Latest news from FE Week

Skills Bill: DfE accused of ‘power-grab’ over colleges

The much-heralded Skills Bill contains a Department for Education “power-grab” and will “fail to meet the scale of the challenge that years of neglect” of FE have caused, Labour has said.

Writing for FE Week, shadow skills minister Toby Perkins warned that many “smaller” colleges will be looking nervously at the government’s expressed right to force mergers “without recourse to local circumstances or consultation”.

He said there is also “little expectation” of a role for metro mayors and nor does there appear to be “any enthusiasm for Local Enterprise Partnerships”.

Perkins added that in the “many hundreds of meetings” he has held during his first year in this post, “I confess I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was central to ensuring Britain is equipped with a well-skilled workforce”.

Yet here, the education secretary “awards himself new powers to intervene in ‘failing’ colleges, to merge or replace colleges, to select or to sack ‘employer representative’ bodies, and to dictate whether colleges are fulfilling the requirements these bodies lay down”.

“Poorly defined local skills plans risk shutting out metro mayors and combined authorities, many of which have democratic accountability for local skills and economic regeneration,” Perkins added.

Local skills improvement plans led by employers and new powers for the education secretary to intervene when colleges “fail to meet local need” are central new pieces of legislation in the Skills Bill.

Batting for the government in this week’s edition of FE Week, skills minister Gillian Keegan insisted that the Bill is “not about taking back control of colleges”.

“This is about ensuring we can continue to sustainably offer high-quality education and training to as many people as possible, and that the training on offer meets the needs of employers and local communities,” she added.

Other sector leaders have cautiously welcomed the reforms.

Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said the Bill gives “sweeping new powers to end FE college autonomy as we know it”.

“Power without proper resources is futile,” he continued. “And too much centralisation of power without devolving resources to individuals, employers and local communities will not work either.”

Bewick said the federation “broadly supports” the direction of travel of the reforms but will “examine carefully” the clauses that appear to change the focus of independently regulated qualifications, particularly those that give the Institute for Apprenticeship and Technical Education new powers to accredit technical courses.

“In no circumstances must we return to a situation where public agencies are marking their own homework when it comes to ensuring public confidence in apprenticeships and qualifications. That’s why Ofqual was set up in the first place.”

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the Bill puts post-16 education, skills and colleges in the “forefront of the government’s priorities as look to a post-pandemic and post-Brexit world”.

He added that his association is looking forward to hearing the proposals on what will trigger interventions and how DfE proposes to measure and assess the degree to which colleges are meeting local needs.

“Getting the balance between accountability and intervention powers is a bit like walking a tightrope, and requires careful consideration and fine tuning, but colleges are confident that they meet local learner and employer needs, so we’re confident that there is a way to ensure the measures are fair and proportionate.”

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie welcomed the “employer-informed approach” and is “generally comfortable with the direction of travel that the Bill is pursuing”.

She said the House of Lords can play a “very useful role” in probing the government on how the legislation’s clauses on local skills improvement plans will apply in practice to independent providers, especially as the impact assessment document states that the duty to “have regard” to the plans “does not mean that a provider is required to implement or deliver the skills needs outlined in the plan”.

Another key reform in the Bill is the introduction of a new register that private providers will need to be on to be eligible for funding and subcontracting.

Hickie said AELP has “no argument” with new legislative measures to protect the interests of learners.

However, “where we have serious concerns is that being on the list will, according to the government, have ‘significant impact’ on the costs of smaller providers because, for example, of the imposition of professional indemnity insurance.

“If this is a backdoor method of trying to reduce the number of ITPs in the market, it could backfire because many are either specialist providers or serve areas out of easy reach of a local college.”

Provider challenges Ofsted for ‘factually incorrect’ report

A care worker apprenticeship provider is challenging a damaging Ofsted report and accused inspectors of lacking the knowledge to judge their provision.

Flexible Training Ltd was found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in all three areas of an early monitoring visit for its provision of adult care apprenticeships to 21 learners.

One key criticism by inspectors was that the Hertfordshire-based provider’s safeguarding arrangements were “inappropriate and a conflict of interest”. The owner of their apprentices’ employer is the designated lead but is not employed by the provider, so is “not impartial” to learners’ needs.

Leaders were also lambasted for not providing an “ambitious curriculum”, and for not enabling apprentices to “develop new knowledge and skills beyond the care qualification”.

As a result of the ‘insufficient’ judgment, the provider now faces a ban on starts under Education and Skills Funding Agency rules.

