Sixteen colleges across England face “significant disruption” in the new year, after members of the University and College Union voted overwhelmingly in favour of industrial action in an ongoing dispute over pay.
However, they won’t be joined by members at a further 16 colleges who were balloted, as turnout did not meet the minimum 50 per cent threshold.
Matt Waddup, the UCU’s head of policy, said the outcome was a “testament to the strength of feeling” members had “about their treatment”.
“Sixteen colleges will face significant disruption in the new year unless they agree to do more to address the pay and conditions of their staff,” he said.
“Government cuts are hurting the further education sector, but too many colleges use them as an excuse to do little or nothing,” he said.
He hit out at the “anti-trade union laws” preventing all the colleges balloted from taking action which he said “curtail people’s democratic right to strike in a manner that is not used in any other part of society”.
A total of 89 per cent of union members who voted at the 26 colleges were in favour of industrial action.
Ten colleges met the tough 50 per cent threshold required for them to take action.
These are Abingdon and Witney College, Bridgwater and Taunton College, City of Wolverhampton College, Coventry College, East Sussex College, Harlow College, Hugh Baird College, Kendal College, Leicester College and West Thames College.
They join Bath College, Bradford College, Croydon College, Lambeth College, New College Swindon and Petroc, which all took action in November.
Staff at a further 16 colleges were in favour of a walkout but because the turnout – which ranged from 33 per cent to 49.2 per cent – was too low, they will be unable to act on the results.
College staff are unhappy about proposals put forward by the Association of Colleges, which represents college leadership, over pay for 2018/19.
They were left bitterly disappointed in July when the AoC said it was unable to recommend a salary increase of five per cent, and was instead only able to propose a “substantial pay package” over two years dependent on government funding.
Earlier this month the AoC put forward an offer of one per cent, which the union described as a “wholly inadequate response” to the pay crisis in FE.
Study programme learners aged 16 to 19 who’ve passed GCSE English and maths are set to be barred from level one courses from next year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has revealed.
The proposed rule change, published today, prompted the Association of Colleges to warn that the government was in danger of creating the “wrong incentives” for learners.
Learners “with prior attainment in English and maths at grade four or above that are undertaking a vocational qualification are not expected to be on an entry level or level one core aim” from 2019/20, the ESFA guidance said.
The new rule, included as an advance notification of a planned change to funding guidance, would still apply “even if they have no previous experience in the vocational area”.
Instead “they should undertake a core aim at level two or above, except in exceptional circumstances”.
Julian Gravatt, the AoC’s deputy chief executive, said it had “some concerns that government will create the wrong incentives for students”.
A 16-year-old who wants to become a bricklayer or carpenter may start with a level one course and “it may not make sense to penalise them for passing their maths and English GCSEs first time around,” he said.
It’s not clear how many learners this new rule is likely to affect, and Mr Gravatt said the AoC would be consulting its members “to work out how significant an issue this is”.
One college leader took to Twitter today to voice his concerns about the new rule.
“Think there are a fair number of young people staring their vocational journey at level one nationally who do have their maths and English,” Jerry White, deputy principal at City College Norwich, tweeted.
“Maths and English GCSE does not prep young people for laying bricks very well in my experience.”
The new rule was included in the ESFA’s review of end of year 16 to 19 study programmes data for 2016 to 2017.
Other changes for 2019/20 include a cap on the number of hours of study per learner it will fund on compressed delivery programmes.
“The number of hours a student may study during a week should not be greater than the maximum number of hours a young person can legally work during a week,” it said.
“ESFA will therefore restrict funding to the first 40 hours per week and both the study programme’s planned hours and planned dates will need to reflect this”.
The introduction of T-levels could be under threat if a “no deal” Brexit goes ahead, according to reports this morning – although the Department for Education has denied this.
The Times newspaper listed the new technical qualifications as being “considered vulnerable to ‘reprioritisation’” in the event that the UK leaves the European Union at the end of March without having secured an exit agreement.
“The introduction of T-levels is not under threat,” a spokesperson for the DfE said.
