumstances.

An even more ambitious lump sum is proposed in Free to Choose: How Individual Education Budgets can revolutionise tertiary education from think tank EDSK in 2019.

Director Tom Richmond makes the interesting point that the Augar review’s proposal for a £30,000 loan entitlement for each citizen – a figure touted as the equivalent to four years’ undergraduate degree funding under the report’s recommended fee cap – only takes into account the tuition fee loan, not the maintenance loan also available to an HE student. Learner accounts that are truly equitable should be around the £75,000 mark, he says.

“If you can only get maintenance support for HE courses then it will leave universities on a pedestal relative to colleges,” says Richmond. By contrast, his suggested pot “would send a powerful message to learners of all ages, which simply does not exist right now”. Like other policy wonks (and, indeed, Augar’s review), Richmond points towards the Student Loans Company as the obvious administrator for the scheme.

But is it ever going to happen? Those working closest to Westminster aren’t yet convinced. “The DfE are sold on it from a theoretical point of view. The difficulty has always been, will they make it cashable?” says Simons. “There are also questions about whether you can commit to this without a multi-year comprehensive spending review.”

John Cope, formerly of the CBI and recently appointed director of strategy and policy at UCAS and board member at the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education, says skills education reform is clearly a government priority, “with long-debated ideas around learner entitlements and ‘learner accounts’ in the mix”.

In an apparent offer of help, Cope adds UCAS “needs to become a one-stop shop for all options across HE, FE and apprenticeships”. But both stop short of saying the government is set to expand the Lifetime Skills Guarantee into a personal learner account revolution.

John Cope

It’s true that there are a host of factors against it, with cost and risk of mismanagement highest up. For all the pronouncements about lessons learnt, only at the start of this year it was estimated that £1.2 billion has been wasted from the apprenticeship levy fund on “fake apprenticeships”. The accounts system isn’t invulnerable to fraud yet.

In its favour, meanwhile, is the fact the government is obviously worried. The number of adults taking out advanced learner loans has fallen for the third consecutive year. A skilled worker shortage is looming because of Brexit. And Wolf, aside from her support of ILAs, is bothered about devolution (telling MPs it adds “another layer of bureaucracy and arguing about who gets what”).

As Bewick puts it, “if the Treasury is now interested in skills accounts, it’s because they want money to increasingly go to individuals rather than the combined authorities”.

If the combined authorities are out of favour, perhaps the real question then is, will the Lifetime Skills Guarantee hand money to citizens or colleges?

The policy is not altogether straightforward for college leaders: grant funding will be out of their hands. Yet Gravatt is cautiously welcoming, suggesting a “mixed model” of guaranteed core funding for colleges alongside a trial of personal accounts for learners. Echoing Augar, he proposes “a staged implementation with local pilots, to test this out.”

Policy experts seem to be concerned that, despite flirting with the language of learner accounts, and having got firmly into bed with those who would know exactly how best to implement them, current ministers, like those before them, will fall just short of the mark of delivering a policy that most regard as not only excellent, but much-needed.

The Augar review agrees: “We emphasise that, without these changes, neither more flexible provision, nor a major increase in level 4 to 5 uptake, is at all likely.”

It may be that it needs colleges, more than anyone else, to make the case this time.

The government’s attack on the Union Learning Fund is purely political

As a former trade union education officer, I saw the real difference this fund makes, writes Lilian Greenwood

“We must invest in skills, we must invest in further education”.

This was the prime minister’s message to the country when he launched the Lifetime Skills Guarantee on September 29.

Yet less than a month later the government wrote to the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to tell them that funding for the highly effective Union Learning Fund (ULF) would be scrapped from the end of March.

In the middle of a pandemic that is wreaking havoc in the jobs market, scrapping funding for a programme that helps people retrain and gain new skills is nonsensical.

Established under the Labour government in 1998, ULF’s aim was to work with employers, employees and learning providers to encourage greater take-up of learning in the workplace and develop the capacity of trade unions.