Flexible Training has been delivering standards-based apprenticeships since October 2018, and when asked for a response to the report, the provider’s managing director Jason Dudderidge listed a series of complaints about the way in which they were inspected.

He criticised the inspectors’ “lack of specialist knowledge” of the care sector.

“I believe that had they been competent in this sector, they would have been able to inspect in a more positive, productive and realistic way.

“Ofsted inspectors need to have experience in this sector as it is too regulated to guess your way around,” he insisted.

Dudderidge also accused the watchdog of publishing inaccuracies. He said the safeguarding lead was previously employed by the provider and then left to start her own care company but was still listed as one of their safeguarding leads.

This was addressed “immediately” after Ofsted flagged the issue, with responsibilities being transferred to a member of staff before the inspection in March was finished.

Ofsted also found that although the provider’s assessors have continued progress reviews for apprentices during the pandemic, they have “not continued to teach apprentices to enable them to make good progress”.

Apprentices, who all work for one domiciliary care employer, also “do not benefit from high-quality off-the-job training”.

The curriculum is not tailored for apprentices’ existing knowledge and skills appropriately, the report adds, and assessors do not make “effective” use of available online resources to teach apprentices so they can make good progress.

Yet Dudderidge said this was all “factually incorrect,” as evidence of the apprentices’ qualification requirements, mandatory training requirements and the apprentices’ prior learning was shown to the inspectors.

How teaching practices had been adapted to the Covid-19 pandemic; how apprentices have progressed in a timely manner; and the fact that none was overdue were also presented to the watchdog, he added. But, claimed Dudderidge, all this was “not considered and disregarded”.

Inspectors asked to visit the apprentices’ workplace, but Dudderidge said they were not allowed because of coronavirus restrictions, which he alleges “did not please” the watchdog’s team.

The report notes assessors have been unable to visit workplaces for face-to-face reviews and observations.

“They constantly challenged us in regard to visiting care homes which, as the country, and the world, knows, is something that has not been permitted, not even for residents’ families, since March 2020, in line with government guidance,” Dudderidge said.

“It was apparent the lead inspector ‘did not like us’ and as a result of this she led the inspection, clearly influencing the other inspector at times with her opinions, as she has expressed within this report.”

He told FE Week he intends to formally challenge the inspection result.

An Ofsted spokesperson said it “would be inappropriate for us to comment on individual cases or complaints”.

The Skills Bill: inadequate to deal with years of neglect and a pandemic

This Skills Bill reveals an approach that remains inadequate to tackle the scale of the skills challenges we face post-Covid, writes Toby Perkins

After a decade of funding cuts and neglect of further education, the sector has understandably welcomed the government’s new-found interest.

But the much-heralded Skills Bill contains less than meets the eye, and we fear it will fail to meet the scale of the challenge that years of neglect and the impact of the pandemic have caused.

While this Bill was not expected to solve all funding challenges, the government is failing to even recognise the role their spending cuts have played in the decline of further education.

The Conservatives have overseen a sharp fall in apprentice numbers since the introduction of their apprenticeship levy, at the same time as claiming to be the party of small business and excluding those very businesses from the levy.

The sector is understandably sceptical when it comes to big new promises.

The heady claims that this was a government that believed in localism and devolution of power are clearly consigned to the history books. This Bill contains a Department for Education power-grab with little expectation of a role for metro mayors and confusion around the role of shire authorities in setting skills priorities.

Nor does there appear to be any enthusiasm for Local Enterprise Partnerships to play a central role in bringing together the needs of businesses and educators.

Many smaller colleges will also be looking nervously at the government’s expressed right to merge colleges without recourse to local circumstances or consultation.

I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was needed

In the many hundreds of meetings I have held during my year in this post, I confess I have never heard anybody suggest that a more hands-on role for Gavin Williamson was needed for ensuring Britain is equipped with a well skilled workforce.

Yet here, the education secretary awards himself new powers to intervene in ‘failing’ colleges, to merge or replace colleges, to select or to sack ‘employer representative’ bodies, and to dictate whether colleges are fulfilling the requirements these bodies lay down.

This is a government that has consistently created oblique structures and been surprised when they fail to deliver, yet there is again very little evidence of a robust, systematic approach to underpin the government’s desire for employers to take the lead in skills reforms.

Poorly defined local skills plans risk shutting out metro mayors and combined authorities, many of which have democratic accountability for local skills and economic regeneration.