“T Levels are a way of making sure young people gain the skills they need to get a great job. The programme is on track and the first T Levels will be taught in September 2020.”
Yesterday the chancellor Philip Hammond announced an additional £2 billion funding across 25 government departments for their Brexit preparations for all scenarios.
The funding is for 2019/20 priority areas including borders, trade and security, according to the announcement – which made no reference to the DfE or to T-levels.
T-levels have been designed to increase the prestige of technical qualifications, as match for A-levels.
“I want us now to put all of our collective weight behind delivering these T-levels to begin in 2020,” Mr Hinds wrote in his letter to Johnathan Slater.
A vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, originally scheduled for last week, will now go ahead in mid-January.
The chair of the influential education select committee has urged the government to be “open and transparent” about a projected £500 million overspend on this year’s £2 billion apprenticeships budget, after the education secretary dodged a question about it in parliament yesterday.
Mr Halfon told FE Week it was “incredibly concerning” if the budget was set to be overspent by the amount highlighted by the IfA and it “could affect the employment of thousands of apprentices”.
“The Department for Education and the Treasury need to be open and transparent about this alleged overspend and what action they are taking to mitigate it,” Mr Halfon said.
He added that he’d tabled a number of Parliamentary Questions in a bid to find out the information.
Mr Halfon asked Mr Hinds to “make sure that the apprentice levy is fit for purpose” and to “confirm that there is a £500m overspend on the apprentice levy budget” during education questions in parliament on Monday.
“I can confirm to my right honourable friend that of course it’s very important that we continue to monitor the way the apprenticeship levy works,” Mr Hinds said in response.
The government has “committed to having a review in which we’ll work with businesses on how that works after 2020” that would “make sure that young people but also older people who are further into their careers can benefit from this programme”, he continued.
The prospect of an apprenticeships budget shortfall was first raised in a presentation by the IfA’s chief operating officer Robert Nitsch, at an employer engagement event at Exeter College on November 30.
That included a slide showing that the apprenticeships budget could be overspent by £500 million in 2018/19, rising to a £1.5 billion overspend in 2021/22.
“With an apprenticeship programme still adapting to the introduction of the apprenticeship levy, and fluctuating starts across levels and standards, I believe maximum transparency as to where the apprenticeship budget is being spent is essential for the health of the sector,” he wrote.
“The sorts of things you’re talking about can only be projections,” he said.
“I didn’t write the presentation that you’re referring to so I can’t really comment on it further, but we will obviously be continuing to manage our budget across all areas while continuing to make sure that we are supporting the growth of the apprenticeship scheme.”
“I think what they were trying to set out was one scenario or a potential, particular illustration of what the budget might do and might happen, depending on some assumptions about demand, take up and those sorts of things,” Mr Smith said.
However, he added that from the agency’s “current point of view we’re working within the context that the apprenticeship levy does and can continue to cover the costs of the programme”.
The government’s top apprenticeships civil servant has defended the decision to allow more providers on to the provider register – after FE Week analysis revealed a third already on there aren’t delivering.
When asked by this newspaper why the Education and Skills Funding Agency didn’t focus on removing the inactive providers before making the register bigger, Keith Smith said it was “trying to ensure the system is working for businesses” – for which it needed a “high-quality responsive provider system that can respond to their needs and their demands”.
“Where in the system there are potential parts of the country or parts of different sectors where employers feel there isn’t a provider we want to ensure we do right by employers,” he told FE Week.
Under the new, tougher rules for the reopened register of apprenticeship training providers, all providers will be asked to reapply, with the agency focusing first on those deemed “high risk” – including those that have had no starts.
Furthermore, any providers without any delivery within a 12-month period will now face being removed from the register. Mr Smith said the agency would “make sure that those providers who are not delivering go through the new process as providers delivering will go through the new process”.
But rather than kick those inactive providers off immediately, “we’re trying to do that in a sensible way so that we don’t provide unnecessary disruption into the system”, he said.
The apprenticeships provider register reopened on Thursday after being closed to new applications for more than a year.
