England’s largest apprenticeship providers have told FE Week that starts are “falling off a cliff” and redundancies are likely to follow.

According to many of the providers we spoke to, they are becoming increasingly desperate for the government to provide information on what, if any, financial support they will receive in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Liz Bromley, the chief executive of one of England’s largest college groups, NCG, said announcements by education ministers that they expected providers to close their doors and move to online learning for most students after this week will “inevitably impact on our colleges’ apprenticeship delivery for an uncertain period into the future”.

“Across our colleges we are seeing recruitment of new starters stall, as many of our employer partners observe guidance on social distancing, and have concerns about their financial health.

“We have already seen a number of apprentices (four in 48 hours) being made redundant across the construction and event management sectors.”

All NCG’s face-to-face learning at its seven colleges has been transferred online for its students and apprentices, and they have put workplace assessment by in-house assessors on hold.

“There is no doubt that this will impact on apprentices’ timely completion of their programmes and may well significantly reduce our income over time.

So financial support “will be needed,” she continued, “to protect the capacity of providers into the future, to maintain the confidence of employers, and to enable the apprenticeship market to grow in strength again.”

A college on the south coast, which did not want to be identified, has said the impact on their apprenticeship provision had been “immediate” and they have “well over 100 potential starts at serious immediate threat”.

Other employers they work with, like those in the aviation supply chain, have been quick to act in pausing or even cancelling recruitment.

Private provider Qube Learning said while they had seen a reduction in new enrolments, by working closely with their employers to offer online solutions they had managed to limit the damage.

But, a spokesperson said, there needs to be “some sort of profile payment support measures put in place to help providers through this period of uncertainty”.

Another provider, which wished to stay anonymous, warned they would have to consider staff redundancies if learner numbers fall off as they predict they will, after around 200 took breaks in learning already.

They said “the clock is very much ticking” for government support for the sector, but even if the support is not yet coming, confirmation it is on its way would mean providers “can plan with a bit of certainty about the future”.

The warnings come after Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe called on the government to guarantee providers’ income from non-levy contracts, the European Social Fund, sub-contracts and adult education budgets, and for rules around that funding to be relaxed.

One provider reported that while they had yet to see employers pause their training programmes, small businesses had already, in effect, stopped paying their co-investment fee, which is what non-levy payers contribute towards training when they recruit an apprentice.

They added that even if government announced support measures, “it will probably be too late already for some redundancies to not happen, because the impact is already being felt during this month”.

They chastised the Department for Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency for “remaining very quiet” and for “no real messaging going out”.

At the time FE Week went to press, the government had yet to publish any guidance on how providers will be funded and what help they will be receiving as the UK grapples with coronavirus.

A leading apprentice assessment organisation has told FE Week they are already experiencing “significant cancellations” following the coronavirus outbreak.

A spokesperson for Highfield Group, one of the busiest end-point assessment organisations (EPAO) that is approved for 38 apprenticeship standards, said the cancellations were mainly as a result of employers restricting site access to visitors, as well as apprentices being redirected to frontline activities during the current situation.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, claimed that “a significant proportion” of EPAs would not happen without dropping face-to-face assessments, and said that there had been thousands of cancellations already, in a letter to members on Thursday.

He called on the government to drop end-point observations and replace them with “a remote professional discussion” to allow apprentices to achieve their programme.

While some assessments can and are being conducted online and remotely, some have warned that this will not be possible in many cases.

At the time of going to press an announcement on apprenticeship assessment flexibilities appeared imminent.

The FE and skills minister Gillian Keegan told FE Week: “We are continuing to work closely with the sector to work through a range of areas that have been raised in order to provide clarity and certainty.

“I would like to thank everyone for their continued support and cooperation during these challenging times and we will provide an update as soon as we possibly can.”

FE Week spoke to a number of EPAOs to find out what impact the pandemic has already been having.

Charlotte Bosworth, managing director of Innovate Awarding, which is approved for 39 different standards, told FE Week 80 per cent of their planned assessments had been cancelled this week.

She said remote assessment was proving “very difficult” in many cases and called for the announcement of a similar policy on apprenticeship exams as there has been on GCSEs and A-levels, where planned summer exams will no longer be going ahead but students will still receive their qualifications.

“Learners who have demonstrated sufficient competence through the knowledge, skills and behaviour during the programme, and are able to successfully complete their gateway conversations, should be put forward to EPAOs who would ratify this decision through professional discussions on the telephone,” Bosworth continued.

Jamie Holland, EPA commercial and planning manager at City & Guilds, said the organisation had experienced “minimal changes” to the way it works with EPAs at this point in time.

