Alarm bells sound over college’s last-minute £500K subcontracting tender

A college has put £500,000 out to tender in an attempt to achieve funding targets before August – despite rules that ban subcontracting to meet “short-term funding objectives”.

One provider membership organisation said the case has set “alarm bells ringing”, but the Education and Skills Funding Agency has refused to say whether it will take action over what appears to be a clear breach of funding rules.

According to a tender published on the government’s contracts finder website last month, Croydon College is after subcontractors to deliver half of its total ESFA adult education budget funding for five months.

As soon as this tender appeared alarm bells were ringing

The contract, worth £475,000, will run from February 28 to July 31 with “no scope to carry forward any funding to 2020/21”. Bids must be submitted by February 10.

The college, which will charge a 20 per cent management fee, also does not specify what type of provision it is looking for the subcontractor to deliver. It says only that the “delivery target group” is adults who live in non-devolved funding areas of England and within a 50-mile radius of the college’s main site.

This, together with the short duration and last minute nature of the tender, suggests it is a tactical move to use up unspent moneys from the adult education budget.

Funding rules state that providers “must not subcontract for delivery to meet short-term funding objectives” and an ESFA spokesperson said they should have “clear curriculum plans for the delivery of their subcontracted provision”.

The college did not deny that it was embarking on tactical subcontracting, but blamed the move on “unintended consequences of devolution on access to education and training for our local community” (see full response below).

The Greater London Authority took control of the AEB for providers in the capital in August 2019.

Croydon College received £3,350,056 from the GLA to deliver the provision in its local area this academic year, but also received a direct ESFA contract worth £936,000 for delivery of the provision outside London.

The college claims to have used up all of its GLA funding for the AEB, and has even requested more of it for this academic year. It is the out-of-area funding that the college is struggling to use up.

However, the college, which has a history of “distance learning” through subcontracting, would have known about its ESFA allocation since around this time last year. It refused to comment on why the procurement was so last minute.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers boss Mark Dawe told FE Week that as “soon as this tender appeared alarm bells were ringing”.

He said it is “finally time” for the government to “reallocate the tens of millions of grant money directly to those who do the work”.

“Let’s stop avoiding the elephant in the room and from August 2020 fund all subcontractors directly and ensure that all the money reaches the learner rather than brokers and spurious management fees,” Dawe added.

It comes amid a fresh crackdown on subcontracting by the government.

A consultation on radical rule changes was launched this week. It states that “entering into subcontracting arrangements for financial gain” would not be acceptable.

ESFA chief executive Eileen Milner sent a sector-wide letter on October 3 which said: “I am asking that you review your current subcontracting activity and satisfy yourself that it is purposeful, appropriate, and provides added value to learners. We must be confident that you are managing and overseeing it in line with our requirements.”

It went on to warn: “I want to make it clear that where poor subcontracting practice is evident to us we will act decisively.”

The ESFA said Croydon College had responded to Milner’s letter to state that they were complying with the rules.

The Department for Education told FE Week that it will take action against providers who are not compliant with funding rules, but stopped short of commenting directly on Croydon College’s case.

A spokesperson said: “We expect any college making subcontracting decisions to be able to evidence that the subcontracting is primarily for the benefit of students.

“All providers should have clear curriculum plans for the delivery of their subcontracted provision and these should fit with their overall curriculum strategy – we would expect to see this feature in their declarations to us. If there is a significant deviation from their declaration we would explore the reasons for that with the college.”

 

Croydon College’s response in full

“In January 2020 Croydon College commenced a procurement exercise for delivery of up to £475,000 of activity to learners who are not resident in any of the devolved areas of adult education budget funding within a 50-mile radius of the college.

The devolution of the AEB from 1 August 2019 used geographical delivery from the 2017/18 academic year as a basis for funding allocations. In the 2017/18 academic year, prior to the arrival of the new executive team at Croydon College, approximately 25 per cent of the AEB to the college was subcontracted.

In the 2018/19 academic year under the new leadership a key priority for the college was educating and training our community in Croydon where there is clear levels of demand and need. We were very successful in delivering this priority with an extra c£600,000 of education and training provided to our local community in Croydon. It is greatly disappointing to us that this change in delivery pattern has not been recognised in our 2019/20 GLA allocation, as the methodology for deciding the level of devolved allocation to the College was based on the 2017/18 academic year.