At the time, I was a trade union education officer for Unison in the East Midlands and saw for myself the difference the ULF made to our members, particularly those who had left school without qualifications.

People who thought learning was not for them gained the confidence to give it another try and it’s no exaggeration to say it transformed lives.

I saw hospital cleaners and council refuse collectors discover a love for learning and use that discovery to encourage their workmates too ̶ becoming Union Learning Reps and working with their employers to spread the word.

I saw workers gain promotions, go from basic skills to higher education and burst with pride as they received their certificates in front of their friends, family and colleagues.

For over 20 years the ULF has enabled millions of people to improve their skills and progress at work.

Meanwhile, a new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Social Mobility Foundation has found that adult education is associated with higher wages and an improved chance of moving job.

Today, the fund supports around 200,000 people a year to learn and develop new skills. It is supported by over 700 employers, including such well-known brands as Tesco, Boots and British Steel.

The ULF costs the Treasury just £12 million a year and in return the fund delivers a £1.4 billion boost to the economy through increasing jobs, wages and productivity.

ULF costs the Treasury just £12 million a year

Support to retrain and gain new skills has never been more important. By the end of the year, an estimated one million young people will not be in education, employment or training. They face an uncertain jobs market and uncertain future.

The prime minister’s Lifetime Skill Guarantee does not provide any funding until April 2021, but funding for new opportunities is needed now.  

Unless the government takes urgent action to ensure people at risk of unemployment and those who have lost their jobs during the pandemic can access training, we risk leaving them without new skills, without new opportunities and without the chance to find new employment.

Against such a critical backdrop why would the government scrap a fund that its own evaluations say is effective?

Answers lie in the Department for Education’s letter to the TUC in October explaining the decision to close the fund.

It read: “We are investing much more in adult skills retraining, and doing so through a broad offer, rather than a small, dedicated fund promoted through the union network.”

Put simply, the government’s objection to this effective and cost-efficient programme is that it is managed by the unions.

I was proud to lead this week’s Union Learn debate in parliament and Labour MPs from across the country urging the government to rethink this politically motivated decision, which is not just an attack on unions, but on workers up and down the country wanting to learn new skills and support our economic recovery.

The government’s attack on the ULF shows Boris Johnson is more interested in playing politics than improving people’s life chances.

Ofqual must work closely with employers for its bigger role in apprenticeships

The new system has the potential to strengthen the employer voice, but needs clear communication routes, writes Lee Pryor

The announcement that Ofqual will now be overseeing a significant number of apprenticeship standards has been greatly welcomed by institutions such as ours.

This is a significant move for organisations that provide end-point assessments and will not only ensure a smoother process but a more cost-effective, simpler and efficient one.

The end-point assessment model has been one of the government’s key reforms in recent years. However, we must not lose sight of the need to retain or consider employer choice and feedback in a competitive market place.

Employers need to be involved in developing policy, as they have been at the centre of creating apprenticeship standards in recent years.

Therefore, Ofqual needs to work in partnership with them and end-point assessment organisations to ensure continuity and consistency of the new policy framework.

The wide range of bodies involved over the years has proved disadvantageous to the overall process, so I suggest that a regular review of standards and systems takes place on an ongoing basis.

The assessment process should be reviewed at least every 12 months, to ensure that it is appropriate for new and existing apprenticeship standards and that all criteria reflect what is valued by employers and respective industries.

This will go a long way in helping address any irregularities or “developmental gaps” within Ofqual’s strategy.

It is a known fact that changes to assessment plans have resource implications for end-point assessment organisations as they have to adapt assessment methodologies, tools and guides.

It is important that a pragmatic strategy is applied that takes into account the employer and apprentice needs, as well as the end-point assessment organisation’s capabilities.

If Ofqual sets a framework of quality criteria, this could ensure coherence across the wider qualification landscape.

