The DfE says there are around 8,000 level 2 and below qualifications across a wide range of subject sector areas, but “many have low or no demand” while others “do not have clear progression routes to further education or employment”.
New analysis published by the department today found that 60 per cent of 16 year olds who study a classroom-based level 2 course do not move on to study at level 3 the following year. It also highlighted that 37 per cent of students who leave education with a level 2 qualification find it harder to get a job, compared to 14 per cent of students who leave with a level 3 qualification.
While detailed proposals on how to improve this system will not be put forward until next year, today’s call for evidence does outline some early “solutions” that the department has in mind.
For 16 to 19 year olds at level 2, the DfE also proposes to develop a new “transition programme” designed to support progression to level 3. This would be similar to the tailored preparatory T Levels transition programme that launched this year.
Another key goal of the department is to “improve outcomes for all students who are using classroom-based level 2 study to enter into employment”. They believe potential solutions might include “being more prescriptive about the pathways that lead to employment and aligning classroom-based study with employer-led standards” that are developed by employers and approved by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and form the basis of apprenticeships and T Levels.
The DfE states it also wants to “streamline” qualifications at level 1 and entry level, and asks training providers to define “good outcomes” for students at these levels to “help us determine the programmes they need” to keep.
Views are also being sought on how English as a second or foreign language (ESOL) qualifications can be “better targeted towards progression and employment”.
In her foreword of today’s call for evidence, skills minister Gillian Keegan said that level 2 and below classroom-based study is a “key part of our further education landscape that is too often undervalued and its importance should not be ignored”.
However, “they are not allowing the diverse range of students they serve, including some of the most vulnerable or those with special educational needs, learning difficulties or disabilities, to fulfil their potential”.
She adds that the government’s ambition for level 2 and below study is “high” and “we want to give students and employers the confidence that every programme or qualification at level 2 and below is high quality”.
Too many colleges and employers have a ‘diversity and inclusion’ policy but go no further, writes Jeremy Crook
Will 2020 mark a turning point in how employers and the FE sector deal with racial inequalities?
Those of us working with black and Asian young people are still waiting to see.
There has been some progress – black and Asian apprentice numbers have increased. In the past decade the proportion of BAME people starting an apprenticeship has increased from nine per cent to 15 per cent.
But across primary and secondary education in England, BAME groups represent 34 per cent of the student population. It’s not enough progress.
Think about this: young black and Asian people are at least twice as likely to be unemployed as young white people, whatever their qualification level. Only eight per cent of apprenticeship starts for 16-19-year-olds are from BAME backgrounds.
The Black Training and Enterprise Group (BTEG) was set up nearly 30 years ago to influence the new training and enterprise councils (as they were then called) to tackle racial inequalities in skills and employment.
There have been many more initiatives since then, but none has managed to transform the race disparities in apprenticeships.
It seems that many employers, especially in STEM-related sectors, do not recognise the benefits of ethnic diversity.
It also appears that FE colleges and other organisations that interface with employers have been reluctant to challenge unfair and poor recruitment practices.
Racial bias in recruitment remains conscious, unconscious and widespread. Some employers and their national bodies have avoided facing this issue head on. This has to change.
Too many employers, training providers and colleges are still stuck on the first rung of the race equality ladder: they have an equality or diversity and inclusion policy but go no further.
Not long ago, I facilitated a workshop in Bradford for textile employers, organised by the council and an FE college.
The college had built good relationships with textile employers offering high-tech jobs but struggling to recruit locally. Despite Bradford’s ethnically diverse population, the employers said they were unable to recruit talent from Asian communities.
Listening to the employers it was clear that they were ready to reach out to diverse communities. But at the same time it was equally clear that they held stereotyped and outdated views about why.
The employers held stereotyped and outdated views about why Asian people were ‘not applying’
Asian people were “not applying” to their firms, although none was conducting any ethnicity monitoring to see what the actual application rates were.