The college has written to the ESFA, the GLA, Croydon Council and its MP about the unintended consequences of devolution on access to education and training for our local community. In order to try and deliver the volume of education and training that we were able to for our local, close community the college has applied for and will hear at the end of February whether it has been successful in its bid for increased GLA funding for 2019/20 (maximum 10 per cent).

The college has commenced its own provision of distance learning and short courses during 2019/20 in order to deliver its non-GLA grant and is working hard to develop our capacity in nearby areas of Surrey, Sussex and Kent alongside high quality partners. This will be used to support our apprenticeship delivery. The college expects to be in a position meet the full level of our non-devolved GLA funding directly in future years once it has built its own capacity.”

Government hands 36 Skills Advisory Panels another £2.7m

Skills advisory panels have been handed another £2.7 million to identify local skills gaps and tackle them, education secretary Gavin Williamson has announced.

The 36 panels (SAPs) will receive £75,000 each and use the money to produce action plans and reports, highlighting how they have supported local providers and employers to address local skills priorities.

They will also provide evidence to support Williamson’s Skills and Productivity Board, an expert panel led by an industry leader which is set to be established later this year.

The new cash comes after FE Week reported in January the Department for Education was working on secondary legislation, an FE Bill, which could include a bigger role for SAPs in influencing which courses will be prioritised and funded in their area.

It could mean colleges and providers lose their deciding power over which courses are run, with SAPs providing advising national and local government on the sectors to prioritise in their region.

Announcing the funding today, Williamson said: “SAPs will play a key role in our drive to make sure every community can access the skills they need.

“That’s why we are providing an additional £75,000 so each SAP can go further in identifying local skills gaps, take action to address them as well as providing evidence to support the Skills and Productivity Board when it is established later this year.”

SAPs – groups of 15 to 20 made up of employers, providers and local authorities based in each mayoral authority and local enterprise partnership – were initially handed £75,000 each last year to undertake labour market analysis.

The money, £2.7 million in total, had to be spent by next month on hiring additional analysts, training existing ones and undertaking more analysis to establish employers’ needs – most mayoral combined authorities FE Week spoke to in January had done this.

The Department for Education told FE Week the new grants would be funded from the Skills Advisory Panels Programme budget, and would be for the April 2020 to March 2021 financial year.

The prospect of an enhanced role for SAPs was welcomed by the LEP Network last month, with a spokesperson saying connecting them to apprenticeships is “smart thinking and a natural development of exploiting labour market insight to help focus on areas of employer need – and that can only be a benefit to local communities”.

The news of this latest funding boost marks an upturn in SAPs fortunes, which were heralded in the Conservative Party’s 2017 manifesto and featured in the government’s ensuing Industrial Strategy, but absent from the party’s manifesto for last year’s election.

Changing perceptions, raising aspirations, making improvements

The new secretary of state for education introduces National Aprenticeship Week with his vision for how the sector will change on his watch. His focus will be on challenging misconceptions about apprenticeships, tightening oversight of providers, and encouraging headteachers to promote the apprenticeship concept to their students

I’ve enjoyed so many great “firsts” since becoming education secretary—my first visit in  the role, my first results day — but one of the things I’ve been most looking forward to is my first ever National Apprenticeship Week. And what a week it’s been!

The 13th annual National Apprenticeship Week got off to a flying start on Monday, and was as jam-packed as ever, with – by my last count – an amazing 800 or so events and activities taking place across the country to celebrate apprenticeships and all the great opportunities that schools, colleges, training providers and employers have to offer.

I’m determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most

I kicked off the festivities in Stratford, where I met apprentices working for MACE construction on the UCL East development.

The 35,000 square metre project shows exactly how exciting and cutting-edge a modern apprenticeship can be: after donning all the traditional construction site gear, including the obligatory hard hat, I was led by apprentices round a virtual reality “cave”, a cube made up of projectors that allowed us to virtually walk around the project as it was being built around us.

My visit to MACE construction was just a taste of the opportunities on offer this week.

Other events taking place included “have a go” workshops in Nantwich, an open evening in Sunderland, and an awards ceremony in Somerset to celebrate all the wonderful work apprentices do in all sorts of sectors.

The theme of National Apprenticeship Week 2020 involves looking beyond misconceptions of apprenticeships, including outdated ideas about their range and variety. One great way of celebrating that theme is by checking out grime artist P Money’s latest track The Calling, released a few weeks before National Apprenticeship Week. The video, which you can watch online, was put together with the help of seven apprentices working across sound and video production, lighting, hair and make-up and even drone engineering.