Given the continued decline in apprenticeship numbers, and unspent levy funds, supporting businesses to utilise more of that pot and spend the money as intended on boosting skills should be a key priority for this government.

Yet again there is inaction. Silence in the face of Labour’s call for a wage subsidy policy which could have created 85,000 new apprenticeships for young people last year, giving them their first step on the ladder.

There are measures here that we welcome – the moves to create learning accounts and expand learning entitlements are both positive steps.

However, even here there are gaps, the lack of support for living costs risks closing the door to potential learners, in contrast to the Labour-led Welsh government’s Education Maintenance Allowance, which supports young students to invest in themselves.

The government’s proudest boast in this Bill seems to be a reversal of their own move in 2013 to scrap the right for adults to study a level 3 qualification.

Yet the renewed commitment is more limited than what existed before, and crucially won’t allow someone qualified to level 3 in one field to receive funding to retrain in another, which, given the needs of the post-Covid world, is a remarkable failure.

Its introduction in 2024 is also disappointingly slow.

It is also concerning that supported internships, which can play a huge role in supporting learners with learning difficulties to prepare for and enter the world of work, are missing from the Bill. We would like to see them specified as an intrinsic part of local skills plans.

This Bill is itself an acknowledgement of this government’s 11 years of failure on FE policy and funding. Many measures, such as the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, are undoing previous mistakes or going over old ground to finally deliver promises such as employer-led skills.

Yet at a time when the need for the sector has never been greater, the over-riding first impression is one of a government seizing powers for itself, to introduce policies dictated from an out-of-touch Conservative government in Whitehall, instead of a genuine partnership of local learners, elected officials, providers and employers.

This amounts to a huge, missed opportunity and an approach that remains inadequate to tackle the scale of the skills challenges we face post-Covid.

The Skills Bill is not about taking back control of colleges

Instances of serious failure are rare and the government wants to reduce interventions with the Skills Bill, writes Gillian Keegan

This week we introduced the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill in Parliament.

Not only did this mark an historic moment for education, it also signalled how serious we are about skills reform.

While the Bill is just one part of our wider reforms to post-16 education and training, many of which are being consulted on separately or are already in train, each of its nine measures will be vital in making sure we can progress this work.

I’ve been delighted at how much genuine support there is for our reforms, but I wanted to take this opportunity to set out why we need this legislation and why now.

First of all, I want to make clear this is not about taking back control of colleges.

This is about ensuring we can continue to sustainably offer high quality education and training to as many people as possible, and that the training on offer meets the needs of employers and local communities. This is central to our levelling up agenda.

This is about ensuring we can continue to sustainably offer high quality education

There are skills shortages throughout our economy, holding people back from working in highly skilled jobs and stopping employers getting the workforce they need.

We are also still recovering from a global pandemic, which has significantly impacted opportunities for many people.

In 2019 employers reported that they were unable to fill a quarter of all vacant positions, due to not finding people with the right skills.

Skills shortages accounted for 36 per cent of all construction vacancies, and 48 per cent of all manufacturing and skilled trade vacancies.

We need to act now to make sure everyone can gain the skills they, employers and the economy need to thrive.

If employers say they need more engineers or web designers, then it is crucial that we offer more training that will meet that need.

This will support more people into work, including locally, so they are not forced to leave their hometowns to find well-paid jobs if they don’t want to.

There are many colleges and providers that are doing a fantastic job and who are already collaborating successfully with employers to do this. We want to build on this and make sure this is replicated everywhere.

We will do this through our local skills improvement plans.

The Bill will allow us to designate employer representative bodies to lead this work and make it a legal requirement for providers to collaborate on developing these plans, and to pay due regard to them, ensuring skills provision meets local training needs.

An employer-led system needs an employer-led approach, and this is the framework that will make that happen.

It will also offer colleges and providers an opportunity to take a more proactive role in shaping future skills need; and to use their expertise to support employers to make the incremental innovations that are needed to drive demand for higher level skills and boost productivity.

Most colleges are well run, and instances of serious failures are rare. We are already developing a more strategic and supportive relationship with colleges so that problems can be identified sooner and so we can reduce the numbers needing intervention.

The Bill will ensure that when there is failure, we can intervene, such as by requiring a restructure, to support colleges and to protect the interests of learners, employers and taxpayers.

Statutory intervention is only expected to be used as a last resort where it is not possible to secure improvement through other measures.

Statutory intervention is only expected to be used as a last resort

Finally, I want to reiterate that talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not. That’s why we have put our reforms and this Bill at the heart of our recovery plans and our levelling up agenda.