By working with the Department for Education to engage the end-point assessment organisation market early, with forthcoming standards and assessment plans, this could ensure that the assessment market is viable.

Sir Gerry Berragan, chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, said last year “it has never been more crucial that we ensure we have the best regime possible to assess quality”.

I agree entirely with this sentiment. We were in need of a system that doesn’t impose an undue burden on end-point assessment organisations and that is easy for all parties to understand and engage with.

The new system has the potential to strengthen the employer’s voice in external quality assurance. In the current system, around 30 per cent of apprenticeship standards have an employer-led approach to external quality assurance.

Ofqual needs to work with employers to ensure they gain the understanding required, and perhaps have a member of Ofqual on the trailblazer group.

This would allow for effective monitoring of apprentice assessment organisations, through external quality assurance organisations and agreeing necessary action on specific cases.

I suggest that a regular review of standards and systems takes place

Visibility of apprentices as a whole remains a problem when planning for end-point assessment – so this is an area that needs to be focused on when working with providers.

Ofqual will need to bear this in mind in their future plans, working closely with end-point assessment organisations and employers to ensure that this transition is seamless.

The delivery of this comes at a crucial time for apprenticeships and it is understandable that the transition will require a lot of work from Ofqual, particularly after the results debacle of last summer.

Nonetheless, if we really want a more skilled and efficient workforce, and a robust assessment strategy, more support is needed from the government to streamline the infrastructure and ensure Ofqual have adequate resources to oversee this policy.

It will be great to see end-point assessment organisations and Ofqual working together to create a strategy and policy framework that supports a strong and competitive marketplace of quality providers.

The government mustn’t scrap ESOL qualifications

The funding set-up, not the qualifications themselves, is to blame for a lack of take-up, writes Mary Osmaston

When we think of entry level, people with degrees or vocational skills probably don’t come to mind.

But there are many such learners studying from entry to level 2 purely because they don’t yet speak English well enough to achieve their goals in the UK. They are studying ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages).

And it’s not a small group, either. Last year, there were 180,000 enrolments on ESOL qualifications and many more ESOL learners on other English courses.

The Department for Education’s current consultation on level 2 and below qualifications “wants to understand how far the current ESOL qualifications meet students’ needs and if they might need to be reformed”, partly because there are “many more enrolments on entry-level ESOL qualifications compared to levels 1 or 2 ESOL”.

Reading the document, we’re concerned that there’s a lack of understanding of the huge range of backgrounds and ambitions of those learning ESOL, and how complex it is to learn a new language.

The document also betrays a lack of awareness of how the funding regime reduces choice and distorts provision.

ESOL students are a varied bunch. Some have had little education in their home country and need to spend many hours a week developing study skills and learning English.

Others are qualified professionals who need more English to progress from low-skilled work into jobs that match their skills and aspirations. One thing that unites them is that they recognise that they cannot succeed in UK society unless they improve their English – and fast.

What they want is a programme with specialist language teachers and enough class time to develop all their language skills effectively. Many also need a level 2 qualification for further study or employment but are frustrated when they are enrolled on qualifications such as Functional Skills.

These qualifications are recognised by employers but, as they are designed for fluent English speakers, they emphasise writing skills and leave too little time for essential language development.

So why are learners not choosing higher level ESOL qualifications? It’s not a problem of the qualifications, but of funding.

Functional Skills and GCSEs are fully funded whilst ESOL is only co-funded. This means many learners can’t afford the fees for ESOL. There are also financial incentives for the provider to place students on a fully funded but less appropriate course.

Functional Skills and GCSEs are fully funded whilst ESOL is only co-funded

Learners are progressing, but not always to ESOL qualifications. This has led the DfE to ask whether ESOL qualifications are really needed at those higher levels? ESOL is English, after all.

Yes, and no. Learning a new language is an entirely different – and much more difficult – task than brushing up skills in a language you already speak fluently, and we British should recognise this as we are particularly poor at language learning.