However, as I know you’re all aware, lingering stereotypes about apprenticeships persist – which is why I also marked National Apprenticeship Week by commissioning
Mumsnet to survey parents about their attitudes towards apprenticeships. The results were illuminating: some 45 per cent of those parents were unaware that apprenticeships
go right up to degree level, for example, while one-third said they still associated them with only manual jobs.

I know that everyone in the sector has been working hard to tackle these types of assumptions and show just how varied modern apprenticeships are, and we’ll be doing everything we can to change people’s perceptions over the coming years so that they recognise the work which goes into delivering apprenticeships and the opportunities they
provide.

I’m aware that many of you have raised questions or concerns about funding for apprenticeships as well as the future direction of the apprenticeships programme. I want to reassure you that I am looking at all of this very carefully. I’m determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most from the life-changing impact apprenticeships can have, and that it works better for employers and providers too.

We are making improvements, including moving smaller employers on to our award winning digital apprenticeship service so they can choose the training provider that
works for them, and we are making funding available to support for up to 15,000 additional apprenticeships.

It’s also vital that we continue to have high quality providers to deliver apprenticeship training, both so that people gain the skills they need to get ahead and to give us the workforce our economy needs to grow. I know the vast majority of you are doing a fantastic job – I’ve seen this first hand – but there are still some areas of concern.

We’ve put in place new tougher rules for providers and employers applying to get on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers, and they now have to meet strict
criteria to become registered training providers. Strengthened oversight and tighter monitoring also means we can take swift and decisive action against poor performance by providers or attempts by them to break, or manipulate the rules.

Finally, we also want to make sure every young person is aware of just how rewarding  doing an apprenticeship can be, which is why the Department for Education’s own Lord
Agnew has just sent out a letter to headteachers across the country reminding them of their duty to make sure they are letting apprenticeship providers into their schools to talk to their pupils about the range of opportunities available, no matter what their skills, interests and aspirations.

All in all, the past seven days have been a testament to all the hard work being done to boost apprenticeships up and down the country.

As we mark the closing of the 13th National Apprenticeship Week, here’s to another brilliant year!

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 306

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Morag Davis, Centre Principal, Accrington and Rossendale College

Start date: January 2020

Concurrent job: Assistant principal for technical curriculum, Nelson and Colne College Group

Interesting fact: She is a qualified snowboarding instructor.

Andrew Wathey, Interim Chair, Student Loans Company

Start date: February 2020

Concurrent job: Vice-chancellor, Northumbria University

Interesting fact: He is a musicologist and recently rediscovered a 15th century carol, Parit Virgo filium.

Robert Halfon, Chair, Education Select Committee

Start date: January 2020

Concurrent job: MP for Harlow

Interesting fact: He has an interest in horology, the study of time, and owns around 30 watches.

Brian Doran, Trustee, WorldSkills UK Board

Start date: February 2020

Concurrent job: Principal, Southern Reginal College

Interesting fact: He is the longest serving college principal in Northern Ireland.

Who will gain this time from apprenticeship reform?

National Apprenticeships Week is now in its thirteenth year; launched in 2007 by the then Labour government as an “annual week-long celebration of apprenticeships across England”.

For our readers, those delivering the training and assessment, the programme has changed considerably since 2007, a time when they were only available to young people at level 2 and 3.

The coalition government lifted limits on the number of apprenticeship starts for those aged over 25 and they now make up the majority of all apprenticeship starts.

Conversely, as we’ve documented in FE Week over recent years, the number of young people starting apprenticeships has been declining at an alarming rate. 

The government also allowed graduates, and even those with an unlimited number of post-graduate qualifications, to be funded as apprentices for the first time in 2017 – at the same time as expanding the level of apprenticeship courses to degree and beyond.

Literally any employee in need of new skills at any level, soon all the way up to PhD, could be eligible for funding for an apprenticeship under the “employer ownership” model.

But the bonanza has come at a much higher cost than mandarins had predicted and last week the government’s own apprenticeship quango called for an extra £750 million per year.

Critics, including myself and Ofsted, will have you believe small employers, young people and opportunities at level 2 are all losing out to large employers rushing to cash-in their levy pot on rebadging both management courses for existing employees and their existing graduate schemes.

The message seems to be reaching the incoming government, with prime minister Boris Johnson telling parliament that he plans to “reform the apprenticeship levy” and the “secretary of state for education will updating the house in due course on those proposals”.

And writing in this supplement, the education secretary Gavin Williamson looks to “reassure” critics that he is “determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most” as well as work “better for employers and providers too”.