This was based on our analysis of new figures published by the Department for Education, which for the first time showed the number of starts per provider.
There were 1,787 providers on the register in 2017, of which 580 – or 32 per cent – did not have any starts by the end of 2017/18.
Of those, 506 were main providers, representing 32 per cent of the 1,587 on the register last year.
The proportion of employer providers not delivering was higher, at 37 per cent – or 74 out of 200.
“One thing that we’ve been mindful about is that we have got employers in the system both levy-paying and non-levy paying that are coming into the apprenticeships system for the first time,” Mr Smith said – indicating that some of the inactive providers may start to deliver in the future, in response to demand from these new employers.
Where new providers begin delivery “we have a really good system to scrutinise” them, he said.
“We have a really good-quality oversight regime for new-provider monitoring in the shape of the new monitoring visits by Ofsted.”
Mr Smith acknowledged that many existing providers “aren’t delivering and many of them probably have no intention to deliver, but if they do start delivering then our assurance process and regime will pick those up”.
A month-long FE Week investigation has uncovered a trail of insolvency and debt left by two businessmen, David Harper and Mark Hargreaves, who’ve created a complex web of companies involving Talent Training and AMS Nationwide which received millions in apprenticeship funding from the government.
Questions are now being raised over why a multinational employer, Santander, chose to move a lucrative apprenticeship contract from Talent Training to AMS, after the former went bust with £1.4 million debt.
Fast forward a year and AMS has now also gone into administration, on the same day that Mr Harper and a former HR director of Santander launched a training provider in Glasgow.
The demise of Talent Training
Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves have incorporated numerous businesses in recent years, within a structure led by a holding company called HarperCo and operating out of HarperCo House in the north east.
At HarperCo, according to their website in early 2017, Mr Harper was chairman and owner and Mr Hargreaves was head of investments and acquisitions.
Of the many subsidiary companies connected to it, nearly all of HarperCo’s income was derived from Talent Training, which was owned by Mr Harper and received millions in government funding for apprenticeships over many years.
The company also claimed to have £130 million of apprenticeship-levy business lined up, with contracts to deliver training for big firms including high-street bank Santander.
But in June 2017 an undercover FE Week investigation caught a Talent Training employee offering banned inducements, where as much as 20 per cent of the provider’s government funding per apprenticeship was being offered to a firm that was considering its training services.
The company insisted at the time that no inducement payments had actually been paid, but it called in administrators David Rubin and Partners in August when the ESFA pulled its contracts after it became aware of our findings.
Around 100 jobs were lost.
While Mr Harper was a listed director of Talent Training on Companies House, Mr Hargreaves was not.
But his LinkedIn page shows that he worked at the provider as its managing director for over four years from 2009.
Mr Hargreaves claimed to FE Week that he stopped working for Talent Training and HarperCo in November 2013 and November 2014 respectively.
But in a later conversation he admitted that he led redundancy meetings at the provider in 2017 and FE Week has seen evidence that he was an integral part of the running of Talent Training right up until it was taken into administration.
The rise and fall of AMS Nationwide
Mr Hargreaves joined AMS Nationwide under the name of “Ian” as a director in September 2017, a month after Talent Training went into administration.
It is understood that he started running the firm, which was a subcontractor to Talent Training, at this point when the majority shareholders Martin Rocks and Martin Foster became silent partners.
AMS started delivering its own apprenticeships for the first time in October 2017.
Mr Hargreaves told FE Week that he “recruited a couple of people from Talent” when he moved to AMS, and “got a couple of contracts that Talent Training had been dealing with”.
FE Week understands one of these contracts was with Santander to train back-office staff within its subsidiary, Geoban. Mr Hargreaves claims on his LinkedIn page to have taken the monthly turnover of AMS from £10,000 to £250,000 in four months.
He told FE Week that there was a “contractual relationship” with Mr Harper, who is not listed as a director for AMS, who “did certain business-development exercises” for the company, and was used “under a consultancy arrangement”.
