Ofsted has today published a summary of what they found during their final “interim visits” of colleges and training providers that took place this autumn.

A total of 84 providers were visited between October 19 and December 4 – the majority of which (44, or 52 per cent), were previously judged as ‘requires improvement’.

The first briefing paper was published in November and was based on 36 provider visits (the key findings of which you can find here).

While the visits do not result in an inspection grade, they do produce a published letter which tells the public how each provider is “coping with this challenging start to the new academic year” in the face of Covid-19 based on interviews with leaders, staff and students.

Full Ofsted inspections are currently not planned to return until summer 2021, but monitoring visits will resume from January along with new “support” visits (see full details here).

Here are seven things we learned from today’s report.

 

1. Centre-assessed grades have caused a ‘big challenge’

Centre-assessed grades were introduced for GCSE, A-level and some vocational and technical qualification learners this year to replace exams and assessments which had been cancelled owing to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Exams regulator Ofqual has previously said many schools were too “optimistic” about the grades which have led to students being put on course levels that are too high and do not accurately reflect their ability.

Ofsted found that during its interim visits, a “few leaders”, particularly in colleges, said that the high volume of learners with centre-assessed grades for GCSEs was a “big challenge for them”.

“It made identifying learning gaps harder and sometimes meant learners were not on the best course or level for them,” today’s report says.

“Some providers commented that the pace of learning has been slower than usual for the start of the academic year.”

 

2. Gaps in learning, including loss of social and communication skills, evident

Leaders told Ofsted that they had assessed learners at the beginning of the term and identified “some learning gaps” as a result of lost teaching time, which were “generally most apparent in English and maths”.

Additionally for apprentices, some leaders said gaps in practical skills were evident, while others also mentioned learners’ “loss of social skills and ability to communicate formally or their loss of aspiration”.

“Some leaders said these gaps were worse for current learners compared with previous cohorts,” the inspectorate added.

“This was mainly the case for young learners and those on lower-level qualifications. Leaders said these learning gaps had to be considered when planning the content and order of teaching in some programmes and subjects.”

Many of the providers said they had put catch-up programmes in place as a result of their assessments.

 

3. Practical work placements a ‘real concern for many’

Providing work placements and apprenticeships was an “ongoing problem,” particularly for learners with high needs and those wanting to work in the health and social care, hospitality and retail sectors, leaders told Ofsted.

They reported that employers with existing apprenticeships were ceasing to trade or making the apprentices redundant, while others were reluctant to take on new learners for work placements due to possible infection risks.

Some apprentices were still on furlough and had “exhausted” the theoretical work needed in order to complete their course and were now just waiting to complete the necessary practical work with their employer.

 

4. Mental health and safety referrals on the rise

“Many” leaders said that the number of learners with significant mental health concerns had increased over the course of the pandemic.

They had also seen increases in safeguarding concerns such as domestic abuse, county lines, dependence on food banks, knife crime and drug and alcohol misuse.

As a result, for many leaders, this had “resulted in an increase in the number of learners they referred on to local mental health and safeguarding teams”.

Suicides, as well as Covid-19-related bereavements, within the community had also “significantly impacted both staff’s and learners’ well-being,” while many leaders said that staff and students needed “additional reassurance and support in order to return to work due to anxiety”.

This led to the providers making mental health one of their top priorities during the autumn term, with some updating courses to include personal development modules on protecting learners’ mental health and/or well-being.

 

5. Innovative solutions to fix ‘disjointed’ curriculum sequencing

The pandemic had disrupted the “logical sequencing” of many courses. For example, Covid-19 restrictions make it “hard to integrate practical elements and work placements in courses,” Ofsted found.

As a result, most staff the inspectorate spoke to were prioritising practical skills in face-to-face sessions and teaching the theoretical knowledge online.

Other providers were working around the practical skills challenge by working with local businesses to supply learners with the necessary equipment and/or expertise to undertake projects at home.

For example, one provider had sent all learners a “make your own drone” kit as part of a project to construct and document it at home. Another hired local chefs to provide online lessons on their specialities to learners. A few providers had also set up an in-house tuck shop during the second national lockdown to provide enterprise and money-management opportunities for learners with high needs.

