Government efforts to increase apprenticeship take-up by black, Asian and minority ethnic young people have been slammed as a “national disgrace”.

New FE Week analysis shows that the proportion of BAME 16- to 18-year-old apprentices is falling and made up just 7.7 per cent of starts in the first three-quarters of 2019/20, compared to over 20 per cent for other further education courses.

City of Bristol College principal Andy Forbes, who co-founded the former BAME Principals Group, said the under-representation of BAME apprentices at all levels and in most sectors is a “long-standing issue”.

“The fact that we have made so little progress in addressing it is a national disgrace,” he added.

Analysis of the government’s National Achievement Rate Tables shows the proportion of apprenticeship starts for BAME 16- to 18-yearolds was 7.8 per cent in 2018/19, down from 8.6 per cent in 2017/18.

This low and falling figure is in stark contrast to other FE courses, where BAME 16- to 18-yearolds have risen from 20.9 per cent in 2013/14 to 25.8 per cent per cent in 2018/19.

The analysis comes after the Department for Education claimed 12.5 per cent of all age apprentice starts were BAME in 2018/19, exceeding their target of 11.9 per cent.

One of the government’s leading initiatives to boost BAME participation, the Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network, has not met since February, as meetings were paused by the pandemic.

Meanwhile, funding for the 5 Cities Project, which aimed to use local authorities to drive up BAME starts, ended this month with no renewal.

A DfE spokesperson confirmed that a new target for increasing BAME apprenticeships has not been set and was unable to point to any new initiatives to increase BAME apprenticeship participation.

On the lack of BAME apprentices, the spokesperson insisted the department is “very keen to increase awareness of apprenticeship opportunities” so they have been reviewing advice and guidance and using their Apprentice Support and Knowledge service to target schools in high BAME population areas.

“We have also ensured that young BAME role models are visible in campaigns such as ‘Fire It Up’, and that we are hearing the voices of young apprentices (including BAME) through apprentice networks such as the Young Apprentice Ambassador Network, and the Apprentice Panel.”

Forbes said that in his experience, most modern businesses are keen to recruit a more diverse workforce.

The problem is “simply that not enough is being done to talk to young people – and crucially to their parents – about the advantages and value of apprenticeships.

“This has to be done on the ground and face to face, not through glossy advertising campaigns.”

Forbes called for a “step change” from the Department for Education and the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, which was criticised last week for having no BAME representation on its board.

The IfATE’s indicators of a quality apprenticeship do not include improving diversity, but a spokesperson said they are “committed to playing a full part” in improving BAME participation in apprenticeships.

“Going forward, we will continue work on the manner in which apprenticeships and technical education qualifications are issued to ensure they are equally accessible to all communities and that we continue to promote wide participation by all groups in the work of the institute.”

Jeremy Crook, chief executive of the Black Training and Enterprise Group, a charity that runs courses on diversity in the workplace and compiles statistics on ethnic minority groups, said the lack of BAME apprentices “extremely concerning”.

Crook added that “progress on increasing BAME participation in apprenticeships has been disappointingly slow” and urged the DfE to create a “targeted plan to open pipelines to employers that still have opportunities”.

One of the initiatives the DfE has been using to try and increase BAME participation in training is the Apprenticeships Diversity Champions Network.

The network of 80 leaders from across different sectors of industry is intended to “champion apprenticeships and diversity amongst employers and encourages more people from under-represented groups to consider apprenticeships”.

One of the champions is Jill Whittaker, managing director of apprenticeship provider HIT Training, who told FE Week: “The key thing the network has been trying to do is generating ideas and sharing best practice.

“There are some very big employers who have done some really far-reaching programmes, so to be able to share that expertise is very valuable.”

One of the lessons learned led HIT to include a more diverse array of people in its marketing materials after an engineering degree apprentice told Whittaker: “You don’t see people like me doing that kind of job.”

She added that the government is looking to resume meetings of the network in the next few weeks.