“However, we do expect this to change over coming weeks, with more EPAs to be completed remotely and some potential cancellations,” he added.

Holland stated that “many” of the more than 50 standards for which City & Guilds completes EPAs have on-line functionality already. But he also acknowledged that many other standards would not be able to operate observations remotely.

“In these challenging times, we would hope that IfATE would be able to allow all parties to utilise professional discussions in the place of technical observations, so that the knowledge, skills and behaviours are still assessed, albeit through an alternative method to that stated in the assessment plan.”

Similarly, a spokesperson for NCFE claimed employers and providers had not wanted to cancel EPAs over the last two weeks.

But in anticipation of cancellations, the EPAO has been expanding digital assessment options and implementing options which could be undertaken from apprentices’ home environments, in attempts to keep EPAs on track.

The spokesperson added: “We are currently in discussions with the DfE, IfATE, Ofqual and other regulators to identify a viable suitable alternative to face-to-face observation, which is the only assessment method we are currently unable to offer.

“We have proposed a number of options to our regulators which would allow apprentices to complete all components of their assessment.”

A spokesperson for the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education told FE Week: “We are working on a package of measures with the Department that will assist providers, EPAOs to respond to these exceptional new circumstances, while protecting the interests of apprentices and maintaining quality.”

 

Colleges will have to keep campuses open to vulnerable children and those of “key workers” indefinitely, including during the holidays, while most people go on an unprecedented nationwide shutdown.

On Wednesday, education secretary Gavin Williamson called on providers to be on the forefront of the country’s response to the coronavirus crisis, insisting they will be “directly saving people’s lives”.

Emergency legislation, the Coronavirus Bill, will go through Parliament next week and allow the government to force colleges and schools to stay open or “relax some requirements around education legislation in order to help these institutions run effectively during the event of an emergency”.

I cannot tell you that by the end of June we will be on a downward slope

It means that while college doors will be closed and classes migrated online for most students from Friday afternoon until “further notice”, they will remain open to those that need them most, including during the upcoming two-week end-of-term break.

The definitions of “key workers” and vulnerable children can be found here.

Prime minister Boris Johnson told his daily press briefing on Thursday evening that “we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks and I am absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing in this country, but only if we all take the steps which we have outlined”.

But when asked what “turn the tide” actually meant, Johnson said: “I cannot stand here and tell you that by the end of June we will be on a downward slope.

“It is possible but I simply cannot say that is for certain. Of course not. We don’t know where we are. We don’t know how long this thing will go on for.”

Colleges could therefore very well see themselves working under this “new operational model” until the next academic year, in August or September.

East Coast College principal Stuart Rimmer told FE Week it is “time for colleges where possible to step forward for communities”.

His college has taken steps to work with local food banks, offered kitchens to provide hot meals for local vulnerable groups with the local councils and is working with the  hospital trusts to get students rapidly ready to step into jobs to support vacancies or shortages.

He said they are also preparing telephone support and online courses for “day one redundancies with employers and the Department for Work and Pensions”.

Counselling service support has also been “ramped up” for students and staff.

“We intend to continue working face to face on reduced timetables with vulnerable learner groups who need us more than ever,” Rimmer continued.

“The college intends not to be closed but to migrate our college community online. We remain at the service of our community. It is important that clear, unambiguous and direct advice to colleges in post-16 sector is provided urgently by government around educational health and care plan students.”

Writing for FE Week about his college’s approach to life off campus, the principal of Lancashire-based Cardinal Newman College, Nick Burnham, said: “Teaching and learning online begins for students from Monday using Microsoft Teams and will be a mix of live sessions and pre-recorded or set work.

“All will follow the existing college timetable, hopefully motivated by the thought their teacher will have a significant input to their final grade.

“The college’s ‘achievement tutors’ will work from home, regularly making contact with vulnerable students but also supporting all students through this difficult time.”

He added that counselling will continue via Skype.

On Thursday, the Department for Education published guidance on how schools can continue to claim free school meals during the country’s lockdown.

They were told to work with catering providers or local authorities to provide food parcels or send out supermarket vouchers to eligible pupils.

The average college has “several hundred” 16 to 18 students who receive free meals, according to the Association of Colleges.

The DfE told FE Week it does plan to provide free meals support to post-16 providers, but the arrangements had not been finalised at the time of going to press.

In a letter sent to Williamson this week, AoC boss David Hughes warned that an average college could lose up to £1 million per month of temporary closure and “very few, if any, will be able to cope without government support”.