 

6. Second national lockdown prompted face-to-face provision reduction

FE providers were advised to keep all teaching face-to-face for 16 to 18 learners during November’s lockdown, while splitting online and onsite teaching for adult learners.

Ofsted found that the mix of delivery for students at each provider varied.

For example, in one college, year 12 and year 13 learners alternated each week between remote and on-site learning to reduce the number of learners on site.

A few providers had also changed their timetables so that all face-to-face teaching on a particular subject was concentrated over one day, rather than spread across the week.

Elsewhere, other leaders said they were having to restrict their intake on practical courses to be able to run them on site, while a few said they needed to return to fully remote provision during the second national lockdown because their community venues had been closed.

 

7. Unforeseen financial pressures persist

Ongoing and unforeseen costs that have hit FE providers include making their sites meet Covid-19 safety requirements, improving ventilation of buildings, buying IT kit for learners and providing software and equipment for learners to access their courses online.

Reduced commercial income continues to affect some providers, while others reported that waiting for the funding for new learners has had more of a financial impact than usual because they have less capital in reserves to fall back on.

This is due to an “increase in the number of learners enrolling and the immediate costs of new learners accessing the curriculum”, Ofsted said.

Meanwhile, some providers have found that subcontractors are reluctant to commit to training and sign new contracts, and in apprenticeships, delayed assessments result in delayed completion payments which has impacted on cash flow.

The government’s skills “boot camps” have moved into their second pilot phase ahead of plans for a countrywide rollout backed by £43 million from the new National Skills Fund.

Colleges and training providers began recruiting earlier this month for the next set of the 12- to 16-week courses, which have been expanded to tackle not only digital skills but also industries including welding, engineering and construction.

Following a £4 million tender by the Department for Education, the Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire (D2N2) local enterprise partnership (LEP) was chosen to commission boot camp providers in their area, with a budget of £996,419; while Devon County Council will oversee courses in the heart of the south-west LEP area, with £1.7 million; and the West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) will do so for Leeds, with £1.3 million.

They have a strict deadline to recruit learners, who must be aged 19 or over, put them through the boot camps, and provide them with job interviews where appropriate, by the end of March, before the National Skills Fund is rolled out.

The first phase of boot camps started recruiting learners in September with a budget of £4 million and built off existing digital skills-only schemes in the West Midlands and Greater Manchester, before expanding to Liverpool and Lancashire.

Both phases must be completed by the end of this financial year in March 2021, and are being funded through the DfE’s unallocated resources.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson announced the second wave last week and called the pilots “only the start for this innovative approach to adult training”.

In a tender ahead of the national rollout of skills boot camps published last Friday, the DfE said it would welcome bids by consortiums of organisations with employers and providers lined up and ready to deliver training.

Plans for the national rollout reflect much of what was put in place for the second phase of pilots, where the bidders also bid with supporting organisations, employers and providers ready to deliver already made courses.

Organisations involved in the second pilot phase told FE Week there was no formal procurement process. Instead, providers and employers attended engagement webinars and then the training organisations submitted an interest in taking part in the boot camps with D2N2, Devon County Council or WYCA.

The providers had to include in their submission what programmes they could deliver and how much it would cost, and the three authorities assessed them against criteria, then put their bids to the DfE, with the providers’ programmes.

The three had from July this year until August to put in their bids.

Exeter College’s director of adult and higher education Lucinda Sanders said they attended a webinar for south-west
employers and providers in July and then worked on their proposal over the next few weeks before submitting it to Devon County Council in August. They put in a bid for £150,000 and received that amount for a course in digital insights – covering a range of skills, including how to do a social media advert and develop simple software.

Rachel Quinn, head of people and skills for D2N2 (pictured, left), said: “We didn’t ask providers to tender as much as to be part of our consortium. But they did submit proposals, which we assessed. If there had been strong competition, then we would have run a formal process, but in the end, the partnership built quite naturally.”

Devon County Council said the Heart of the South West LEP ran a similar process and “received expressions of interest to join, which were then assessed against strategic fit, value for money, quality of provision and deliverability”.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority said: “Due to the timescales involved in delivering the project and the requirements of DfE’s tender process”, its four providers were directly commissioned – but they refused to elaborate.

Employers also became involved with the boot camps through the webinars, or through existing links with boot camp providers, and have to contribute to the programme by guaranteeing job interviews, providing in-work mentoring, or allowing the use of facilities for learners.