BAME representative groups in the FE and skills sector independent of government have begun to regenerate after a number of them – including the BAME Principals Group – shut down several years ago.

These new groups include the Association of Colleges’ Equality, Diversity and Inclusion steering group, and the Black FE Leadership Group (BFELG).

In reply to a letter from BFELG last month, skills minister Gillian Keegan said it was their “ambition for our FE providers to offer an inclusive, welcoming environment for students, teachers and leaders from all backgrounds”.

She also spoke of how she was “committed to our new mandatory annual data collection in FE, which will uncover the full range of characteristics of the workforce, including ethnicity” from summer 2021.

Someone with intimate knowledge of what the DfE has done to improve BAME participation in apprenticeships is former skills minister Anne Milton (pictured).

She said when she was in office “we knew there was a problem”, and she has impressed upon her former department the importance of working quickly, saying: “This is urgent stuff.”

The 5 Cities Project was launched at the DfE while Milton was in office to try and improve BAME apprenticeship participation. A total of £20,000 was given to each of the Greater London Authority, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, the Greater Birmingham and Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership, Leicester City Council, and Bristol City Council.

Its aim was to improve apprenticeship diversity in their area, and although latest figures from the five has shown the proportion of BAME apprentices has risen over the past few years, the authorities pointed out apprenticeship starts nationally have dropped, which has meant the number of people from BAME backgrounds starting apprenticeships has not necessarily risen.

In Manchester, for example, 11 per cent of starts in 2014/15 were by people from BAME backgrounds, equating to 3,240 people. In 2018/19, it was 15 per cent, but just 3,116 people. 

Funding for the project has now come to an end, but the authorities have pledged to continue attempting to improve BAME apprenticeship participation.

The Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has said it will be launching a marketing campaign aimed at BAME-owned businesses to highlight the benefits of apprenticeships.

The 5 Cities Project has been received warmly by BAME leaders, with Crook saying his organisation wants to see the project “continued and enhanced with better funding”.

The chief executive of the BAME Apprenticeship Alliance Isa Mutlib said the project “has created regional stakeholders to build capacity for boosting BAME apprenticeship diversity backed with local government funding”.

The DfE spokesperson said: “The lessons learned from this partnership are helping to inform how we shape policy, and what interventions have more impact.”

Mutlib spoke favourably of the government’s actions to increase participation, saying the Fire It Up campaign featured a diverse array of apprentices.

In addition, he said, the BAME Apprenticeship Awards, which he directs, receives support from government, and IfATE has a diverse apprentice panel “to boost diverse apprenticeship representation”.

For all the data from FE Week analysis click here: http://lsect.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Appren-ethinicity.xlsx

Virtual work placements, redesigned curriculums for practical courses and borrowing prosthetic limbs are among the creative adjustments made by FE providers to continue education in the midst of a pandemic, Ofsted has found.

The inspectorate this week published letters from the first ten “interim visits” of colleges and training providers that are taking place this autumn ahead of the watchdog’s return to normal inspections, currently set for January.

The five-page letters include inspectors’ findings from interviews with both leaders and learners about the provider’s response to Covid-19, but do not include a judgment grade.

Mental health has reportedly deteriorated among young people during lockdown, according to various pieces of research conducted across the country, and this was a key area of focus found by Ofsted among the ten providers.

Inspectors said this was a “high priority” at Blackpool and the Fylde College, for example, which introduced “online social time” so that students and staff do not suffer from social isolation, while counselling support was increased at Birmingham Metropolitan College.

Private provider Intuitions Limited, based in north Yorkshire, conducted “wellbeing meetings in between reviews to identify those who were most vulnerable in terms of mental health, and they offered support by telephone”. Meanwhile, staff at London-based independent specialist college The Autism Project – CareTrade organised a “variety of online wellbeing support for learners who struggle with being stuck at home” such as “quizzes and social gatherings via computers or mobile phones”.