We know that learning a new language takes a long time. Research in Australia suggests that 1,765 hours of specialist ESOL are needed to reach an adequate level of English for employment ̶ 350 hours per level, from entry 1 to level 2. Some may need less time, but many will need more.

So what should the government prioritise here? Most importantly, they need to make sure that all learners can join the right course, regardless of funding constraints.

For most ESOL students that means one that is based on the ESOL Core Curriculum, leading to an ESOL qualification, as that is the best way to ensure a strong foundation in all aspects of English, building important enabling knowledge, such as grammar and vocabulary at each level.

Next, they should ensure that providers offer every level, so that learners of all ages can continue right up to level 2 in an ESOL-focused environment, and finally that ESOL qualifications are better recognised by employers.

The DfE is right to identify that there is an issue, but it seems to me that it is the funding regime that needs revision, not the qualifications.

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 334

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Alexandra Miles, Governor, Selby College

Start date: September 2020

Concurrent job: Managing director, West Yorkshire Learning Providers

Interesting fact: She reached the final stage of the England Squad Netball trials under-18 in 1993

Anne-Marie Francis, Vice principal of quality and curriculum, Loughborough College

Start date: Early 2021

Previous job: Vice principal, Stockport College

Interesting fact: She previously worked as a voice actor, including for a Ford Transit advert

Patricia Denham, Interim vice principal, Highbury College Portsmouth

Start date: September 2020

Previous job: Specialist FE advisor/consultant, PRTD

Interesting fact: She is a former Highbury College student

WorldSkills: UK beats China in first virtual pressure test

The UK’s elite squad of skilled young people in electronics has beaten their Chinese counterparts in this country’s first virtual pressure test – a new means of training for the international WorldSkills competitions during the pandemic.

FE Week spoke to competitors, trainers and organisers to find out if the innovative model will become the new norm.

Five members of Squad UK, based at Gower College Swansea, and five competitors from China in their own country, undertook a “pressure test” on Thursday, pitting the two teams against one another in an electronics skills competition.

Rhys Watts

Although the competitors were thousands of miles apart, they kept in constant contact over Zoom.

UK competitor Rhys Watts took gold at the event, with Ben Lewis and Liam Hughes taking joint-silver, and China taking the bronze medal.

This was part of a two-day event hosted by the Department for International Trade, with the first day on Wednesday featuring speakers from the department, Team UK training managers, college leaders and the Chinese government, discussing how best to train for and compete in skills competitions. 

Watts told FE Week he was “chuffed” to win and to see the work he had put in pay off was a “big achievement for me”.

“It went well on the whole. There were a few points were my soldering wasn’t going as planned, but then I just took a second and carried on.”

Steve Williams

Speaking after finding out his team had won the medals, electronics training manager Steve Williams said: “I can get a bit emotional with this sometimes. Seeing the work these guys have put in through lockdown is absolutely remarkable.

“This is the first bit of pressure testing they’ve been put under and they’ve risen to the challenge.”

The competitors had two hours to make a controller from a kit, which could then design and run a set of traffic lights.

Williams came up with the task himself, and it was then signed-off by the Chinese side.

He said the skills it called on “directly fits into FE curriculum, whether we’re looking at BTEC or another curriculum.

“It fits into what industry is looking for, which is engineers who are IT literate, who are digitally literate and have all the digital skills needed to push the envelope.”

He said a task that fits in snugly with the needs of industry was the whole ethos of WorldSkills, getting competitors ready for competitions, but also the world of work. 

Each side was judged by experts from their own country, but Williams insisted the standards were “exacting”, with, for example, the soldering joints on the competitors’ projects being examined under a microscope.

He called the pressure tests “vitally important” because if they do not test the UK’s competitors against other national teams “we are going in cold to international competitions and that’s incredibly dangerous”.

There was a hitch when the computer screens they were using froze, but “generally it went very well,” Williams said. 