Quinn said D2N2 will also charge their employers a ten per cent cash match. For example, if a course was allocated £30,000, the employer involved would have to pay £3,000.

Employers also impact upon which learners are put through the course, with Allan Allison, director of client engagement for D2N2 provider Babington, saying their role would be “more focused on the employed than some of the other providers”. Their boot camp offering covers courses such as digital leadership – combining digital skills with leadership training – and data analysis.

Sanders, meanwhile, said Exeter’s course was looking to help people find new careers.

For Quinn, “It’s all about testing how we deliver skills faster and more responsive to employer need, with a quicker turnaround.”

She continued, “If it’s shown to work, then it could pave quite a different model of rollout of the National Skills Fund.”

Unlike courses funded from the adult education budget and apprenticeships, the boot camp courses will not be recorded through individualised learner records (ILR), and the commissioning organisations said they will instead be monitoring providers’ performance against metrics such as completions and destinations.

One outcome the DfE is keen on is to have a diverse range of learners come through the boot camps. Quinn said each of their providers has targets for characteristics such as gender mix and unemployed vs employed participants.

Crispin Read (pictured), director of one of the providers for Leeds, Coders Guild, said there is “a big appetite for using this pilot to further our work in diversity”. His provider is delivering several boot camps, including in software testing and web development.

On learner targets, Sanders said her college, for example, had a target of 100 learners for its course in digital skills, while regionally, D2N2 is aiming to have 520 learners on its boot camps overall.

Promised investment in skills training has been questioned after FE Week discovered £125 million of FE funding has been delayed by at least a year.

The Conservative Party manifesto pledged a new National Skills Fund (NSF) with £500 million being made available in each of the next five years in England from 2021/22, but last month’s spending review only committed three-quarters of that amount for next year.

The Department for Education has now confirmed that just £375 million of the promised £500 million will be used in 2021/22, following a reprioritisation of funds to “support the government’s response to Covid-19”.

The DfE did, however, make clear that the £125 million underspend will be used as part of the National Skills Fund in future years, and it remains committed to spending the full £2.5 billion.

But it seems there are even questions over the £2.5 billion figure, as £50 million of the dedicated £375 million for next year has been allocated to a capital budget.

Shadow skills minister Toby Perkins was shocked to hear the spending delay decision, saying it was a “remarkable thing at a time when the need for this money is greater than ever before” in the face of Covid-19.

He told FE Week: “There is a particular need for this funding at this moment because there are huge numbers of people who are being laid off in one sector who need to be retrained in new sectors. We have got fast-rising youth unemployment and there is a real need for investment in skills.

“The government rhetoric acknowledges that but their actual spending commitments are even less than what they committed to in their manifesto a year ago, long before anybody had ever heard of coronavirus.”

Policies that the NSF will be used to fund in future years are not yet known, as the DfE is yet to launch its promised consultation.

Of the NSF funding being used in 2021/22, £95 million will fund the prime minister’s level 3 entitlement in his ‘lifetime skills guarantee’, and £43 million has been set aside to expand the employer-led boot camp training model.

Meanwhile, £127 million will be used to continue the chancellor Rishi Sunak’s summer Plan for Jobs, including funding for traineeships, sector-based work academy placements and the National Careers Service.

And £110 million, including £50 million of capital investment, will be used to “drive up higher technical provision in support of the future rollout of a Flexible Loan Entitlement to test and develop innovative models for local collaboration between skills providers and employers”.

When FE Week asked why the NSF was being used to fund capital investment rather than its capital spending budget, the DfE would only say the decision was “taken as part of the spending review”.

University and College Union head of further education Andrew Harden echoed Perkins’ concern about the delay to NSF spending in 2021/22.

“Questions must be asked as to why we yet again see an underspend on a key government policy designed to address a chronic skills shortage when there is a looming need to re-equip the nation’s workforce for a post-Covid-19 economy,” he said.

Harden added that the funding could, for example, be used to fund a college staff pay rise in an effort to rebuild further education’s capacity to deliver the courses needed.

Last week, the Association of Colleges recommended its members give staff a one per cent pay rise owing to a lack of government investment – a decision that outraged trade unions.