In terms of the curriculum, Ofsted found leaders at most providers had modified sequencing due to restrictions, such as by reordering practical elements to be taken at the end of a course in anticipation for local lockdowns where theory can be delivered online.

At Blackburn College, which this week moved into tier three (the top level of England’s Covid restrictions), inspectors said: “In anticipation of further local restrictions, managers and teachers have amended the sequencing of the curriculum to ensure that the practical skills are delivered early in the programme.

“This is as a result of lessons learned during the summer term Covid-19 restrictions, where learners studying sports were unable to complete their practical assessments in sports halls and gyms because they were closed.”

Ofsted said the college is “confident” that it has a “variety of flexible approaches” to enable it to continue to deliver practical curriculums. For example, teachers have provided prosthetic limbs for beauty therapy learners so that they can practise manicures and pedicures at home.

Work placements have also been heavily impacted by the pandemic, with many sectors, particularly health and social care, not allowing visitors except their own employees.

To tackle this issue, a number of the providers that Ofsted visited introduced virtual placements.

For example, managers and staff at WS Training Ltd, a Suffolk-based independent training provider, explained how they had been “running an online shop, rather than a physical one”.

At Catch 22 Charity Limited, a provider based in London, staff now “make use of a virtual work experience arrangement provided by an employment agency, where students complete work-related tasks that they can do from home”.

At The Autism Project – CareTrade, where a “high proportion” of learners’ time is normally spent on work placements at local hospitals, leaders and staff have “adapted the curriculum by adding lessons in business enterprise, through which learners develop their ability to work in a team and use their knowledge of English and mathematics”.

Ofsted also quizzed the providers on their work to keep students safe online following the switch to remote delivery.

All ten providers were praised for their work in this area, with inspectors finding bolstered training for staff and a range of safety software being introduced to protect learners from online fraud, cyber bullying and extremism.

Inspectors found that Beacon Education Partnership Limited, a private provider in London, had introduced a new video conferencing package which has “improved safeguarding” by, for example, only allowing learners to access online lessons “with an identification code for the session”.

At Catch 22, leaders said “organisations, such as Social Switch, were useful in training teachers, trainers and students how to share text and images safely when learning through digital media”.

The Department for Education could be forced to hand back up to £80 million to the Treasury after closing the national retraining scheme pilot, FE Week has learned.

Skills minister Gillian Keegan last week announced that the retraining scheme would be “integrated” into the new £2.5 billion national skills fund to “reduce complexity” in the skills system.

This publication later revealed how the centrepiece of the national retraining scheme – Get Help to Retrain – would be scrapped as part of the move after a number of mayors, including London’s, declined the opportunity to take part.

FE Week has now discovered that any leftover cash from the £100 million earmarked for the retraining scheme will not be added to the skills fund.

Instead, the DfE has confirmed it will go back to HM Treasury.

The DfE refused to say how much of the £100 million remained unspent but the 2018 Budget suggests around £80 million was due to be spent in the next financial year.

The document, published by the Treasury, stated that the retraining scheme’s funding would be spent over a number of years: £10 million in 2019/20, £25 million in 2020/21 and £80 million in 2021/22.

The news comes just weeks after prime minister Boris Johnson announced major plans for a Lifetime Skills Guarantee to help adults retrain.

Toby Perkins, Labour’s shadow apprenticeships and lifelong learning minister, said the government continually claims to be wanting a skills-led recovery, but its actions and performance “always achieve the opposite”.

“Like the £300 million of unspent apprenticeship levy money that they sent back to the Treasury, here is another failing government scheme retreating back into its shell whilst the numbers requiring support from the government continue to soar,” he added.

“It’s hardly surprising that so few in the sector have any confidence in their ability to deliver on their rhetoric.”

Perkins quizzed Keegan on the decision to bin the Get Help to Retrain service during a Westminster Hall debate on Tuesday.

She said the “learnings” from the service’s pilot would be brought into the national skills fund but then claimed that it “will be called something else but the learnings will not be lost”.