As colleges and providers, you will all play a vital role in making sure this happens.

I’m excited for the future. With government, employers and providers all working together we will bring about the change that is needed and that will make a huge difference to people’s lives.

£250m of apprenticeship funding went back to Treasury in 2020-21

Apprenticeship funding to the tune of £250 million was handed back to the Treasury in 2020-21, FE Week can reveal.

The Department for Education said it had to surrender the money as demand for apprenticeships from employers was “lower than expected” partly due to the impact of Covid-19.

Government statistics show that apprenticeship starts were down 18 per cent in the 2019/20 academic year compared to the previous year, falling from 393,400 to 322,600.

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie said with workplaces closed, the pandemic was “always going to have an impact on starts and spend” but she sees no reason why “every penny” of the apprenticeships budget should not go to levy- and non-levy payers in future years as the economy recovers.

As per levy rules, businesses with a payroll of £3 million or more pay each month into the pot and have a rolling 24-month deadline to spend the funds.

The levy policy was designed so that large employers wouldn’t use all of their funds. The unspent money is meant to be recycled and made available to small businesses who do not pay the levy to use to train their apprentices. Unspent funds are also used to top up levy funds by ten per cent as well as pay for English and maths teaching for relevant apprentices, among other things.

But because government refuses to share annual spending data, there are many misconceptions in the sector and national media that all apprenticeship funding that expires from levy accounts goes back to the Treasury.

The actual sum of apprenticeship funding surrendered to Treasury each is year is published in the DfE’s annual “estimates memorandum”.

The memorandum for 2021/22 was published this week and states: “Unspent funding of £250 million was surrendered at the 2020/21 Supplementary Estimate (as the demand for apprenticeships from employers was lower than expected during 2020/21, partly due to the impact that Covid-19 had on employers’ recruitment plans).”

A DfE spokesperson confirmed the funding was returned to the Treasury, which is “usual practice” for “any underspends in overall departmental budgets by the end of the financial year”.

This isn’t the first time the DfE has handed back lumps of apprenticeship funding to the Treasury. In 2017/18 – the first year of the levy – around £300 million was surrendered.

The DfE claimed it did not surrender an apprenticeships underspend in 2018/19.

But £330 million was sent back to Treasury in 2019/20, despite concerns at the time that small employers had struggled to find providers with sufficient non-levy funds to train their apprentices, with some being turned away.

There have been numerous calls over the past year for unspent levy funding to be redistributed to other parts of the skills system or reinvested into apprenticeships.

The Labour Party, for example, wants any unspent levy funding to be used to subsidise the wages of apprentices as a way of boosting the number of people taking up the programmes.

Hickie said making use of the full apprenticeship budget in future can be “easily done if the government steadily lifts the limit on each small employers’ starts but more likely we can anticipate levy-payers spending their entitlements again so that we end up with a repeat of the ‘hard choices’ planning”.

“It is a major reason why AELP agrees with FE Week that there should be much more transparency surrounding levy funding,” she added.

Right2Learn campaign to host inaugural conference tonight

A new campaign that argues for a lifelong statutory right to fully funded learning for every adult is holding its first conference tonight.

Former education secretary Lord David Blunkett will be the opening speaker for the Right2Learn campaign, which was founded in December 20202 by a steering group including ex-shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden (pictured).

Blunkett’s lecture will be given in honour of Bob Fryer – a well-known champion of lifelong learning who worked with Blunkett on The Learning Age green paper at the turn of the millennium – who died in December.

Other speakers leading the conference include director for education and skills at the OECD Andreas Schleicher, City & Guilds chief executive Kirstie Donnelly, founder of the Helena Kennedy Foundation Ann Limb, President of the Further Education Trust for Leadership Ruth Silver, and WEA general secretary Simon Parkinson.

The Right2Learn campaign took its inspiration from Labour’s 2019 Lifelong Learning Commission which called for everyone to have a statutory right to learn whatever their age or background.

Their aim is to “show how important properly funded lifelong learning is to the life chances of millions”.

Since its launch, the campaign has created an online platform which features regular blogs, discussion and comment.

It also published a manifesto following a consultation in January, which produced five principles they believe should underpin government policy: break down barriers; integrate and coordinate; devolve and empower; tackle inequality and meet community needs; invest and promote.