With the three million starts manifesto commitment in the last parliament already a distant memory, major reform can be expected before, or as part of, the budget on 11 March.

I have argued before that employer ownership and social mobility are incompatible.

Hopefully the reforms can prove me wrong in time for National Apprenticeship Week 2021.

Read FE Week’s National Apprenticeship Week 2020 supplement here.

Perverse incentives and tangled pathways

If the new government is serious about its proposals, it must address the many problems with the levy, plus the accessibility of courses for those outside towns and cities, writes Emma Hardy

Apprenticeships should be the perfect vehicle for meeting the challenges of social mobility, bridging the skills gap and raising productivity.

However, the government’s rushed implementation of the apprenticeship levy has resulted in unforeseen consequences and perverse incentives, while previous obstacles remain unresolved.

The pathways for post-16 FE, apprenticeships and skills training are confusing and dislocated. There has been no real move to untangle the jumble. To compound the problem there is no guarantee that every child in secondary education will receive full, impartial information and guidance on all their choices post-16.

The Baker Clause was an important step forward, but there are still grave concerns around FE access to secondary schools and the careers advice children are receiving. It is certainly worth considering a national careers service with a guaranteed offer for each child.

Alternatively, the quality of careers advice could be made an important part of Ofsted’s judgment of a school, alongside proper support and funding for schools to provide it.

Should a child decide on following the existing apprentice route the barriers to progression and universal access remain significant. Parents lose child benefit for under 19-year-olds taking on apprenticeships.

Combined with the low level of apprentice pay this puts a severe cap on travel costs and associated expenses and therefore limits the choice of placements available. For those living outside of urban centres, with greater distances to travel, the situation is more acute. If you are one of the 4 million children living in poverty your opportunities further diminish.

This situation needs addressing through a combination of transport schemes or travel passes, making child benefit available to parents with u-19 apprentices, and an increase in the apprentice wage.

For the majority of apprentices their journey traditionally began at level 2 or 3. However, the number of these apprenticeships has fallen precipitously since the introduction of the apprenticeship levy. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which provide the lion’s share of new jobs, are now receiving half the funding they were before the introduction of the levy. Current estimates are that 40,000 to 50,000 apprenticeship vacancies are going unfilled because of the lack of funding.

The biggest falls are in the north-west and north-east: areas in desperate need of job opportunities and economic growth.

The government needs to take urgent action to solve this crisis of its own making by providing a funded pot for SMEs. Further, its level needs to be guaranteed in order to give certainty to SMEs and to training providers alike, so that both parties can provide the apprenticeships that are needed and at the same time allow effective planning for the future.

In its original estimates, the DfE counted on the large businesses who pay the levy spending around half on their own apprenticeships. However, and some might say predictably, they responded to the levy by increasing spending on training in their own businesses well beyond that. Some of this was accounted for by an increased number of higher-level apprenticeships up to degree level. Currently around 50% of university graduates leave to take non-graduate jobs and there is no doubt that degree apprenticeships have a role to play in alleviating this skills mismatch, as well as providing a recognisable route to high level qualifications through apprenticeships.

However, there is strong evidence that some companies have “apprenticised” their trainee workforce by simply rebadging or moving over their existing programs. This is clearly not what was intended and has opened a debate on what is and is not an apprenticeship.

This important discussion leads to fundamental questions on the way post-16 FE, apprenticeships and skills training should be organised, integrated and funded. We need good answers if we are truly to address the challenges of social mobility, bridging the skills gap and raising productivity. There are no good answers to be found “on the cheap” and gaming the system just creates winners and losers where we need everyone to be a winner.

This sector needs a serious commitment to long-term investment and planning from all parties for the benefit of all.

Williamson offers his reassurance that apprenticeship system will be fixed

Days after Ofsted criticised the government for locking young people out of the apprenticeship system, education secretary Gavin Williamson has offered his “reassurance”.

“I’m determined to make sure the apprenticeship system works for the people that can benefit the most”, he said.

Williamson made the comments whilst writing in FE Week’s National Apprenticeship Week 2020 supplement.

Concerns about graduate recruitment schemes being rebadged as  apprenticeships, falling starts for young people, a lack of level 2 standards and the levy budget running out have been building for more than a year.

In December 2018 the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education projected that the shortfall in the budget for England could rise to £1.5 billion during 2021/22.

The National Audit Office further sounded the alarm over the financial sustainability of the programme in March 2019 after it found the average cost of training an apprentice hit double what the government predicted.