Training his competitors for Shanghai will now continue virtually: each of them has a fully equipped electronics lab at home and they are communicating through Zoom. 

The online pressure test comes after the WorldSkills Shanghai competition was pushed back from 2021 to 2022, and the EuroSkills competition, set to take place in Austria next January, was indefinitely postponed.

Following the decision on Shanghai, WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann told FE Week they were looking at running pressure tests with other countries. 

Parisa Shirazi

Head of skills development and international competitions for WorldSkills UK Parisa Shirazi said that traditionally, “we would pressure test by taking squad members to other countries to compete with their counterparts”.

But due to the travel restrictions around Covid-19, she said: “We are looking at new innovations and how we can simulate the same experience, the same pressure, with the use of technology.

“Today marks a really great step for us in how we can then look to adopt the principle of this livestreamed training activity, which enables us to benchmark and compare the standard our young people in comparison to our counterparts across the globe.

“What this gives us a really good proxy so we are then able to establish the distance our students and apprentices need to travel.

“And there are some really insightful lessons we can take away, as we can then say ‘are there differences in our education and training system that we’re maybe not teaching to the right level or standard in comparison to China?’.”

China was a key candidate for the test as their technical and vocational education system has had to adapt to the demands of a fast-growing industry, especially in electronic products.

So, Shirazi says, WorldSkills UK is looking at what China has done which they could adopt for the UK’s own system.

“The competition,” she says, “is a vehicle. Our ambition is looking at how we can mainstream excellence.”

WorldSkills UK is looking at holding a series of these events next year, with Shirazi saying Wednesday’s mini-conference was intended to “draw from the lessons we have learned about the logistics and operation of putting on an event like this, which we can then replicate across the multitude of skills in our portfolio”.

“We see in the UK, real value in this. For young people and where we can bring together policymakers, industry leaders and education providers across the globe, to collaborate and share practice.

“This is not something we’ve done before, and there is some real gold dust in that, I think.”

An example of this meeting of minds was exemplified in the Wednesday session, where Hao Bin, director general of international affairs for China’s ministry of human resources and social security, which runs the country’s participation in WorldSkills, said he was “honoured” to participate, recalling an old Chinese saying that: “No distance can separate friends and likeminded people.” 

Shanghai will be the first time China has hosted the international WorldSkills competition since it joined the organisation in 2010, and Hao Bin said that had “helped to raise our level of vocational and educational training and teaching”. 

He explained that his country wanted to learn from the UK as it has been a member of the movement that became WorldSkills in 1953 and has hosted three of the international competitions.

“In light of this, there is a lot we can learn from each other.” 

Bentley-Gockmann gave a pre-recorded address to the event, in which he said: “I think that this is the start of a forward-looking partnership, where we can forge deeper and closer relationships on exchanging best practice within the world’s skills network.”

DfE hiring spree for Covid response

A huge recruitment drive has been launched at the Department for Education to aid its response to Covid-19, with 100 jobs up for grabs.

Job adverts for the 12-month contracts contain limited detail but state that people are being sought to work in “priority roles” that have been impacted by the pandemic and will be deployed “where business needs are greatest”.

The DfE refused to shed more light on what the positions will entail or the areas that will be covered, but it appears they will be looking to poach existing civil servants from other government departments and agencies for a loan spell.

Job adverts for the roles include the line: “Existing civil servants (with manager approval) would have the option of transferring to DfE on loan.”

When Covid first struck, a “small” number of staff from the DfE’s agencies were seconded to the department, including from Ofsted, to keep inspectors busy after the watchdog’s inspection regime was suspended in March.

An FE Week investigation in May found that 20 inspectors had been deployed to the DfE to support their social care, early years and further education departments.

All those civil servants who temporarily transferred to the DfE and aided its initial Covid-19 response have since returned to their previous areas of work.