Despite not being listed as a director at AMS and not responding to any FE Week questions, it is understood that Mr Harper played a central role in running the company. Mr Hargreaves claims to have “retired” and left AMS in June 2018.
Three months later the ESFA carried out an audit of the provider and found that “payments were being incorrectly reclaimed” which resulted in a claim being issued against the company for £177,000, according to a directors’ report to creditors for AMS, obtained by FE Week.
Click to enlarge
Ofsted went knocking a month later and found the provider claiming funding for delivering little to no training. The inspectorate gave the company an ‘insufficient progress’ monitoring report.
The firm’s reduced cash flow and “inability to source new work” caused it to cease trading immediately, with over £400,000 in debts, says the creditor report. Included in the creditors list is £15,000 owed to Mr Hargreaves, despite his claim that he left the company altogether in June 2018. He did not respond to requests for comment when asked about this discrepancy.
Amongst other creditors connected to Mr Harper, £106,000 was owed by AMS to HarperCo.
AMS called in David Rubin and Partners, in November 2017, the same administrator which handled Talent Training and two other dissolved companies set up by Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves – Hco-Consult Limited, and Driving Careers Limited.
The DfE has remained tight-lipped about what action they have taken against AMS.
The birth of Go-Centric
Despite leaving this trail of debt, FE Week has learnt that Mr Harper has now set up a new training provider called Go-Centric in Scotland.
He’s doing this with the former HR director of Santander, Joanne Mansell, who was responsible for “talent” at the bank and now works at HarperCo as its chief operating officer.
Santander told FE Week it had 32 apprentices with AMS at the time of the company going bust.
But the bank declined to comment on whether it is investigating Ms Mansell’s relationship with Mr Harper, Talent Training and AMS.
The web of companies and people involved
Talent Training
The defunct training provider, based in south Tyneside, was incorporated in April 2007.
It was the main income generator for the HarperCo group, owned by David Harper, and gained millions of pounds in ESFA funding. In 2016/17 alone its contracts were worth more than £8 million.
The company, which also claimed to have apprenticeship-levy business lined up worth more than £130 million, went bust in August 2017 after the ESFA terminated its contracts.
This followed an undercover FE Week investigation in June 2017 which found a Talent Training employee offering banned inducements.
It went under with debts totalling more than £1.4 million. Among its creditors are the HMRC, who are owed over £153,000, HarperCo, owed over £90,000, and AMS Nationwide, owed over £16,000 from its former subcontracting relationship with Talent Training.
But as this newspaper revealed last week, the ESFA paid a further quarter of a million pounds to the firm after
it collapsed.
The company’s administrator, David Rubin and Partners, has so far racked-up fees of close to a quarter of million pounds according to its latest progress report, published on Companies House.
And almost £30,000 was handed over by the administrator to Mr Harper for assisting with the ESFA payment.
Talent Training has also launched a legal challenge against the ESFA in an effort to claim more cash, in the hope of “high recovery value”, which is ongoing.
Despite its large debts, the administrator’s report also
shows that Mr Harper owes the company up to £1 million, after taking out a “six-figure” director’s loan, which needs to be paid back in full
by June 30, 2019.
HarperCo
HarperCo is a holding company founded in 2009.
David Harper is the sole active director with more than 75 per cent ownership of shares – and financial statements to March 31, 2017 show negative reserves of £161,268 and dividends to him totalling £140,000 declared in May 2016.
HarperCo’s LinkedIn page states that it operates across a number of business sectors including apprenticeships, skills development and property investments via a variety of related organisations including Talent Training (UK) LLP, Talent Partnerships UK Limited, Hco-Consult Limited, Hco-Lean Limited, Hco-People Limited, Hco-Sustain Limited and Very Niche Ltd.
It claims to be a “well-respected business incubation company, based on South Tyneside, with an impressive list of high-profile clients and business investments” with up to 200 employees and offices in Bristol, Darlington, Gatwick and Glasgow.
Mr Harper claims that HarperCo has grown into a “national multi-million pound group”.