The workshop prompted a council initiative to help employers adopt fair recruitment practices. This is something that should be happening routinely, although perhaps it is difficult for certain stakeholders to play this role because they have not always got their own house in order when it comes to ethnic diversity either.
Regrettably the government no longer publishes application data by ethnicity but previously published data for 2015/16 showed that around 25 per cent of all apprenticeship applications were from ethnic minority people.
Meanwhile, only around 10 per cent of those starting apprenticeships in the same year were from an ethnic minority.
These figures dispel the widely held myths that black and Asian young people and their parents lack awareness of apprenticeships or are reluctant to apply.
Looking forward, employers in growth sectors need practical support to improve recruitment and implement workforce ethnicity monitoring. They could use the Greater London Authority’s recently published Inclusive Employers Toolkit for construction and technology.
But BTEG still wants much more to be done to tackle poorer success rates for black and Asian apprenticeship applicants. Application data is important in achieving this and should be shared with employers and colleges.
We are also calling on the Department for Education to set a stretch target (one that requires entirely news ways of working) for the number of 16-18-year-old black and Asian apprenticeship starts in growth sectors over the next four years.
The FE sector should be a catalyst for change. Let’s finally make this happen.
The technical qualifications we end up with must have value for employers and universities, writes Ruth Gilbert
As a sector, we have been working hard for many years to raise the parity of esteem between vocational or technical qualifications and academic qualifications.
Progress has undoubtedly been made, with the government recognising the important part that apprenticeships and technical education must play in the country’s post-Covid 19 economic recovery and highlighting the vital role of colleges in this.
The development and introduction of T Levels in 2020 has also been a clear nod towards the recognition of the value of high-level technical skills. They are a much-needed addition to the qualification landscape, putting technical skills on a par with the “gold standard” A-level.
But we must never forget that the purpose of education is to give people the skills they need to get a good and meaningful job.
This takes more than simply stripping out qualifications and requires a much more holistic approach aligned with the future of our industry and economy.
Rather than focusing on the quantity of qualifications, the government should recognise that it is the quality of curriculum content and delivery that is the key thing to get right.
So the question now is what should become of the plethora of other vocational qualifications offered by colleges, learning providers and sixth-forms around the country?
The right approach takes more than simply stripping out qualifications
This is, of course, a difficult question and one that the Department for Education is quite rightly consulting on.
Having worked in FE for many years, I strongly believe that giving students a clear line of sight to work must be at the heart of every post-16 course and qualification.
To do this, employers and HE institutions need to recognise the value of the various education pathways – with an understanding of the competencies a particular qualification will develop.
An A-level grade, for instance, is instantly recognisable, providing the employer or university with an understanding of a student’s ability and knowledge.
All vocational qualifications need to carry this same “assumed” value, a value that will ultimately come from impact. Employers must expressly endorse and reference T Level entry to the workplace.
FE and HE providers must embrace more flexible delivery that is accessible while learners work, including degree apprenticeships and part-time HE options.
We also need universities to recognise T Levels, for parity of opportunity with A-levels, on HE progression.
And industry must also drive the development of new qualifications and modifications. The world of work moves quickly, and qualifications must keep up.
Here at the Career Colleges Trust we have just created a new level 2 and 3 qualification in Logistics and International Supply Chain Management, through a collaboration with seven FE colleges, a Rotterdam-based learning provider and several logistics employers.
A T Level in this area is also needed to provide a clear point of higher entry for young people who know relatively little about this growing sector ̶ illustrating exactly how different qualifications can co-exist successfully to meet industry need.
We should not forget BTECs and other awarding body certification, often recognised as “the standard” for specific industries. We have to ask the questions “are they still current, and is there an alternative that better prepares students for work/progression?”.
The second government consultation must make currency of qualifications king.
Seeking out new industries and opportunities has never been so important for our economy so this is a perfect time to consider our portfolio of technical qualifications.
Off-the-job training in apprenticeships is clearly critical, while GCSE resits need to be rethought, writes Anne Milton
When I attended WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017, I was privileged to be the first government minister to witness WorldSkills on foreign soil. It was an experience I will never forget.