Commenting on the NSF, AoC deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said: “The extra money in the spending review for 16-to-18 education, for skills and for capital is a good start. With a lack of details or allocations yet, colleges won’t be able to make firm spending decisions, including on pay, until this happens.

“It would be useful to know where the £125 million top-sliced from the skills fund has gone. The £375 million allocated for 2021/22 will be a useful addition to the £2 billion spent on adult education and apprenticeships but it’s worth noting the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ estimate that spending halved in the last decade, so there is still some way to go to reach the levels needed to catch up.”

He added: “The need for capital investment is still very real – but there is a risk that Treasury and DfE have divided it up among a lot of budgets.”

The DfE would not be drawn on where the £125 million has been reprioritised to.

 

As most in the sector will know, calling a training programme an “apprenticeship” if it is not government-backed became illegal under the Enterprise Act 2016.

Then skills minister Nick Boles said at the time it would give officials power to take action in such cases as “we don’t want their status to be undermined by those unscrupulously passing off short courses as apprenticeships”.

So when FE Week was tipped off that a commercial training provider in the brewing industry was calling a two-week course an apprenticeship – just the 50 weeks off what is needed to meet the government’s minimum duration for a statutory apprenticeship – we began investigating and asked the Department for Education what action it would take.

But, as ever with the DfE, things were not simple or very transparent.

We were informed on Wednesday December 2 that the Brew-School, a firm that runs commercial beer-brewing courses, had been advertising plans to launch the “Brew-School’s Brewing Apprenticeship” which would last for 14 days at a cost of £2,500 per learner, from 2021.

The course would “combine the best of internationally recognised brewing qualifications with intensive experience of working in a real microbrewery”.

And “during the two-week brewing apprenticeship you will be taught by three master brewers to the latest syllabus of the Institute of Brewing and Distilling general certificate in brewing,” it added.

The advert pitches the course against the government-backed level 4 brewing apprenticeship, saying that “unfortunately” it takes 18 months to complete “and you still will not have an internationally recognised brewing qualification”.

“The beauty with the new Brew-School Brewing Apprenticeship is that this intensive two-week apprenticeship will lead you to obtain several formal brewing- and beer-related qualifications as well as practical brewing training,” it said.

The advert even came with a syllabus for the “apprenticeship”.

FE Week initially tried calling the company, which is also not on the government’s register of apprenticeship training providers, but the number provided on its website goes straight to voicemail. We emailed asking for comment about how this two-week course qualifies as an apprenticeship, and informed them that it is an offence under the Enterprise Act 2016, which includes the following clause: “Only statutory apprenticeships to be described as apprenticeships”.

In 2017, the same clause was added to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 – the relevant legislation under which powers to intervene now fall.

At the same time we enquired with the DfE and received a response just hours later saying the department will “consider the information provided to us in relation to this enquiry and take action as appropriate”. However, it added that enforcement duties actually rest with the relevant “local weights and measures authority” (trading standards) and it would be for them to decide whether or not legal proceedings are appropriate.

Next stop, then, was to contact the local trading standards – a service typically found in each local authority to whom illegal trading can be reported and acted upon. In this case it was Sheffield City Council.

Days went by before the council called to say it could find no evidence of the Brew-School’s 14-day apprenticeship.

Upon checking back on the firm’s website, it transpired that the “apprenticeship” had since been changed and is now called a “Trainee Brewer Course”.

The DfE called that same day to say it too could see no evidence of a bogus apprenticeship.

Of course, FE Week had screen-shots and the previous syllabus saved to show the council and government what the advert had previously stated.

But it turns out the DfE’s Education and Skills Funding Agency had actually contacted the Brew-School last Thursday, the day after FE Week’s initial enquiry, and told the firm to “ensure that all references to apprenticeships are removed immediately” and to confirm that this action has been taken within ten working days.

FE Week was not – and still has not – been informed of this action by the DfE, but the Brew-School finally responded one week after our initial enquiry to tell us about the department’s communication.

A director of the Brew-School responded to the DfE to say: “Thank you for bringing this to our attention which we were totally unaware of. We have now changed the description of our course and renamed it as a Trainee Brewer Course.”

The council has since not responded to FE Week’s request for comment – so the extent of any legal action that could be taken in such cases remains unclear.

The government has said the names of colleges receiving emergency cash support must be kept a secret so as to avoid “disadvantaged learners” missing out on being educated.