At the time of going to press the HarperCo website was “under construction” and in May 2018 Google street view showed HarperCo House up for sale.
AMSNationwide
The company was incorporated in 2012 and started out in marketing, “producing leads for a small number of different solicitors in the personal injury sector” before offering “workforce training and development” in 2017.
It became an approved apprenticeship provider by the ESFA in March 2017 and began offering its own apprenticeships in October that year, according to its Ofsted monitoring visit report which was published earlier this month on December 4.
It had ESFA contracts totalling £500,000 for 2018/19 and trained over 400 apprentices this year.
The provider had a number of levy-paying employer contracts including Santander, Guarding UK and Stobart Group Ltd.
AMS went bust in November following visits from the ESFA and Ofsted, with just £1,745.84 in the bank and £414,329.15 in creditors.
An audit by the agency found that “payments were being incorrectly reclaimed”.
Ofsted visited a month after the ESFA and its monitoring report gave an ‘insufficient progress’ verdict, meaning AMS got kicked off the apprenticeships register and banned from delivering apprenticeships.
Its creditors list includes £175,000 owed to ESFA and £31,000 to HMRC.
It also owes £4,000 to Nick Merrey – the husband of Mr Harper – £15,000 to Mr Hargreaves and £106,000 to HarperCo.
Over £9,800 is also owed to a firm called 8th Green Developments Limited, which was incorporated by Mr Merrey, Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves in December 2015.
David Rubin and Partners are handling the administration for AMS Nationwide.
Martin Rocks and Martin Foster are listed as the company’s majority shareholders.
David Rubin & Partners
David Rubin & Partners is an administration firm.
It states on its website that it “specialises in business turnaround and rescue, corporate and personal insolvency, forensic accounting, and litigation support”.
The firm has handled the administration for four companies that Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves have run: Talent Training (UK) LLP, AMS Nationwide Ltd, Hco-Consult Limited and Driving Careers Limited.
A report to creditors document published on Companies House earlier this year said its fees were already close to £250,000 for handling the administration for Talent Training.
FE Week attempted to contact the insolvency practitioners at David Rubin & Partners handling the administration for Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves’ various companies multiple times, but they would not respond.
Go-Centric
In November 2018 a dormant company called Hco-Sustain Ltd, which Mr Harper and Mr Hargreaves incorporated on September 15, 2015, registered a name change on Companies House to now be called Go-Centric.
Joanne Mansell (front) with David Harper (back right) presenting at launch of Go-Centric “new company name brand” on November 20, 2018, according to the company’s Facebook and LinkedIn pages
A Registration of Charge document, dated August 31, 2018, and signed by Mr Harper, shows the firm taking on the assets of a training provider in Glasgow called Impact Results Limited that had appointed a liquidator on August 6, 2018.
Last month a Go-Centric launch event took place in Glasgow at which Mr Harper and Joanne Mansell, the former HR director of Geoban UK – now called Santander UK Operations Limited – were present.
Ms Mansell’s LinkedIn profile states that she is now chief operating officer of HarperCo. She “recommended” Go-Centric on her Facebook page on November 16, and posted this message: “It’s a people and customer-centric business that really works to help people and businesses prosper.”
Go-Centric’s website states it is a “multi-channel contact centre and training provider based in Glasgow, with over 20 years’ experience managing the customer service, retention and acquisition needs of a wide range of businesses, from major high-street retailers to national utility providers”.
Joanne Mansell
Joanne Mansell is a former HR director and executive board member of Santander Operations who worked for the high-street bank from January 2010 to September 2018, according to her LinkedIn page.
Joanne Mansell
Before this she held the top HR role at Coca-Cola Enterprises and then Santander’s subsidiary company, Geoban.
While at Santander, Ms Mansell was responsible for “the complete HR, learning, talent and internal communications functions and processes within the company,” according to her LinkedIn profile.
She became the chief operating officer of HarperCo after she left Santander, according to her LinkedIn page, and is playing a key role in the running of Go-Centric for David Harper.
She put the phone down without providing any comment when approached by FE Week.