I was left in complete awe of the competitors. They demonstrated an amazing level of skills and had the mental stamina to keep up the intensity of a competition lasting up to four full days.
I soon realised that I was witnessing excellence from those incredibly talented young people. My visit gave me a fantastic opportunity, as a relatively new minister at the time, to learn about other countries’ skills systems. It left me in no doubt as to what we must do to improve skills levels in this country.
It is traditional to cite Germany as the gold standard for technical education. But we shouldn’t just try and emulate one country, there are many other countries that are also doing some excellent work on technical education.
For instance, Russia has used all that it learnt from WorldSkills as a basis for overhauling the country’s entire skills system. Meanwhile, a minister from Singapore was clear that one of the pillars of their successful technical and vocational education system is high English and maths standards.
There should be no weakening of our requirement for off-the-job training
This is something we haven’t yet got right in England. We want young people to achieve a strong standard in both subjects, but the GCSE resits policy can lead to young people repeatedly sitting exams and repeatedly failing, which can then go on to have a very detrimental impact on their confidence and self-esteem.
Functional skills qualifications help with this, but we need to continue to strive to find a better way of getting young people to develop and improve.
There was a lot of interest in our apprenticeship reforms and the introduction of T Levels. Discussing how apprenticeships work in different parts of the world is always useful. In particular, these conversations hardened my views about the importance of the off-the-job training element of apprenticeships.
Some businesses in the UK were unhappy about our requirement that 20 per cent of an apprenticeship should consist of off-the-job training. But what I discovered was that this minimum requirement is lower than those in place in almost every other country.
This confirmed my view that there should be no weakening on this requirement if we are to have the world-class apprenticeships our young people deserve.
What is clear to me is that to raise the esteem in which technical education is held, we must look at what excellence in skills looks like.
WorldSkills UK knows this better than anyone else. It holds the ring on excellence.
It leads the way on best practice because it must achieve exceptionally high standards for Team UK to win medals when competing against some of the strongest nations.
We also need long-term investment so providers can plan ahead. Further education has long been underfunded; adult education has dropped even further behind. Only by significantly increasing our investment can we achieve parity of esteem. How this funding is spent – and who these decisions are made by – is also critical.
Team UK does very well in the medal tables, consistently placing in and around the top 10. As a nation, we punch well above our weight for every pound spent.
If the government is serious about its stated ambitions on skills and technical education, what better way to do this than bidding to host the WorldSkills competition on UK soil?
If the UK is prepared to back a bid, just think what a message this would send to the country and the world about the importance of skills to the UK economy.
FE Week has been a strong champion of this bid and I look forward to talking further to the paper at the WorldSkills UK International Skills Summit next week.
It is a chance we simply cannot afford to miss as we strive for excellence in our skills systems.
The WorldSkills UK International Skills Summit takes place on November 11 and 12. For more information visit worldskillsuk.org
The first ever court battle to challenge a failed adult education budget application has been dropped.
East Birmingham Community Forum (EBCF) has withdrawn its case against the West Midlands Combined Authority following “discussions with our legal counsel”.
The training provider previously claimed it was wrongly denied a fair run at securing a slice of £28 million of funding put out by the authority, which took control of the AEB for the region last year.
Lawyers were set to go to battle at the high court in January, but this was then pushed back to November 20.
EBCF told FE Week this week that it decided to drop the case altogether over the summer as it could not afford the legal costs of seeing the challenge the whole way through. A spokesperson confirmed that there was no out-of-court settlement.
The West Midlands Combined Authority declined to comment.
In documents seen by FE Week ahead of the original January 31 court date, the independent learning provider had alleged the authority’s AEB procurement was “flawed” and that WMCA admitted in writing that it had made scoring errors.
The forum also claimed the WMCA did not abide by legislative procurement rules.
If the EBCF challenge had been successful, two parts of the area’s AEB provision bid could have had to have been retendered.