The government had made no announcement on what, if any, financial support there will be for colleges during this crisis at the time of going to press.

Ministers have been urged to guarantee training providers’ income and for the Department for Education to relax funding rules during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe has asked officials to honour non-levy and other funding contracts, including European Social Fund and subcontracts regardless of performance.

He also called for all combined authorities with a devolved adult education budget to do the same, and for apprenticeship funding to be guaranteed, as a minimum, at the average draw down for levy starts from the past three months.

Yesterday, education secretary Gavin Williamson announced that GCSE and A-level exams will no longer take place this summer.

In a letter to his members this morning, Dawe said has told the government: “I must insist now this is extended to apprenticeships and that the requirement to have end-point observations is dropped.”

While nothing has yet been agreed with the DfE, the AELP told them the following measures will be “required” for providers:

    Change in break in learning, increasing from four weeks and make it a general rule, not something that is applied for. If the crisis is predicted to be three months long, then breaks in learning or delays in learning up to this period of time, three months, should be allowed for all the above eventualities – with the appropriate sign-off from the employer and the provider. However, while this helps data and success, we know that it still leaves a hole in funding which is why we have asked for profile funding as described above.

    An acceptance that the period of training is likely to be extended due to delays in on-the-job, off-the-job or both – and the need to consider the financial consequences of these delays.

    Flexibility between on and off-the-job required during this period if a provider can demonstrate appropriate development of knowledge, skills and behaviour through the delivery put in place in whatever form.

    Confirmation the gateway exercise can be done remotely and does not need to be done face-to-face.

    Functional skills – there is a deadline to complete the old functional skills assessment – given possible delays in delivery, this deadline needs to be moved.

 

Changes to assessment rules and regulations will also be required, Dawe wrote, such as:

    Face to Face assessment: Some assessments are required to be face to face in the standard, when they could be delivered remotely – there should be a rule change for the period of the crisis (at least) to allow remote where possible.

    Assessment Order: There is often a requirement for a particular order of assessments – this should be relaxed to allow flexibility.

    Staff present: some assessments require a manager to be present – again this needs to be dropped to allow assessments to be done at home / in isolation.

    Invigilation: there will still be issues about independent invigilation of functional skills assessments and assessments such as EPA multiple choice. Employers staff should be allowed to invigilate these with appropriate rules and controls in place – agreed across the system – not by EPAO or individual EQA. Simply the employer staff used should not be involved in the training of the apprentice. They can be easily trained as invigilators remotely.

    Assessment windows: there are fixed assessment windows post gateway, often 3 months – these rules need to be relaxed to allow a longer period to deliver all assessments.

    Observations: this requires some expansion. Currently, it is required face to face and via an independent assessor – EITHER this assessment is dropped during the period and the remote professional discussion is extended to cover what would have been assessed through observation OR the observation is allowed to be undertaken by the employer (with the EPAO supplying the observation records required) making a record of assessment and moderated by the EPAO remotely or reviewed through the professional discussion.

Other asks the AELP is making of the government include:

    Suspend funding bands consultation for six months – it is flawed, and we can’t put the work in to it with members that we were planning.

    Stop ESFA audit

    Suspend framework change for six months – those that were transitioning over the next few months don’t have a chance in hell of achieving this.

    AEB and traineeship funding – removing the restrictions of whether funding is spent period 1–8 or 9–12.

    Increased flexibility of funding and rules for those apprentices made redundant.

    Traineeships – completing them or running them without employer placements as these are near impossible now.

    Extend the non-levy contracts for another six months.

    For those that have used up AEB – extra funding for on-line programmes for employees at home.

    Removing the five per cent employer contribution for non-levy employers.

The awarding bodies designing the first three T-levels have called on the government to delay their rollout by a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, FE Week can reveal.

Pearson and NCFE have agreed with the Federation of Awarding Bodies that their launch should be combined with wave two and begin in September 2021 instead of 2020.

In a letter to education secretary Gavin Williamson, FAB chief executive Tom Bewick warned that colleges, and therefore the “delivery network”, will be in “crisis management and recovery mode up until the autumn term”.

Similarly, asking employers to provide high-quality industry placements at this time “looks very challenging when you consider that the deep economic shock we are experiencing will pre-occupy company survival plans for at least the next 12 months”.

He added: “Following consultation with our members and, specifically, those AOs that have to date successfully secured licences from you to design these new technical qualifications, I am requesting that you postpone the wave one commencement of three T-Levels in September.”

Fifty providers are signed up to deliver the first three routes – in digital, construction and education – from September 2020.