Their side of the story: Introducing David Harper and Mark Hargreaves
David Harper
FE Week has contacted David Harper multiple times over the last month and finally managed to catch him on the phone two weeks ago. He requested that we send questions about his tangled web of companies to him via email, but he has not responded despite numerous attempts.
Given that he has refused to tell his side of the story, FE Week has pulled together a biography to shed some light on who he is.
Mr Harper is a 38-year-old millionaire businessman who has created multiple companies across a number of different business sectors, ranging from apprenticeships to property investment.
In April 2014 he purchased a £1.2 million property in the north east, complete with a swimming pool, tennis court, paddock and stables. Since then the property has undergone substantial redevelopment.
David Harper
He also owns a McLaren MP4-12C supercar and a Range Rover Autobiography, both with personalised Talent Training numberplates, which are worth around £150,000 each.
His main company is HarperCo. On the firm’s website in 2017 Mr Harper described himself as a “successful, ambitious and driven entrepreneur”.
“He has established and grown a small business to be a national multi-million pound group today,” it said.
“David’s business interests are principally held in HarperCo Limited, his parent investment company.
“With a passion for people and business development, David is focused on the continued growth of the group with a keen interest in building new investment channels.
“David takes an active role in client relationships across his companies and drives the strategic development of sales and marketing.”
Via Companies House, FE Week has found that Mr Harper has been the director for over 20 different businesses since 2004. Six of these firms are now closed.
He married Nick Merrey at a ceremony in Scotland in August 2015. The couple have both been directors for a number of the same companies, including Talent Acquisitions (north east) Limited and 8th Green Developments Limited.
David Harper’s McLaren MP4-12C supercar and Range Rover Autobiography with personalised Talent Training numberplates
In March 2014 Mr Harper became a patron at The Prince’s Trust and still holds the role today, according to his LinkedIn page.
A year later he became a board trustee at Pathways4All, a charity that provides leisure and social opportunities for children with disabilities and additional needs in the north east, as well as a board member of the North East Local Enterprise Partnership in April 2015.
His most well-known single company in the FE market was Talent Training, but as explained on pages 10 and 11, it went bust in August last year after being caught offering banned inducements.
Mr Harper told FE Week at the time of the exposé that he was “shocked to hear that alleged offers may have been made in order to win business”.
“We are investigating but can confirm these incentives would be against all our business principles and would not make it through our governance processes”.
He worked at AMS Nationwide on a consultancy basis as it started to offer its own apprenticeships and after Talent went bust in late 2017, as confirmed by Mark Hargreaves.
It is unclear if Mr Harper continued working at AMS up until the point it went into administration.
David Harper’s home swimming pool
Mark Hargreaves
Mark Hargreaves is a 60-year-old businessman who has worked at some of the largest professional services firms in the world including Grant Thornton and Coopers & Lybrand.
He “retired” when he was 40 but then moved into the apprenticeships market in 2009 after being recruited by Mr Harper to work at HarperCo as its head of investments and acquisitions, and as the managing director of Talent Training.
An older version of the HarperCo website from 2017 states: “Mark is a chartered accountant who hates numbers and didn’t want a desk job.
“He was the youngest ever partner at Coopers & Lybrand and has travelled the world counting beans.
“He returned to the UK as managing partner for Grant Thornton, where he carried out the first UK-based NASDAQ float and worked on business turnarounds before retiring at the age of 40.
“’I got a call from David in January 2009 and came in for four months, but he wouldn’t let me leave.’”
Mark Hargreaves
Mr Hargreaves’ LinkedIn profile says he was the office managing partner at Coopers & Lybrand from July 1985 to July 1990, providing audit and tax services to US, UK, European, Korean and Saudi businesses operating in Saudi, Kuwait and Bahrain.
The firm merged in 1998 with Price Waterhouse to become PricewaterhouseCoopers and is now known as PwC.
In August 1990 Mr Hargreaves became an office managing partner at Grant Thornton UK LLP, and worked there until June 2002.