A college in dire financial straits is looking to sell off one of its campuses to balance the books, the FE Commissioner has reported.
The commissioner’s team intervened at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College (GB Met) following a request for emergency funding and a Notice to Improve from the Department for Education.
Their report, published this morning but dated August 2020, reveals: “Liquidity is weak, debt levels are high, and the underlying operating performance is poor.
“Total income is declining, staff costs are too high, and the college is operating across five main delivery sites.”
Had the government bailout not been granted, the report adds, it would have left GB Met in “a significant negative cash position”.
Despite that, the report also covers a number of positive aspects of the college’s progress since FE Week reported in July it had received emergency funding and principal Nick Juba had been replaced by Chichester College Group executive principal Andy Green, who was seconded on an interim basis.
But the college’s five campuses – from East Brighton across to West Worthing: a range of nearly 20 miles – are “not sustainable” and GB Met is currently working on selling one of them.
The report says: “The overhead cost of running five sites is expensive and efficiency opportunities for curriculum rationalisation are diluted by falling learner numbers.
“The resolution of the estate infrastructure will be a key feature of improving financial operating efficiencies and further work on an estate solution is required.”
Three of the sites are owned and two are leased, with specialist facilities across all sites, but space utilisation was rated as “low” in the report.
Subcontracting is also an area of concern for the FE Commissioner, with over half of GB Met’s learners in 2018-19 being delivered “poor” provision from outside the college.
The college had planned to go against its own policy and increase subcontracted activity in 2019-20, yet a data return from this summer showed it had reduced against the previous year.
The quality of the Ofsted grade three college’s apprenticeships, since it was formed from a 2017 merger of Northbrook College and City College Brighton and Hove, was called “disappointing” in the report – GB Met is planning to rationalise the breadth of its apprentices offer to streamline provision.
The report also highlights the “excess” number of management posts after FE Week reported last month up to 20 of those postholders were at risk of redundancy as part of a clear-out.
But the report is complementary of the actions taken by chair Sue Berelowitz, a former deputy children’s commissioner for England, who was appointed in April.
She has “led a refresh, review and recasting of the board’s committee structure and membership,” the report reads, and Green’s approach and grasp of the challenges is also “encouraging”.
Governors and staff were said to be positive about the change in leadership and style of engagement.
In a letter accompanying the report, skills minister Gillian Keegan told Berelowitz she was “encouraged” by the college’s “prompt and decisive actions,” but she remains concerned “by the numerous outstanding issues that threaten the college’s immediate and long-term future”.
Green has said the college is “pleased the commissioner recognise the hard work and innovative thinking that the team have undertaken in a very short space of time.
“We have all the foundations of an Ofsted ‘outstanding’ college—passionate, dedicated staff who are committed to delivering for their students, state-of-the-art facilities and fantastic achievement rates across much of our course provision. By all working together, we are confident we can make the college sustainable again; both in terms of quality and financially.”
Almost 100 jobs are at risk at one of the colleges which took over part of the first college group to go through education administration.
North Kent College (NKC), which took over the main Hadlow College campus and the Tonbridge campus of West Kent in August, has confirmed to FE Week that 90 staff are at risk of redundancy under plans to cut 44 posts.
Meanwhile, three staff have lost their jobs after East Kent College (EKC) Group closed a motor vehicle centre when they took over the Ashford campus and Hadlow’s Canterbury site.
Hadlow College was the first of its kind to enter the insolvency regime last May, and its sister college West Kent and Ashford became the second in August.
North Kent principal David Gleed said: “Given the financial reasons that drove Hadlow into educational administration before the break up, acquiring nearly 100 per cent of the costs and around 70 per cent of the income was never going to be sustainable without making cost reductions.
“While we do face some very difficult decisions surrounding staffing, these reductions represent a small percentage of the college workforce and North Kent College will do all that it can to prevent compulsory redundancies.”
The college has entered into a 30-day period of collective consultation with the University and College Union over the losses.