The Department for Education included this claim in a host of reasons why it will not name five colleges that received emergency funding earlier this year, in response to an FE Week freedom of information request.

The response to the request said identifying the colleges could lead to a “loss of confidence in their ability to provide sustained education, and this would be likely to result in fewer students applying to the college for their courses.

“Given the additional travel required to study elsewhere, some disadvantaged learners would be likely to choose not to undertake any education at all.”

Essentially, the DfE is conceding that disadvantaged learners would have no alternative education provider were the college to stop delivering courses.

Despite their reticence in publishing the names of colleges that receive bailouts, the DfE regularly publishes the FE commissioner’s intervention reports and Education and Skills Funding Agency financial notices to improve for individual colleges, which include details of their financial situations alongside recommendations.

The DfE also claimed, in the response to the FOI request, that revealing the colleges’ names “might jeopardise any negotiations of upcoming contracts with their suppliers” and “would likely result in significant additional burdens being placed upon their resources, with the need to manage media attention, parental concerns and the potential loss of/difficulties in recruiting staff.

“This would limit their ability to effectively provide further education, harming the outcomes of learners, which would not be in the public interest.”

FE Week submitted the FOI after skills minister Gillian Keegan told parliament in September that five colleges had needed “financial assistance”. In its response, the DfE did reveal that the colleges had been handed a total of £9.6 million between April and August, with one college receiving £5.3 million over June and July (see table below).

The ESFA’s director of provider market oversight, Matthew Atkinson, told the Commons’ Public Accounts Committee last month that 64 colleges were currently at risk of running out of cash, and the government was likely to spend £70 million on emergency funding for colleges in total this year – which he said was “more than we thought”.

College leaders were themselves “staggered” when another FE Week FOI request revealed in January how four colleges had spent £111 million they had received as part of secretive “Fresh Start’ deals with the government, with money going towards IT equipment and writing off government loans.

An increasing number of college bailouts have been handed out in recent years and have ultimately led to the introduction of the college insolvency regime, which was used for the first time when the Hadlow Group of colleges collapsed last year.

But Atkinson admitted to the education committee these insolvencies will still cost the taxpayer over £60 million, with £6 million going to accountants alone – a figure DfE permanent secretary Susan Acland-Hood called “gut wrenching”.

Yet the government has actively worked to stop the names of colleges that receive bailouts coming to light, changing its oversight policy in October so colleges that apply for emergency funding will not automatically fall into formal intervention.

The DfE withheld the information under section 43 (commercial interest) and section 36(2) (c) (would be likely otherwise to prejudice the effective conduct of public affairs) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

FE Week will be referring the decision to withhold the college names to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

A former exams company chief executive is set to replace Dame Glenys Stacey as the chief regulator at Ofqual, FE Week understands.

Simon Lebus is being lined up to take over the top position at the exams regulator as Stacey’s interim period comes to end on December 31.

Lebus served as the group chief executive at Cambridge Assessment, which runs exam board OCR, for 15 years before leaving in 2018.

FE Week understands the appointment is set to be another interim role, though, and has yet to be fully ratified.

Stacey, who previously served as chief regulator from 2011 to 2016, took up the role in August after Sally Collier left following the exams fiasco.

It was announced this week that she is the preferred candidate for chair of the Office for Environmental Protection.

Asked by the education select committee on Tuesday what advice she would give her successor, Stacey said they should make sure they’ve “got the stamina for it” and should “really get into the technical detail”.

She urged the successor to “learn from 2020”, adding: “For example, I don’t think Ofqual was particularly visible in 2020. It had a rather established way of sort of communicating.

“We need to be much more visible and much more interested in listening to others’ ideas and working them through with them… they may be valuable, they may not… but really listening and engaging.”

Lebus was said to have driven Cambridge Assessment through “major organisational and industry change”, including technology advances such as the introduction of on-screen marking and computer-based testing.

His roles since include becoming a non-executive chairman at Sparx, an AI online platform for secondary school maths teaching, and a visiting fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School, according to his LinkedIn page.

The decision to make another interim appointment is likely to be controversial, particularly given the huge task ahead of ensuring next year’s exam series doesn’t become another fiasco.

The Department for Education said a replacement for Stacey will be announced in due course.