In response to the letter, apprenticeships and skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “We recognise the impact the Covid-19 outbreak will have on T-level providers.

“We are continuing to keep this under review, working closely with providers, as the situation develops and we will provide an update as soon as we possibly can.”

Bewick’s letter also stressed the need for urgent guidance on how apprentice end-point assessments will continue, following Williamson’s announcement yesterday that this year’s GCSE and A-level exams would not go ahead as planned.

“It is critical therefore that all external quality assurance providers and end-point assessment organisations are issued with the agreed guidance as soon as possible so that they can begin to put in place the mitigating measures that can ensure apprentices can continue to be independently assessed for occupational competence,” he said.

“Any further delay of this Guidance is putting in jeopardy the ongoing employment status of apprentices who may unfortunately find themselves being made redundant.”

He also called for the government’s review of qualifications at level 3 and below be put back by one academic year to “provide some much-needed stability in the post-16 sector”.

And in terms of apprenticeship jobs, Bewick warned: “We know from previous economic downturns that training is often the first expenditure item that firms will cut.”

So government should “protect apprentice lay-offs at this time, for 6 months, by using powers in the emergency legislation to prevent firms doing this”.

“In return, employers would receive a percentage towards wage compensation measures, in addition to a temporary national insurance holiday,” he added.

“These measures would have the impact of underwriting employer confidence in the apprenticeship system and ensure that small businesses, in particular, continued to want to take on apprentices.

“If we don’t take bold action like this, apprentice numbers will fall off a cliff and lay-offs will continue over the coming weeks.”

You can read the letter in full here.

All colleges in England are “expected” to close from Friday as the government steps up its attempts to contain the coronavirus.

GCSE and A-level exams will also not take place as planned in May and June.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson made the announcements in the House of Commons this afternoon, where he  committed to continue funding providers for apprenticeships even where training is disrupted.

“The spike of the virus is progressing at a faster pace than anticipated,” he said.

“After schools shut their gates on Friday afternoon they will remain closed until further notice.

“This will be for all children except to those of key workers and children who are most vulnerable. The scientific advice shows that these settings are safe for this small number of children to continue attending, but asking others to stay away will go towards helping us the slow the spread of this virus.

“Examples of key workers include NHS staff, police and delivery drivers who need to be able to go to work.

“Vulnerable children include those who have a social worker and those with an educational health and care plan.

“We are expecting early years providers, sixth forms and further education colleges to do the same.”

He added that the Department for Education is working with Treasury on the “financial support that will be required”.

The first colleges in England to close campuses and move to online learning in response to the Coronavirus outbreak were revealed yesterday.

On free school and colleges meals, Williamson said his department will give providers the “flexibility” to continue this offer by allowing them to purchase meals or vouchers for supermarkets or local shops.

He noted that some schools are already doing this and committed to reimbursing those costs.

The education secretary continued: “I know that all of this is not going to be easy. I am asking nurseries, schools and colleges to be at the forefront of this crisis.

“In order to allow schools and other setting to focus on this new operational model, we are removing various duties.

“Ofsted has ceased all routine inspections. I can confirm we will not go ahead with assessments or exams, and we will not be publishing performance tables for this academic year.

“We will work with the sector and Ofqual to ensure students vet the qualifications they need.”

When asked about how apprenticeships will be affected, Williamson said: “No one will be in a position where we take away the work that they have been doing in their apprenticeships.

“We have already made it clear to the college sector and the independent training providers who deliver so many apprenticeships that funding for apprenticeships is continuing.”

A spokesperson for Ofqual said: “We welcome the certainty that the Secretary of State’s decision not to hold exams this summer provides in these challenging circumstances.

“We will now work urgently with the Department for Education to work through the detail of this decision and to provide more information as soon as possible.”

Association of Colleges chief executive, David Hughes, said: “With partial college closures announced across the country it raises major challenges for staff, students and families, but protecting the nation’s health is vital during these uncertain times.

“We are working very closely with DfE and ESFA to manage the flow-on implications of this announcement and in particular the funding support colleges need to deliver.” 

In a letter to Williamson yesterday, Hughes warned that an average college might lose between £500,000 and £1 million per month of temporary closure and “very few, if any, will be able to cope without government support”.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said closing colleges was the “right decision” and his organisation will “continue to work collaboratively with the DfE and others to help address the challenges ahead”.

He added that they will be “particularly focused” on “ensuring that students – who have worked so hard over the past couple of years – secure fair and accurate grades in the absence of any formal assessments taking place this summer”.