This is despite the DfE adding a note to the Get Help to Retrain website on October 15 that reads: “This service will no longer be available from November 11, 2020. You can continue to access services for support with skills and training through the National Careers Service.”

Perkins told FE Week he was “surprised” to hear Keegan suggest that the service was simply changing its name, adding that she “needs to explain whether she deliberately misled the house to cover up the department’s failure, or whether she didn’t realise what was happening to the centrepiece programme under the national retraining scheme”.

Not much is known about how the national retraining scheme funding was spent, aside from research and the Get Help to Retrain service. Tender documents suggest the firm chosen to pilot the Get Help to Retrain website held a nine-month contract for £1.8 million, which started in May 2019.

Further tender documents seen by this publication show that plans were afoot to roll out the Get Help to Retrain nationally as well as to develop a “find and apply for a job” service at a cost of between £5 million and £6 million. The tender received 28 applications before it was “cancelled” in April.

And according to the national retraining scheme timeline there would be further tenders for the remaining products, which never materialised, at a total cost of £20 million over the next 24 months.

The DfE said it is considering how it can provide further details of the NRS spend in “due course”.

A spokesperson added that it is “normal procedure” for any department-level underspends to be returned to Treasury.

The national skills fund will dish out £600 million a year from 2021/22. The DfE is expected to launch a consultation on how the fund will be spent in the coming months.

The government has moved a step closer to removing funding for applied general qualifications, such as BTECs, that compete with T Levels and A-levels.

The Department for Education will today launch the second stage of its consultation on the future of vocational and technical qualifications at level 3 and below, which will run for 12 weeks.

The DfE claims there is currently a “confusing landscape” of over 12,000 courses on offer to young people at level 3 and below, with multiple qualifications in the same subject areas available – many of which are “poor quality and offer little value to students or employers”.

Today’s consultation will set out “detailed measures” that the education secretary Gavin Williamson will take to tackle this, including removing funding for the “majority” of qualifications that “overlap” with A-levels and T Levels by autumn 2023.

It will also include plans to open T Levels up to adults from 2023, as reported by FE Week earlier this month.

Williamson said the measures will “ensure that whether a student opts to study A-levels, a T Level or any other qualification, they can be confident that it will be high quality and will set them on a clear path to a job, further education or training”.

A briefing document, seen by FE Week ahead of the consultation launch, shows that for 16-to-19-year-olds, the DfE will propose to fund two groups of level 3 technical qualifications alongside T Levels.

The first will be qualifications that “give people the knowledge, skills and behaviours described in an employer-led standard that is not covered by a T Level”.

The second will be “additional specialist” qualifications that develop “more specialist skills and knowledge than could be acquired through a T Level alone” such as a course in marine engineering, which “builds on the technical qualifications in the maintenance, installation and repair T Level”.

The DfE will also propose to approve for funding two groups of “small academic qualifications” to be taken alongside, or as an alternative to, A-levels where there is a “clear need for skills and knowledge that A-levels alone cannot deliver”.

The first group includes qualifications that would “complement A-levels, for example, if they have more of a practical component, such as health and social care or engineering”. It will also include those that are designed to “enable progression to more specialist HE courses”, such as arts institutions.

The second group will be a “specific, limited group of well-recognised, small qualifications that develop wider skills to support study at higher education, such as core maths, performing arts graded qualifications and extended project qualifications”.

The DfE also plans to fund “large” qualifications that would “typically make up a student’s full programme of study and could be taken as an alternative to A-levels if they give access to specialist HE courses, such as those with high levels of practical content”. Examples might include sports or performing arts courses. The International Baccalaureate diploma will also continue to be funded.

For those aged 19 and over, the DfE says they will “generally need greater flexibility than 16-to-19-year-olds and will also tend to have greater prior experience”. So the department’s starting point for adults is that they “have available to them a similar offer as 16-to-19-year-olds but with some additional technical qualifications to meet their needs and more flexibility built into the design”.