But it wouldn’t be a total surprise to see more inspectors loaned out to the DfE. Speaking at the Schools and Academies Show on Wednesday, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman ruled out an “inspection frenzy” when normal business for the watchdog is resumed (currently set for the beginning of the new year), suggesting the reintroduction of full inspections could be “gradual” and thus will not require as many staff.

Candidates to the DfE’s Covid response team are asked to apply for a range of levels.

Twenty-five will be hired as higher executive officers, who earn a salary of £29,363 and typically work across various policy areas, making “significant contributions toward decision-making”, while 39 will be employed as senior executive officers, who are paid £36,498 and often manage teams.

An additional 31 individuals will be taken on as “grade 7” employees who are “responsible for setting priorities, agreeing targets, allocating responsibilities to their team” and are “accountable for outcomes in their policy area”. They receive £49,861 a year.

Lastly, five people will be hired in “grade 6” positions which typically lead “several complex work streams” and are paid £61,014.

Let’s not kill off the small specialist, local provider in the pursuit of the Amazon model

What’s really behind the Commission on the College of the Future’s recommendation that colleges should have a ‘legal duty’ to create networks, asks Luke Rake

Like many, I have been waiting with interest for the outcome of the Independent Commission on The College of the Future. The sector has for years been lagging in funding, under-appreciated in Westminster and capable of providing a much higher profile role than the one it currently does.

This is not news, and the commission creates an opportunity for us to position ourselves prior to the FE white paper. However, it also raises huge questions about the sector’s future and its structure.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty to agree with. My work in the sector and as an independent local enterprise partnership (LEP) board member shows there are times when a lack of inter-departmental synergy in government, for example between BEIS, DEFRA, DFE and MHCLG, fails to ensure investment priorities meet the needs of communities across the country.

People travel all over the place, not according to lines on a map

The recommendation of closer working to ensure sensible and coherent strategy and the drivers of educational provision to match the needs of geographies and learners is thus a good one.

It’s also sensible to recommend greater stability of funding (although it might be better to just say “get the funding level correct”). However, this requires careful managing by ESFA and others to ensure (a) there are opportunities for growth, and (b) a three-year settlement does not allow for crises points at the end
of each period where a college requires a major negative shift in its funding position.

However, the headline already creating the most noise is the “legal duty” on colleges to create networks, which must be matched by a duty on other post-16 providers. My worry is that this grabs all the bandwidth.

Why this duty? I cannot see a sensible way to force private training providers, public sector schools and the entertainingly different “incorporated by statute but pseudo-public-sector” colleges into bodies that have legal status. We already have networks that are functional and effective, whether LEPS, local safeguarding boards, chambers of commerce, etc. So the legal duty is either not required or it’s after something else.

Control? Create large regional colleges that service whole geographies. Well, sorry, geography doesn’t work like that – people travel all over the place, not according to lines on a map.

Protectionism for colleges? PTPs are a mixed bag, but so are colleges – let the customer choose.

“Securing provision in hard-to-reach areas” – does this mean propping up poor-quality provision, or perhaps forcing those wishing to study level 3 to study miles from home? That’s not going to sell to the student in Cornwall who suddenly finds themselves forced to go 100 miles to study. They’ll just stay in school and do A-levels. Seriously, they will. Might work in a city, but let’s not forget the rural dimension here.

Larger doesn’t necessarily equate to better quality, nor does it equate to more resilient, as the massive bailouts to some very large providers show. Similarly, small does not equate to weak.

The challenges in the sector are arguably of leadership and ambition, not scale.

The principle of survival of the fittest does not say anything about size. Competition in itself is a good thing, not an evil to crush with statute. Foxes may eat rabbits, but rabbits are still here and doing very well thank you. True, they might have to run faster, as they are running for their life, not just their dinner.

However, competition has enabled both to evolve and thrive in their own niche. A well-run, locally-minded provider of any type will always work with partners. This is not vertical restraint or similar, it’s just common sense with a hefty dose of moral purpose.