And writing about apprenticeships in FE Week on Wednesday, Ofsted’s deputy director, Paul Joyce, said: “There is a real danger that young people aiming to step on to the career ladder are discovering that the vital bottom rungs simply do not exist.”

Numerous questions have also been tabled in Parliament from concerned MPs, including chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon.

Boris Johnson said it was “absolutely right” to follow the advice of Halfon and “reform the apprenticeship levy” at prime minister’s questions last month.

He confirmed the education secretary would be updating the House of Commons “in due course” about the proposals.

In his article for FE Week, Williamson said: “I’m aware that many of you have raised questions or concerns about funding for apprenticeships as well as the future direction of the apprenticeships programme. I want to reassure you that I am looking at all of this very carefully.

“I’m determined to make sure the system works for the people that can benefit the most from the life-changing impact apprenticeships can have, and that it works better for employers and providers too.”

He added that “improvements” are in progress – including moving
smaller employers “on to our award-winning digital apprenticeship service, so they can choose the training provider that works for them”.

Williamson also addressed other areas of concern regarding the quality of apprenticeship provision.

He said: “We’ve put in place new tougher rules for providers and employers applying to get on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers, and they now have to meet strict criteria to become registered training providers.

“Strengthened oversight and tighter monitoring also means we can take swift and decisive action against poor performance by providers, or attempts by them to break, or manipulate the rules.”

The education secretary added that he had commissioned the website Mumsnet to survey over 1,000 parents about their attitudes towards apprenticeships due to the persistence of “lingering stereotypes”.

Three in five parents who responded said they were concerned their child would be “stuck doing more menial tasks, such as making the tea” in an apprenticeship.

The research also found around 45 per cent were unaware that apprenticeships go up to degree level, while a third of parents said they still associated them with manual jobs.

Williamson said he knew that everyone in the sector had been “working hard” to tackle such assumptions.

“We’ll be doing everything we can to change people’s perceptions over the coming years so that they recognise the work which goes into delivering apprenticeships and the opportunities they provide,” he added.

DfE launches £95m capital fund for wave two T-level providers

The Department for Education is stumping up an extra £95 million to help upgrade the facilities of the 64 colleges set to deliver T-levels from 2021.

It is in addition to the £38 million capital fund being used for the first 50 providers that will offer the new technical qualifications from this September.

The latest fund will again be delivered in two parts. From today, 2021 providers are being invited to bid to refurbish their existing buildings or to build new spaces.

Funding for specialist equipment such as digital and audio-visual kit will account for around 20 per cent of the £95 million and will be allocated to providers from spring 2021 onwards.

As revealed by FE Week in October, colleges will have to keep on running T-levels for at least 20 years if they want to avoid handing back the millions they will receive in capital funding.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson has also today announced an extra £15 million to expand the T-level professional development programme.

The DfE said the scheme, which is being delivered by the Education and Training Foundation, aims to provide tailored training to boost FE lecturers’ and leaders’ “skills, industry knowledge and expertise”. 

The first phase of this began in spring 2019 and will continue until March 2020. A spokesperson for the DfE said as of December 2019, the professional development programme supported over 2,500 individuals.

Announcing the new cash today, Williamson said: “T-levels will play a vital role in our drive to unlock talent and level up skills across the country.

“This cash injection will make sure more T-level providers and their staff are ready to teach the new qualifications, so young people have access to the high-quality teaching, first class facilities and industry standard equipment they need to succeed.”

David Russell, chief executive of the Education and Training Foundation, added: “It is crucial that professionals teaching the new qualifications are excellently equipped to do so from the very first day learners walk through the doors.”

And John Laramy, principal of Exeter College, which will deliver T-levels from 2020, said the success of the qualifications is “fundamentally linked to the quality of staff who teach, assess and lead the provision”.

The first 11 colleges to receive a share of the original £38 million capital fund were named in July. They included Barnsley College, which received £2.25 million, and Exeter College, which received £2.5 million.

Since then, 11 more colleges in wave one of the rollout have had grants from the fund confirmed, according to a DfE spokesperson, and their names will be revealed in “due course”.

The first three T-levels set for delivery in September 2020 include childcare and education, construction and digital.

Another route, in health and science, will be introduced from 2021.

The DfE spokesperson said that 2020 providers are able to apply for a part of the new £95 million capital fund if they are delivering the health and science route from 2021.

The names of the 64 colleges chosen to deliver T-levels in the second wave of their roll out were announced in June.