‘Tonight’s conference comes at a crucial time’

Right 2 Learn’s steering group founders – Graeme Atherton, VIcky Duckworth, Gordon Marsden and Matt Waddup – said tonight’s conference comes at a “crucial time as we try to emerge from lockdown and the pandemic but with a sobering legacy of thousands of lost jobs, stalled careers and life chances across all ages and sectors, and the disruption right across the UK in further and higher education, skills and employment.”

The conference will also identify key issues and areas to focus on in the next 12 months.

These include “maximising initiatives to learn, both formally and informally, to up skill and reskill across all ages, especially for disadvantaged groups and areas; and the roles of government, local government, mayors and combined authorities, plus businesses, unions, third, public and private sectors, in delivering those goals”.

Titled ‘Right2Learn is Right for Now’, the conference will be held from 6pm to 8.30 pm virtually on zoom.

You can register for free here https://www.educationopportunities.co.uk/events/right2learn-conference/.

New powers in Skills Bill point to radical loss of autonomy for colleges

Government is taking more control but the Skills Bill will only be a success if young people are kept at the heart of it, writes Angela Donkin

The new Skills Bill has been published with a legal requirement for employers and colleges to work together to fill local skills gaps.

The DfE’s press release does a good sell – it cites a skills shortage and research illustrating that 26 year olds with level 4 or 5 technical qualifications can earn more than those with a degree.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting development. It has long been my view that too much emphasis is placed on the A-Level, degree route.

Indeed, I walk the walk. One of my children has been studying a range of BTECs and GCSEs since she was 14 in a university technical college.

That choice was made precisely because the curriculum is linked with the needs of the creative industries in which she is interested in working.

This Bill should make it easier for other young people like my daughter to take that pragmatic step where it suits them.

However, as with any piece of legislation, the devil is in the detail. Let’s look at carrots and sticks.

The incentives include an £83 million fund to build facilities in areas where there are shortages of places given the demographics. There’s also a flexible grant to allow people to afford to be trained.

This makes sense – we need the buildings, and the demand for the courses.

There appear to be more incentives for level 3 or higher qualifications, so we must ensure the Bill does not hinder the availability of alternative level 2 routes where needed.

How will this be achieved?

Firstly, a power to sanction FE colleges for not delivering a local skills plan and, secondly, a power to intervene when colleges are failing to deliver good outcomes for the communities they serve.

These are interesting new powers as they point to a quite radical loss of autonomy for FE colleges.

While the importance of training young people with necessary skills is obvious, it’s vital that young people are at the heart of this, and that they have choice.

For this bill to tackle issues such as social mobility it still requires one vital legal requirement.

While colleges will have sanctions for not delivering, what about employers?

And if sanctions aren’t possible or realistic, what about meaningful and relevant incentives?

There is nothing in the bill regarding sanctioning employers should they fail to offer purposeful opportunities for young people.

As it stands, in local areas with many low paid workers, we could get to a position where we are sanctioning colleges for failing to train young adults to join the 4 million who are in work but also in poverty.

No one wants that to happen.

We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country

So that takes us to the issues of local jobs. We know that opportunities for young adults are not evenly distributed across the country.

This means that in areas with poor prospects, we first need to improve the quality of work available.

Second, we must ensure there is a wider range of courses at different levels to accommodate everyone’s different career ambitions. These might not be linked to skills needed in local areas where there are poor prospects.

Third, we must ensure students can afford to travel further away for opportunities to study or work if needed.

I’m hoping that this is a really important step change in skills education. However, we must ensure that young people are kept at the heart of this and that colleges and employers work together for that reason.

We know there are issues around existing apprenticeships, particularly at level 3 and above, currently favouring large employers with subsidised higher level training courses.

Meanwhile lower level apprenticeships have reduced significantly in number. This has had a disproportionate impact on young adults from more disadvantaged areas and on small employers.

So we must ensure we look carefully at the detail and avoid stumbling into a situation where we have inadvertently exacerbated inequity.

International partnerships announced to boost post-pandemic skills recovery

WorldSkills UK is signing up to a host of partnerships with overseas counterparts which will mean greater sharing of skills expertise and more pressure testing for our competitors.

Today will see the UK formally sign its first partnership with Chinese Taipei, which will lead to representatives from Taipei speaking at the WorldSkills UK International Skills Summits, the latest of which was held this week, as well as other events.

There will also be more opportunities for pressure testing the UK’s competitors; such as when Isaac George represented the UK against 23 competitors from 15 other nations at an IT test this month.

The UK’s experts, who train our competitors, will also receive professional development as a result of the international partnership with Chinese Taipei which will feed into the WorldSkills UK Centres of Excellence programme.

WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann said the new partnerships “harness our global network and sharing international best practice, and will enable us to build on our work to boost standards in higher technical education, supporting young people to develop the high-quality skills needed by employers and investors in key sectors”.

WorldSkills UK is set to sign more partnerships in the coming weeks with countries including South Korea, Japan, Russia, India and France.

It is expected a total of 11 partnerships with WorldSkills members will be agreed by the end of the year.

WorldSkills Chinese Taipei’s official delegate Chen-Yang Shih called the partnership a “win-win situation,” adding: “The agreement symbolizes a great step towards closer collaboration and stronger partnership.

“It provides a fantastic opportunity to work closely to mainstream innovation and excellence in skills development to help the youth build and strengthen their capacity and explore their potential.”

WorldSkills UK says the partnerships will have a “key role” in shaping the work of its new, independent Skills Taskforce for Global Britain, announced earlier this week.

Chaired by former Confederation of British Industry director-general John Cridland, and supported by accountancy firm EY, the taskforce will put together a ‘Roadmap to 2030’ to drive the use of skills in “levelling up” and attracting investment to the UK economy.

It will be answering questions such as how our skills compare with competitor countries, what are international investors looking for in terms of skills in the UK, and are all parts of the UK able to attract inward investment.

In the absence of international skills competitions, owing to the pandemic, WorldSkills UK has launched the pressure tests with other nations – several of which have ran already – and its International Skills Summits.

This week’s summit featured a keynote speech by Labour’s shadow education secretary Kate Green, while the previous one in November heard from Commons Education Select Committee chair Robert Halfon and former skills minister Anne Milton.

The UK will next compete in person at WorldSkills Shanghai next year.

Pictured: Neil Bentley-Gockmann and Chen-Yang Shih signing the partnership documents.

Reverse adult education clawback plans, says cross-party group of MPs

A cross-party group of MPs has called on the education secretary to reverse his adult education budget clawback plans to give colleges “financial security” amid the pandemic.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group on FE has also urged ministers to give students leaving college a fully funded extra year of study and introduce a new fund to support disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds to help make up for lost learning.

The members state that these shorter-term decisions are crucial to support the government’s overarching goals on skills reform as outlined in the Skills Bill this week.

Led by chair and Conservative MP Peter Aldous, the group has penned a letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson with the demands and urging him to announce his Covid catch-up plan.

It comes after Education Policy Institute research claimed it will take £13.5 billion to make up for lost learning.

The MPs’ letter states that colleges are currently facing “a number of challenges” in delivering the catch-up support needed, which is “in no small part due to the fact that college finances have been hit hard as a consequence of the significant disruption caused by the pandemic, and compounded by the recent decision by the EFSA to clawback adult skills funding from colleges”.

Announced in March and forced by the Treasury, the clawback decision means that any college that delivers less than 90 per cent of their national adult education allocation must repay the difference between that threshold and their actual delivery.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has also ruled out a business case process whereby colleges could put forward reasons as to why they should cling on to the money if they did not reach the threshold.

Research by the Association of Colleges suggests that this decision will be in effect nearly a £60 million cut to adult funding, announced eight months into the academic year it applies to, giving colleges little time to reduce costs.

The APPG is calling on Williamson to revise the approach for the ESFA to take a business case approach.

Last month, colleges called on the prime minister to intervene in the “devastating” clawback plans, warning that they risk courses being scrapped and redundancies.

To go with this, the APPG has said a new “simple, flexible” fund should be introduced to give students a free extra year of college. The fund would allow colleges to “design programmes lasting between six months to one year to meet needs and outcomes, with a bursary to support some of the most disadvantaged learners to participate”.

A school and college leavers scheme was introduced last year by government, which gives 18 and 19 year olds who are struggling to find work due to Covid-19 the opportunity to study “targeted” level 2 and 3 courses for a third year free of charge. The fund was only available for the 2020/21 academic year.

Lastly, the APPG wants Williamson to provide colleges with “targeted support for the most disadvantaged learners through a 16 to 19 student premium”, just like the pupil premium in schools.

“We ask that the student premium be paid to 16-, 17-and 18-year-olds to reflect the government’s commitment to supporting the needs of young people, the skills agenda, and the wider governments social mobility goals.”

This student premium would cost around £100 million using the secondary school eligibility criteria and funding level, the group added.

The letter is undersigned by Peter Aldous MP other members of the group including Lord Blunkett, Baroness Garden of Frognal, Stephen Farry MP, and Emma Hardy MP.