NKC inherited 630 staff, with 2,175 students at Hadlow and 2,611 students at Tonbridge, when it took over the two campuses, as well as the Princess Christian Farm facility and Hadlow’s equestrian centre in Greenwich.
At the time, it said a voluntary redundancy scheme had been launched at the request of staff at Hadlow and Tonbridge.
EKC Group chief executive Graham Razey said, other than the three at the motor vehicle centre, no other redundancies had been made.
Ashford College had 1,077 students and apprentices and 103 members of staff at the time it was taken over by EKC, while the Canterbury site had 158 students and apprentices and 33 members of staff.
Hadlow was plunged into insolvency after running up £40 million in debts, while West Kent and Ashford racked up over £100 million, and they had to apply for emergency funding from the government.
The two colleges were run as part of The Hadlow Group, along with a number of other businesses, including a country park and a garden centre.
An interim principal and chair had to be brought in after original principal of both colleges, Paul Hannan, deputy principal Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, and the chairs of both colleges, as well as several governors, resigned.
After the High Court put the colleges in administration, FE Commissioner Richard Atkins recommended their assets be split between NKC, Capel Manor College – which took over Hadlow’s Mottingham campus in January – and EKC Group. The transfer of assets to NKC did suffer some delays, missing three deadlines in March, May and July.
The Mottingham site had 186 learners and 23 staff at the time it was transferred, and Capel Manor has said it has not made, nor does it plan, any redundancies.
A National Audit Office report published in September said that the cost of the first two education insolvencies cost £26.6 million – with millions paid to administrators BDO.
FE Week explores how the government’s £96 million tuition fund is being put to use by colleges and whether it is enough to help 16-to-19-year-olds catch up with education that was curtailed by lockdown
Prime minister Boris Johnson and education secretary Gavin Williamson were set to announce to great acclaim on June 18 that colleges would be able to take a share of a £1 billion fund aimed at helping students catch up on the teaching time they have lost because of the coronavirus pandemic.
However, the praise of organisations such as the Association of Colleges was cut short when, just two hours later, the Department for Education removed colleges from the initiative.
This led to a political and sector outcry, with the decision – blamed on the Treasury – branded “indefensible” by Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes and “unforgivable” by the Labour Party.
The uproar then forced a screeching U-turn from the government, which a month later announced the £96 million 16-to-19 tuition fund, paid for out of the £350 million National Tutoring Programme.
The fund can be used for small tuition groups of around three to five students to study English, maths and other courses where learning has been disrupted.
The remaining £650 million of the £1 billion is being put towards additional funding for the 2020-21 academic year for school pupils catching up on education missed through the Covid-19 pandemic.
Colleges had to opt in to receive the tuition fund money, which is being allocated at £150 for each student without a grade 4 pass in English and maths.
The Department for Education told FE Week it had received requests for £92 million of the catch-up funds at the time of going to press, and providers have flexibility on how to spend it.
Although the DfE has said funding should be prioritised for those students who have not achieved a passing mark, grade 3, in GCSE English and maths, it can be used to support students who achieved grade 4 – meaning students who achieved grades 5 to 9 are not eligible.
Colleges who spoke to FE Week said the £96 million 16-to-19 tuition fund has been spent on hiring extra pastoral and study staff, and in a couple of cases on hiring young people either about to start, or just graduating from, university to make the people delivering this tuition more relatable for students.
Activate Learning, based in Oxfordshire, is one of the providers to hire tutors around their students’ own age. It has paid for 20 young people who have recently completed their A-levels, but have deferred university, who can provide online tuition to students resitting GCSE exams in November, with the help of peer-tutoring company Yipiyap.
Each of the tutors created an online profile of themselves so the student could choose who teaches them, based on their personality and availability.
The funds will help our young students recharge their batteries
A spokesperson for Activate said: “Having worked on peer tuition before at our City of Oxford campus, we recognised the value that young people brought to our students’ learning process.
“By working with Yipiyap we have been able to roll out this innovative approach at scale and in a timeframe where it will benefit those learners going into their GCSE resits in November.”
Between 600 and 700 students resitting their maths and English exams this month will “directly” benefit from Yipiyap’s provision, the spokesperson added, and roughly 5,000 students across Activate’s seven colleges will benefit from other schemes funded under the programme, including subject specific catchup tuition and performance coaches.
College group NCG is approaching catch-up tuition with a similar tack and has used some of the £1.5 million of funding from the tuition fund on specialist tutoring services, such as educational charity Get Further, which uses graduate students to provide tuition on-site and via the internet.
The 5,000 NCG students this funding covers can also benefit from small group tutoring sessions, including some that ran during half-term, and expansions to the group’s English and maths teaching teams and pastoral and learning support teams.
Meanwhile, Birkenhead Sixth Form College has spent the £46,000 it received, which will cover 132 students, on an academic skills tutor to help students’ writing skills and a pastoral support worker who helps students organise their studies and ensures that they have a go-to person for their needs.
Carol Layall, director of quality of education at the Yorkshire-based Luminate Education Group, said the £1.3 million it received from the tuition fund for its colleges is a “good chunk of money”, which it is spending on helping nearly 9,000 students.
With the funding, Luminate is putting on breakfast, lunchtime and after-college sessions to provide the catch-up tuition and have recruited “several” English and maths teachers, study support coaches, and English and maths coaches.
Carol Layall
Layall also said their sixth-form “has got a study support coach, so that’s about getting students back into studying, developing study skills, making sure they were at the right level to take on that A-level provision”.
But making up for lost learning is not the only objective college leaders have got their eye on for this money.
City of Bristol principal Andy Forbes has placed a heavy emphasis on using the £474,000 the college received to manage students’ mental health and classroom performance, saying: “The catch-up funds will help our young students get their batteries re-charged as they come back into education after the lockdown.”
“Several hundred” students will benefit from the funding, which will also focus on study skills and improving their English and maths, he said.
However, it will partly also go towards a staff development programme to “ensure that we develop the coaching and mentoring skills of our dedicated team of teachers and learning support staff”.
Nevertheless, the funding has come in for some criticism from college leaders for being insufficient, ill-targeted and ill-timed.
Mike Kilbride, principal of Birkenhead Sixth Form College, told FE Week: “I’ve got students who were awarded, through the centre assessment grading process, fives and sixes in maths, who are currently on A-level natural sciences. And they’re really struggling.
“So those students who are having to do quite high-level maths, particularly in biology, chemistry, and physics, and haven’t done any meaningful maths since March, they’re the ones who are critically behind.”
But due to the cap on grades, the funds the college received cannot be spent on helping those students.
Mike Kilbride
While Kilbride says the funding is “better than nothing” and shows a “desire to try and help out”, he added:
“It’s not a huge amount when you actually spread it across the sector” and “I don’t know anybody who thinks this is the way to solve the problem.”
Layall also had a problem with the fund concerning timing: “Because colleges are ahead of the game with timetables, you’ve got your plans already in place and it was announced in July, so we’re playing a bit of catch-up on how we’ll use it, when it’s supposed to be used, and then looking at adding in those extra hours for the students.
“So that wasn’t the best. It would have been much more ideal if we had known this in April or May. But that’s just how it is, we’re not going to say no.”
Following on from his comments about colleges “indefensibly” being excluded from catch-up funding, David Hughes has said the £96 million is a “welcome recognition of the need to address lost learning”.
But, echoing Kilbride’s comments about the students who have been cut out of funding due to their grades, Hughes said the Association of Colleges would like “wider eligibility to help this resource reach all those students who need extra support”, along with extra investment and flexibility.
Deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association James Kewin labelled the initiative “micro interventions” aimed at particular subjects or qualifications which “will only ever have a micro impact”.
“These sort of eye-catching, but short-term, funding streams, however well-intended, are no substitute for a sufficient level of core funding.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said they provided the funding so that “no student should fall behind as a result of the pandemic”.