So, let’s push for FE to have its place in the sun, but let’s also not kill off the small specialist, local provider in the pursuit of the Amazon model. I think people deserve more choice on their high street.

Read all sides of the argument for The Independent Commission on the College of the Future’s recommendation that colleges should be forced into local ‘networks’:

Why college networks might be a step in the right direction

The future colleges report’s call for a network strategy is eminently sensible as a corrective to failing marketisation, writes Stuart Rimmer.

This week the College of the Future report landed, with some thoughtful description of how our sector can drive place, productivity and people. There is much merit in the report, which captures discussions between some leaders over the course of many months.

It is often easy within our sector to identify the problems and reasonably straightforward to define our “future perfect”. What rarely gains consensus is how we get there.

The key recommendations appear straightforward (even at times obvious): placing colleges front and centre of a national skills revival; calling for a skills strategy; colleges to co-create with employers and provide lifelong learning opportunities backed by funding. This is important ahead of the white paper, although it’s fair to say that with a single year spending review, public finances under pressure and DfE political stock being at a low point, it may only signify a direction, rather providing the money or legislation to make it happen.

It’s time we admitted the tensions exist and the designed formal solutions

Contention only occurs where there is no consensus and the report has managed to do this under one of the key recommended elements. It suggests that government must introduce a duty on colleges to develop network strategies across economic geographies. This in many respects represents a significant departure from current policy, with accountability now prescribed to the network level and a dual mandate for governors towards institution and system.

This has been seen by some as a grab of power from the centre, a loss of institutional independence, and confusion of corporation role. It might mean that. . . and if it does… then… Good! About bloody time!

Many regions have been plagued by poor competitor behaviours by “robber baron” principals.

Quasi-markets leave a free-for-all system of small school sixth-forms, poor IAG, local colleges running aggressive campaigns and splitting markets for curriculum leading to confusion and inefficiency. Large employers often need to talk to multiple delivery partners and so find it hard to navigate separate institutions or get consistency of delivery. Area-Based Review went some way to achieving this but did not control transition or core funding to bring college leaders to heel where required.

All the report calls for is a network strategy – groups or systems of interconnected people coming together. This is hardly radical and is eminently sensible.

Where regional colleges and higher education institutions have got together in formal partnerships or mergers they have created a “micro-planned system” and they appear to be working to the greater good, with examples in the West Midlands, Manchester, and Sheffield region, to name but a few.

In other parts of the country we have larger college groups (for example, in London region) that “design out” competition through joint planning. Governments have tried through skills advisory panels and skills capital running through local enterprise partnerships to smooth out competition and create regional planning, but many are still ineffective. The report harks back to UKCES outcome area agreements – the linking of regional curriculum deliverables to funding. It is fair that publicly funded work is designed for the public good, by the public through public structures.

There is always a tension between wearing the institutional hat and the regional network hat.

It’s time we admitted these tensions exist and the designed formal solutions. The CoF report suggests one way, not necessarily the best way, of doing this.

For two reasons it is far too early to be decrying the CoF report.

Firstly, it is only some words on a page to stimulate discussions.

It highlights a plan yet to be fully debated, not a blueprint. Secondly, the detail of how this is interpreted by government and translated into policy will take a long time and will likely change. During the interim, as college leaders we should create the space to build consensus on how we will deliver these aspirations.

We can do this regionally or nationally. We can do this by further mergers or through formal collaborations. We have choice. Colleges naturally want to collaborate and many are hugely expert in this already and may not need the funding or capital incentives to do so. But to create a world-class and complete system available to everyone in every place, more structure will likely be required.

I have on many occasions called for some form of renationalisation or “un-incorporation” of our sector, based more on a philosophical and political position to provide correction to failing marketisation and to encourage, or demand, collaboration. Regional network strategies could be a step in the right direction.

Read all sides of the argument for The Independent Commission on the College of the Future’s recommendation that colleges should be forced into local ‘networks’: