Latest news from FE Week

Government ‘expects’ to drop face masks in classrooms requirement by May

Students should no longer be required to wear face masks in classrooms from 17 May, the Department for Education has announced.

But the government has said coverings will still need to be worn on providers’ premises once students return from the Easter holidays.

In an update to its ‘Face coverings in education’ guidance published the afternoon, the department said it “expects” it will no longer be recommended masks be worn by adults and students in FE providers’ classrooms, or by students in communal areas from 17 May.

This decision was made, the department said, as part of an “ongoing” review of evidence and data, and means dropping the requirement ought to coincide with the “next stage” of lockdown easements, including social contact indoors.

It will also allow time for everyone in priority groups one to nine to be offered their first vaccine dose, before any change is committed.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “We obviously all want to get back to face mask-free classrooms and we will do this in line with the latest scientific data while balancing the interests of students, teachers and the wider community.”

This comes after his department announced last month, ahead of the full reopening of providers on 8 March, that masks would have to be worn in the classroom until at least Easter.

Under today’s update, students and teachers will continue to wear face masks in-class until step three of the government’s lockdown easing.

Those who are currently exempt from wearing face masks will remain so, the department has said.

As part of the full reopening, providers were supplied with between 5,000 and 7,500 face masks for contingency use.

College students also had to have four rapid Covid tests within two weeks of their return to class on 8 March; three on-site, one at home, then twice-weekly at home for both learners and staff.

While colleges were sent tests ahead of 8 March, independent training providers were told they would be able to request coronavirus tests from 31 March, but would need to apply to the Department for Education for the amount they need.

This decision was branded as “madness” by providers, with Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie saying it was “difficult to comprehend why the DfE didn’t simply use the same system for schools and colleges by sending kits to the ITPs’ training centres or somewhere appropriate nearby”.

If your college isn’t in a careers hub, here’s the evidence it should be

Colleges already do well with employer links, but new research shows they have a better chance with the hub model, writes Oli de Botton

Helping young people find their right next steps is difficult at the best of times. In the middle of a pandemic, the task becomes critical.

Careers education that is college-led, employer-shaped and focused on removing barriers for young people must be part of the answer ̶ and often already is.

The Careers & Enterprise Company was set up in 2015 to help colleges and schools deliver brilliant careers education, and at the end of February I joined as the new chief executive.

I’d founded School 21 in east London and, as head, had tried to put employer partnerships and skills such as oracy at the heart of our mission.

Since the pandemic, the Careers & Enterprise Company has seen a growing interest in its work ̶ not least because of worries that young people will feel the long-term “scarring” effects of missing out on opportunities so early on.

We’ve had the privilege of partnering with incredible college careers leaders, governors and senior staff. Although in education it is easy to both over- and under-claim, careers education in FE is on the move.

‘Careers leaders praise hubs’

Half of England’s FE colleges are now part of our growing network of “careers hubs”.

First set up in areas of high need, careers hubs are local clusters of schools, colleges, employers and other partners who share practice, provide opportunities for young people and make sure careers education reflects the local economy.

Hubs also access extra training. Around 150 FE careers leaders have now taken part in professional development, with one-third completing a higher level 7 qualification.

This is all driving changes on the ground. The majority of careers leaders in hubs now report that young people have better employability skills and are more likely to consider apprenticeship routes.

Hubs give young people access to more meaningful encounters with employers

Hubs give young people access to more meaningful encounters with employers. We also know careers education in special schools and alternative provision improves when they are in hubs.

Across schools and colleges more generally, 3.3 million young people are now having regular encounters with employers, up 70 per cent in two years.

Employer partnerships are also growing as leaders draw on strategic support from our network of 3,600 “enterprise advisers”, who are senior business volunteers.

In Carmel College in Darlington, for example, the team works with global engineering firm Jacobs to help them shape their careers programme. Staff receive more support, and students have a clearer line of sight into the world of work as a result.

‘More work to do’

So the emerging evidence is clear. Many colleges may ask why this sort of support is needed, when they already have strong links with business.

But the longer colleges are in our network of careers hubs, the higher they are performing against all eight Gatsby Benchmarks, which set standards for best practice in careers education.

In fact, colleges inside hubs achieve almost twice as many benchmarks as those outside. And the higher they are performing, the better the long-term outcomes for students.

This month, research from the University of Derby showed the impact of meeting the Gatsby Benchmarks.

Across 16 colleges and schools in the north-east, significant increases were seen in how prepared young people were for work and how likely they were to achieve their learning outcomes.

Students saw a 39 per cent increase in their “career readiness score”.

But there is more to do. We are determined to roll out our hub model to every corner of the country. We also want to partner with more colleges and have been working with The Association of Colleges.

But we’re also developing a virtual community to bring together hundreds of FE careers practitioners, so they can share best practice and innovate together.

And we will be aligning more closely with the National Careers Service, promoting it widely across our network.

Every young person deserves the best possible start to their working life. Careers education plays an important part in making that possible, and colleges could not be more important in making that vision a reality.

Whitehall is failing as a moral leader on apprenticeship targets

Whitehall chiefs, headteachers and local government leaders should have their performance and pay incentives linked to hitting the apprenticeship target, writes Tom Bewick

Did you hear about this year’s April Fools’ joke over at the Department for Education? A senior official walked into the secretary of state’s office and said: “Minister, I’m pleased to report that we’ve met every single target on apprenticeships that we set ourselves in 2015.”

“That’s amazing! How come?”, replied Gavin Williamson.

“We haven’t really, minister, we’ve missed every single one of them, but don’t worry, we’ll just change the goal posts and give ourselves another year!”

As FE Week reported recently, nearly all parts of the public sector – other than the armed forces – have failed to meet the 2.3 per cent target that was first enshrined in statutory guidance on April 7, 2017.

The original reporting period and timeframe to comply with the law expired this week, on March 31, 2021.

Rather like a flaky student who regularly posts a late essay under the lecturer’s door at five past midnight, Whitehall knew it would fail to meet its own target.

So, it has simply taken the liberty of self-extending the deadline. Those more sympathetic to the mandarins will, of course, cite the vagaries of the pandemic. Cut them some slack, they’ll say.

But I’m less generous.

‘All the usual buzzwords’

As with any serious delinquent, you have to look at the pattern of behaviour. This is not an isolated incident. The big ambition for apprenticeships was actually stated in 2015, when the old Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published its Vision 2020 document.

It was drafted on behalf of ministers by Jennifer Coupland, boss at the current Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, in the days when she was still in the department.

The vision statement was designed to crown the 2015 Conservative manifesto target of 3 million apprentices by 2020 (the target that’s been missed).

Whitehall has simply taken the liberty of self-extending the deadline

The six chapters contained all the usual buzzword bingo lines we’ve become accustomed to reading.

Employers would be “in the driving seat”. Expansion would take place while “quality would improve”.

There would be a “simpler funding system” designed to incentivise more firms to offer apprenticeships, “particularly for younger people” at risk of unemployment. Indeed, under-25s were to be the main focus of the expansion effort.

Five years on, the numbers of starts for young people has plummeted, from 123,000 in 2016-17 to 76,300 by 2020 (pre-pandemic).

Crucially, ministers promised that the public sector would “lead by example”, by meeting the statutory minimum 2.3 per cent target.

The fact that this and many other apprenticeship policy targets since 2015 have been missed is what is so frustrating about the government’s cavalier attitude.

‘Enforce the target’

The bigger picture is this: England already has one of lowest numbers of apprentices proportionally to employed persons among comparable countries, at 18 per 1,000 employees (2019 figures).

Germany has a ratio twice the England rate, at 40 apprentices per 1,000. Even Australia had a much higher recorded ratio, of 39 per 1,000 employees.

This really matters, because if the government can’t deliver as an employer, operating via the public sector (schools, local government and hospitals), then how on earth can it be a moral leader when it comes to exhorting the private sector to hire apprentices?

The Treasury has belatedly realised this, with the recent Budget announcement to gear more financial incentives to new apprenticeship and traineeship hires, including helping those laggard public sector employers.

Ultimately, I believe the 2.3 per cent target needs to be enforced in the following ways: permanent secretaries of Whitehall departments should have their performance bonus payments explicitly linked to the achievement of the apprenticeship target.

The same for quango chiefs, headteachers and local government leaders.

Only when there are some real personal and financial repercussions for failing in this endeavour will we find out whether those entrusted to lead our public sector are really up to the job.

FE White Paper In-Depth | Webcast recordings

Access all the recordings of our FE White Paper In-depth series.

A free webcast update series from FE Week, in partnership with NOCN, to provide an overview of the Government’s FE White Paper (Skills for jobs) and what it means for the FE & Skills sector.

RECORDINGS

2 March – Need for an FE White Paper – an overview
Special guest: Keith Smith, Director for post-16 strategy at the Department for Education (SLIDES)

9 March – Chapter 1: Putting employers at the heart of post-16 skills
Special guests: Jennifer Coupland, CEO, IfATE, Emma Roberts, Head of Research, WorldSkills UK, Paul Allman, Director, Flannery Plant Hire (SLIDES)

16 March – Chapter 2: Providing advanced technical and higher technical skills
Special guests: Tom Bewick, CEO, Federation of Awarding Bodies, Prof Lorna Unwin, Professor Emerita, UCL Institute of Education and Graham Hasting-Evans, CEO, NOCN. (SLIDES)

23 March – Chapter 3: A flexible Lifetime Skills Guarantee
Special guests: Dr Sue Pember CBE, Policy Director, HOLEX, Sally Dicketts CBE, President, AoC and Simon Ashworth, Chief Policy Officer, AELP (SLIDES)

30 March – Chapter 4: More responsive and accountable providers

Special guests: Fiona Chalk, National Head of Governance Development at The Education and Training Foundation, Kurt Hall, Governance Advisor at the Association of Colleges and Mark Taylor, Partner at Eversheds Sutherland (SLIDES)

6 April – Chapter 5: Supporting ‘outstanding’ teaching

Special guest: David Russell, CEO, The Education & Training Foundation (SLIDES)

The Commission on Race is a spectacularly badly-timed distraction

The Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities seeks to lay responsibility for painful lived experience at the door of individuals and families, writes Anjali Shah

When the government’s Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report came out on Wednesday, I got an email from a student. “I don’t know what to make of this report,” she wrote. “Please can we talk?”

My student was distressed and needed help from me just to understand what was going on. It’s likely a situation many educators and learners have faced since this report came out.

This past year since Black Lives Matter, and the Windrush scandal before that, had led many of us to hope that people were really reading, learning and finally discussing at length the deep and complex questions of race and racism.

But this report feels like it takes us backwards. Worse than that – it denies that institutional and structural racism even exist, laying responsibility at the door of individuals instead.

‘Class pitted against race’

Novelist Toni Morrison once said: “The very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”

That’s what this report does. It distracts us with other issues, without actually tackling the problems that exist. It forces people who experience racism to justify their experiences as that, rather than suggesting effective solutions.

For instance, saying that white working-class pupils “trail behind their peers in almost all ethnic minority groups” to indicate that institutional racism does not exist in education is disingenuous.

For a start, it pits class against race. But “white working class” is also a very crude proxy for social disadvantage. It’s far too loaded a term, that is poorly defined. For instance, there is a huge attainment gap between white children receiving free school meals, and those who are not.

This is problematic, and needs deeper examination, but by positioning the “white working class” versus “higher-achieving minority ethnic” we do a disservice to all those groups.

It’s also not clear why the report focuses mainly on attainment. It touches on exclusions, saying the causes are “complex and multifaceted and cannot be reduced to structural racism and individual teacher bias”.

No one is saying the causes aren’t complex – but saying this means that teachers aren’t unconsciously biased, or that structural racism isn’t playing a part, makes no sense. Has the commission really proven they aren’t?

‘Don’t compare to other countries’

Other issues just aren’t tackled. We know young people from minority ethnic backgrounds are more likely to be in care and more likely to be given a diagnosis of special educational needs. Yet the report does not examine this.

Similarly, the report doesn’t explain why, if minority ethnic groups largely do well in attainment at school or college, huge gaps appear in their outcomes post compulsory education.

A further distraction is this idea that as a country we are an exemplar

We know on average they are awarded lower degrees at university, are less likely to get into Russell Group universities, are barely represented at the top of FTSE 100 and are under-represented among leading professions.

We know they are more likely to be stopped and searched by the police and to be in prison. Research still shows that you are more likely to get a job interview if your name is Michael and not Mohammed.

A further distraction is this idea that as a country we are an exemplar. The report says, “It is important to see how the UK has improved race relations more rapidly than in other countries”. Does a school or college say, “Everywhere else is rubbish, so let’s congratulate ourselves instead of aspiring to become an outstanding provider?” No. So why should the nation?

So instead of a deep and nuanced examination of issues and how we might do better, the report has recommended a longer school day and better careers advice. It has placed the responsibility firmly at the door of individuals and families to exercise their agency better.

The fallout could be that some schools and colleges may now no longer see tackling racism as the same high priority they did.

Not only does this report, through distraction, deny the lived experience of many minority ethnic people, it is spectacularly badly timed.

Colleges will need to do their own funding audits – ESFA rules

The government body responsible for funding assurance appears to have lost confidence in itself.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency is requiring all external auditors to conduct a funding audit this year, before signing off on the annual college financial statements.

News of the significant change came buried in the Post-16 Audit Code of Practice for 2020 to 2021, published by the ESFA this week.

One of 19 “changes” stated the ESFA year-end funding statement “does not constitute assurance over the funds earned by the college”.

In previous years, external auditors signed off college accounts without checking the accuracy of income claims received from the main funding grants generated through the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) returns, because the ESFA provided the assurance.

Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive at the Association of Colleges and former college finance director, told FE Week the change “risks creating a last-minute scramble by colleges and auditors to carry out extra work in summer 2021.

“Colleges aim to comply with high audit standards but we don’t agree with the ESFA decision to introduce this change two-thirds of the way through the year.”

And in an email to all AoC members seen by FE Week, Gravatt says: “The implication of this change is that external auditors will now carry out more work this summer and early autumn to ensure compliance with funding rules.

“In effect this extends the funding audit to all colleges this year – at their own expense.”

According to several college accountants who spoke to FE Week, the responsibility for funding audit being passed from the ESFA to colleges presents a number of challenges.

Many accountancy firms that currently undertake external audit for colleges have never conducted a “funding assurance review”.

This is likely to present resourcing challenges announced so late in the year and raises the prospect of additional costs for colleges.

‘This extends the funding audit to all colleges this year’

However, Gravatt said he hoped external audit firms would “handle any extra work within agreed and fixed budgets”.

It also remains uncertain whether other funding bodies reliant on the ILR returns, such as mayoral combined authorities, will make similar demands.

And despite the move from the ESFA to require the extra assurance work, there has been no suggestion they will scale back the number of audits they conduct themselves.

Gravatt was also keen to point out that this late change appeared to go against broader government plans to reduce bureaucracy.

“The FE white paper promises simplification but, for colleges, the current audit code is a uniquely complicated custom-built framework involving internal, external, regularity and multi-year funding audits,” he said.

Swithenbank’s payoff revealed as auditors confirm financial regulations breached

The former chief executive of Hull College Group received £219,000 last year, despite only being in post for 67 days.

Payments to Michelle Swithenbank are revealed in the published accounts alongside external auditor findings that a £300,000 three-year deal she signed with a local rugby club breached the college’s financial regulations.

External auditors reveal in the published 2019/20 accounts that the stadium naming rights and shirt sponsorship deal was “only signed by one authorised signatory who was the corporation’s accounting officer in office during the year [Swithenbank], and neither were the agreements approved by the corporation”.

The college chair at the time, Dafydd Williams, confirmed to FE Week that the “contract [with Hull Kingston Rovers] was never brought to the board for discussion or approval and was signed off by individual executives without our knowledge”.

The auditors also found the college “failed to discharge its duty of care with regard to the novel nature of these transactions” as they ignored legal advice and no evidence was found for any business case or value for money analysis.

Swithenbank led Hull College Group until taking a leave of absence on October 7, 2019 when Williams commissioned an unrelated investigation into financial misconduct.

Two months later, on December 20, Williams emailed all staff to announce that the investigation had found “no impropriety on the part of Michelle […] nevertheless, Michelle has informed us that she wishes to move on, and feels this is a good time to do so”.

The true cost of the deal with Hull KR only came to light earlier this year following an FE Week freedom of information request and subsequent intervention from the Information Commissioner’s Office.

After reporting the deal in FE Week, interim chief executive, Lowell Williams, then launched his own investigation with internal auditors, which is due to report later this month.

Williams, who departs later this month when the first permanent chief executive since Swithenbank’s departure takes over, said “enquiries are ongoing” concerning the “irregular transaction” and he was “confident that the corporation will take appropriate action” – not ruling out the college could seek to recover some or all of the payoff.

The college accounts detail a total of £390,000 spent on the chief executive post in the 12 months from August 1, 2019 until July 31, 2020, compared to £140,000 in the previous financial year.

This consisted of £162,000 contractual and £57,000 non-contractual payments for Swithenbank, with the remaining £171,000 spent on three interim chief executives.

Hull College Group hit the headlines several years ago after requiring a £50 million bailout from the government as part of a ‘Fresh Start’ process that preceded several hundred staff being made redundant.

And in recent weeks staff were informed the college would be disposing of their campus in Goole in July 2021, leaving the group with just their main campus at Queens Gardens in the city centre, a motor vehicle centre on Cannon Street (close to the city centre) and a construction centre in East Hull.

‘What is now revealed is unacceptable and inexcusable’

On hearing of the payoff and auditor findings, the University and College Union’s head of further education Andrew Harden told FE Week: “We can’t undo the events of the past but what is now revealed is completely unacceptable and inexcusable.

“The levels of mismanagement and poor governance that have occurred leading up to and since the financial crisis at the college should not impact on students or staff in the way they have. Staff have worked extraordinarily hard for their students and are completely committed to restoring the reputation of the college.

“It is unacceptable that further wrongdoing has continued since the ‘Fresh Start’ approved by the FE Commissioner and monitored and scrutinised by his teams.

“Given the college acknowledges financial and audit regulations have not been followed, it is only right and proper that the leaders who have overseen these issues should be held to account.”

Swithenbank was approached for comment.

Tripling traineeships: no growth yet, but new providers remain upbeat

The government has failed to boost radically the number of traineeships in the first half of the year – but providers tasked with tripling the number of starts insist they are up for the challenge.

FE Week analysis of the latest Department for Education data shows there were 8,800 starts between August 2020 and January 2021 – just 400 more than were achieved in the same period the previous year.

It means that more than 35,000 starts are needed between February and July to hit chancellor Rishi Sunak’s goal of tripling their number this year to combat youth unemployment following Covid-19.

In the same period last year, 6,500 starts were recorded and took the final 2019/20 year-end figure to 14,900.

This year’s continued sluggish take-up comes despite the government reforming the funding rules for the pre-employment programme in September, which included increasing the funding rate for 19-to- 24 traineeships by 54 per cent, from £970 to £1,500, and opening them up to people who already hold a level 3 qualification.

Employer cash incentives of £1,000 for each traineeship learner they take on were also introduced.

A big chunk of the starts needed in the last half of 2020/21 – around 20,000 – are hoped to come from a £65 million tender for 19-to-24 traineeships.

The procurement was originally planned to get under way last summer but was beset with delays – an issue that FE Week understands personally annoyed Sunak, as it hindered his expansion plans.

Despite only having a brief window to recruit, training providers that won big in the tender are optimistic about spending their full allocations.

Let Me Play Ltd, a provider that did not previously hold a traineeship contract but won the largest allocation, just shy of the £3 million cap, told FE Week it is “profiled to spend the majority of the contract”.

The firm’s co-founder and director Matthew Lord said: “We mobilised swiftly – so far no challenges. We have lots of young people who are keen for an opportunity and many employers who are very committed to support with placements.”

Corndel Limited is another provider new to traineeships but which received a contract of just below £3 million. Its founder and chief executive Sean Williams agreed it is a “significant task” to increase traineeship numbers to the level required but that trainees will, “unfortunately, not be difficult, given the disproportionate impact this economic crisis is having on young people”.

He explained that the biggest challenge is that most of Corndel’s employer partners are still working exclusively remotely, which means “we have to find meaningful, impactful work experience placements that can be delivered connected-by-technology rather than physically co-located.

“We need to do this in a way that is compliant with the funding rule guidance whilst meeting the needs of employers and trainees in the new reality we find ourselves in,” he added.

Williams said his provider had originally planned 880 starts in the six-month timeframe given, and he is still “confident” of hitting that number.

Elsewhere, another new traineeships provider, Professional Training Solutions, told FE Week it expects to exceed its allocation of £1.6 million. Managing director Jackie Denyer said that early engagement has been “strong” but listed several challenges that may dampen the national effort to increase starts.

These include the “ringfencing of the regional allocations, which makes it difficult to engage national employers”; ensuring the government’s Kickstart scheme “doesn’t reduce demand for traineeships”; and the recovery time of sectors hit hardest by the pandemic, such as hospitality.

Steffan Edwards, managing director of Skillcert – a new traineeships provider which won a £1.2 million contract – echoed Denyer’s concern that Kickstart could push recruitment for traineeships down. However, he is “really optimistic” about hitting his target of 300 starts as “we have such high employer demand”.

Other longstanding traineeship providers that were unsuccessful in the tender are not as confident.

Analysis by Babington, shared with FE Week, shows that more than three-quarters of providers with 19-to-24 traineeship allocations in 2019/20 do not have a contract in 2020/21.

Babington’s chief executive, David Marsh, said he was “very disappointed” to have his bid in the recent “frustrating” tender rejected as they have been “one of a few providers to have kept the programme alive and have invested significantly in it” since its launch in 2013.

“The fact that such a large number of existing and successful providers have not been successful while others completely new to the programme have received such large allocations, and smaller providers getting growth of nearly 3,000 per cent, is incredibly concerning and certainly points towards a process that is not fit for purpose,” he told FE Week.

“Surely the ESFA should be building on the areas of success and expanding, rather than handing the majority of the money to providers who are new and inexperienced.”

Controversial adult funding threshold dropped to 68% – but only for Liverpool

A mayoral authority has set a 68 per cent clawback threshold for its devolved adult education budget, in a split from central government.

The decision from Liverpool City Region comes after the Education and Skills Funding Agency was widely criticised for setting a 90 per cent threshold for the national AEB.

Liverpool’s move was revealed in a letter from the Association of Colleges to its members today.

Latest AoC projections indicate that the “collective forecast” for average AEB delivery now is 77 per cent, so the total clawback under the national AEB “will be £59 million” with no concessions after the ESFA ruled out business cases.

The ESFA, which itself set a 68 per cent threshold for 2019/20 allocations, has defended the 90 per cent threshold by saying it is a “fair representation of grant funded providers’ average delivery” in 2020/21.

FE Week exclusively revealed last week it was the Treasury which insisted on the 90 per cent figure, as officials argued colleges have had enough time to reorientate themselves for coronavirus.

There are eight mayoral combined authorities in England with devolved AEB which decide their own funding rules.

The Greater London Authority previously announced it would apply a 90 per cent threshold this year, the same as the ESFA. FE Week has asked if this position has changed at all, but the authority could not say at this stage owing to local elections and purdah rules.

Liverpool City Region has been approached for comment.