The DfE will also propose three “key principles” for level 3 technical qualifications for adults: “Modular delivery of content; recognition of prior learning and experience; and assessing a student’s competence at the end of a course.”

The level 3 and below review includes applied generals, tech levels and technical certificates. While these cover a wide range of courses, BTECs, awarded by Pearson, are the most popular.

The DfE said it will also shortly publish a call for evidence inviting views on qualifications at level 2 and below, including basic skills qualifications (English, maths, ESOL and digital), to find out “what is working well”.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said there is a “place for both T Levels and applied generals” to “happily and usefully coexist”.

He warned that to remove “too many” applied generals would “significantly impoverish the curriculum, damage social mobility and do nothing to reduce the skills gap”.

The government has been urged by their own researchers to stump up funding for assessing prior learning in apprenticeships, after providers were found to be struggling with the financial viability of complying with the rule.

It comes as the Department for Education launches a recruitment drive for three new apprenticeship compliance officers, who will focus on specific “key” funding rules, such as recognition of prior leaning.

Prior learning refers to relevant skills, knowledge and behaviours gained before starting an apprenticeship, and must be taken into account by providers when negotiating a price with an employer to ensure cash is not being claimed unnecessarily.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency, which warns it may “recover funding” where this does not happen, audited a series of providers last year and found the rule was the “main issue causing funding errors”.

The approval and funding committee at the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has also previously “flagged concerns about how best to ensure that prices for apprenticeship training were being appropriately adjusted to take account of prior learning”.

The DfE commissioned the Learning and Work Institute to research the issue last year, the report from which has been published today.

It highlighted two key issues that affect the extent to which prior learning is assessed “consistently and robustly”, the first being the “financial viability” for providers to carry out “pre-programme assessments” for which they receive no funding – and “no financial benefit if an individual is found to be ineligible”.

The second was that it “may not be in providers’ and employers’ interests to make adaptions that could lower the price because employers are motivated to use up their levy pot and providers want to maximise income”.

Providers also reported that there was a lack of guidance about how much the apprenticeship cost should be reduced in relation to an apprentice’s identified prior learning.

To combat this, the researchers said the DfE “could consider how it can incentivise providers and employers to ensure that assessment of prior learning is carried out properly, for example by making funding available for this”.

In addition, or alternatively, the department “could consider how to improve compliance with funding rules, for example through more visible audit of proof of assessment and adjustments from the ESFA”.

FE Week reported in September 2019 how the Education and Skills Funding Agency was bolstering its compliance and prevention teams by hiring almost 30 individuals to work in the agency’s provider market oversight division, led by Matthew Atkinson.

Three new apprenticeship compliance officer posts are currently being advertised by the ESFA, the adverts for which state their specific “areas of focus” will include “thematic reviews” of off-the-job training and recognition of prior leaning. They will also “increase oversight of employer compliance”.

The Learning and Work Institute’s research involved qualitative interviews with 30 levy paying employers, 25 apprenticeship providers, and 25 apprentices.

A DfE spokesperson said: “Assessment of prior learning is an important part of an apprenticeship, ensuring that the training is relevant and valuable to the apprentice and their employer. We continue to consider options that strengthen the assessment process.”

Three other FE-related research reports have been published today by the DfE. You can find links to each one below:

Public sector apprenticeship target reporting: research report, October 2020.

Level 2 and 3 apprenticeships: research report.

Post-16 institutions and providers omnibus: wave 7 survey.

Two well-known sector leaders have been appointed as the new co-chairs of the Federation of Awarding Bodies.

Kirstie Donnelly, chief executive of the City & Guilds Group, and Alan Woods, chief executive of the Vocational Training Charitable Trust (VTCT), will take up the posts at the membership organisation’s next annual general meeting on 8 December.

They will replace Paul Eeles and Terry Fennell, the current chair and vice-chair of FAB respectively, who are retiring from the roles having each served two terms which have spanned across the last seven years.

A joint letter to members from Donnelly and Woods said the decision by FAB’s board to appoint co-chairs was “innovative” and one that was taken because the “breadth of engagement required as we face the future is probably beyond what is possible for one chair and a vice chair”.

The co-chairs, along with chief executive Tom Bewick, will spearhead FAB’s input in the upcoming FE White Paper, level 3 and below reviews, T Levels, apprenticeships, higher technical qualification expansion, as well as the organisation’s “highly complex” relationship with regulators such as Ofqual.

A joint statement from Donnelly and Woods said their appointment comes at a time when further education is “at last centre-stage in our national story about how we build a more prosperous, productive and inclusive economy in future” and their task is to “listen to and work with FAB’s entire membership to chart the best way forward.

“We’re already planning a series of virtual ‘Town Halls’ with members and key stakeholders in the New Year.”

Donnelly, who is a frequent keynote speaker at various FE conferences including FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference, stepped up to the role of chief executive of City & Guilds in January after eight years as managing director.

She was awarded an MBE in 2011 – the same year she joined City & Guilds from the now-defunct Learndirect – for services to e-learning.

Woods joined VTCT in 2016 as chief executive after running his own company consulting on apprenticeships and learning, and previously, leading Skills for Justice – a sector skills council.

He was appointed OBE in 2004 for services to sustainable development and is currently also the vice-chair of Walsall College.

Welcoming the appointments, Eeles and Fennell said: “On behalf of the whole organisation, we would like to congratulate Kirstie and Alan for taking on the baton from us at Board level. As colleagues, we know the real respect they both have across the education and skills sector for what they have achieved. There’s no doubt Alan and Kirstie will provide inspired industry leadership for our part of the education profession during these unprecedented times.

“After our combined tenure on the board of 14 years we both feel that we are leaving FAB in excellent hands.”

Donnelly and Woods thanked both Eeles and Fennell for their “excellent leadership” and “extraordinary” time and energy that they have volunteered for the roles, insisting that the “whole awarding and assessment profession is indebted to them”.

 

The British Army has been named the best apprentice employer in England in a new list of ‘Top 100 Apprentice Employers’ published by the government. 

The Department for Education today released the list, which includes Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs in the second-place spot, ahead of the Royal Navy, BT, and MTR Elizabeth Line which is constructing the new Transport for London railway. 

The DfE placed itself in 73rd place (see list in full here).

Prime minister Boris Johnson said: “Now more than ever we should celebrate businesses who are driving our efforts to build a stronger, fairer, and more competitive economy. 

“These modern employers are at the heart of levelling up our workforce.” 

The army scooped first place after helping over 8,000 apprentices “gain new skills and progress” in 2019-2020, the Department for Education said. 

Almost a fifth of the army’s workforce are currently on apprenticeship as part of their training – studying areas like engineering, telecommunications, logistics, construction, health and IT. 

The assistant head of learning and development for the British Army, Colonel Kate George said those apprenticeships “play a critical part in developing the skills our soldiers need to succeed in their careers and on operations. 

“Entering the top 100 awards provides an opportunity to reflect on our own apprenticeship achievements, but also it gives employers the chance to celebrate the achievements of their staff and their apprentices, and the vital role we have as an employer in contributing to changing lives.” 

Over 400 applications were received for the list, and the results were announced at a special online event broadcast earlier today. 

The rankings were developed by the National Apprenticeship Service in partnership with student and graduate research company High Fliers Research. 

Employers were marked on their overall commitment to employing apprentices, their creation of new apprenticeships, the diversity of their new apprentices, and the progression of their apprentices onto further apprenticeships and employment. 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan gave a “huge congratulations” to all of the companies who took part, but said it was “fantastic” to see the army recognised “for its incredible support for apprentices and the apprenticeships programme”. 

You can see the top ten list of employers, and download the full list of 100 companies, here.