From 2003 to 2007 he claims to have been the financial director at a firm called Atomic Planet Entertainment.
Mr Hargreaves is listed as either an active or former director of nearly 20 companies on Companies House.
Since joining up with Mr Harper, the pair have been directors for at least 10 of the same firms.
When first contacted by FE Week Mr Hargreaves was quite open about his work with Talent Training, HarperCo and AMS Nationwide.
He offered an explanation as to why he is called “Ian” on AMS’ Companies House page when he is actually called “Mark” (see transcript below), and also claimed to have cut ties with Talent and HarperCo in November 2013 and November 2014 respectively.
But in a later text-message conversation he confirmed that he led redundancy meetings at the provider in 2017 and FE Week has seen evidence that he was an integral part of the running of Talent Training right up until it was taken into administration.
This newspaper went back to Mr Hargreaves to ask him to explain why, after years of apparently not working there, he was asked to tell Talent staff that they were being made redundant.
But it was at this point he stopped responding to requests for comment.
FE Week’s follow-up questions included why AMS still owes him £15,000 if he left the company in June 2018, as he claimed. This newspaper is yet to receive a response to this.
The companies ran by both David Harper and Mark Hargreaves
On his LinkedIn page, Mr Hargreaves describes himself as: “A fully qualified finance director with a vast range of experiences across several widely different sectors.
“I have operated as a managing director and operations director, and have developed and led operational and financial strategies to facilitate and accelerate growth plans and, on occasions, to rescue failing businesses.
“I have recently completed a number of interesting transactions – including a corporate merger, a start-up and a management buy-in: and the valuation of a contingent asset!
“I am always looking for one or more new challenges – ideally in a sector which is new to me – part-time and sweat-equity opportunities are particularly interesting.
“I would hate to be referred to as ‘just the finance director’ – irrespective of whether the role be part-time, full-time, executive or non-executive, a strong finance director should push, and at times lead, the other members of any senior management team.”
It adds that since 2002, using the pen name “John Ashton”, he has had three novels published: Business Breakfast, Liquid Lunch, and Dinner with Mandelson.
He is now “on the road to full retirement”.
The interview: FE Week quizzes Mark Hargreaves
FE Week first spoke to Mr Hargreaves on November 29, and quizzed him on his name discrepancy on companies house and his roles at Talent Training, AMS Nationwide and HarperCo. Here’s how the conversation went:
Mr Hargreaves: Hello.
Reporter: Is that Ian?
Mr Hargreaves: No.
Reporter: Oh, is that Mr
Hargreaves?
Mr Hargreaves: Yes.
Reporter: I’m writing about AMS Nationwide going into voluntary liquidation. As one of the former directors, can you explain why?
Mr Hargreaves: I can’t help you at all, I left way back in June, so I have no idea what is going on there. No contact with the company because
I have been travelling.
Reporter: Is your first name Mark then?
Mr Hargreaves: Well no, it is Mark Ian.
Reporter: Is that a joint first name?
Mr Hargreaves: No, it is Ian.
Reporter: So Ian is your first name?
Mr Hargreaves: Well no, Mark is, but I use the name Ian.
Reporter: Why’s that?
Mr Hargreaves: It was from when I was a student many, many years ago.
Reporter: What are your links with Talent Training? I understand you used to work there?
Mr Hargreaves: That was a long, long time ago. And as far as AMS goes I was only involved for six months I think, so you are really talking to the wrong people, the wrong person.
Reporter: So you weren’t working at Talent Training when it went into administration?
Mr Hargreaves: Absolutely, I was working with a business in a completely different sector and had been for a couple of years at the time so I can’t answer any questions about what happened with that business because I just do not know other than rumour and gossip which isn’t what you guys want to hear.
Reporter: But when you went over to AMS you took over a lot of Talent’s business, correct?
Mr Hargreaves: Yeah. I recruited a couple of people from Talent, not many, a handful. And yeah I went and got a couple of contracts that Talent had been dealing with. It wasn’t a case of one company morphing into the other.
Reporter: Did David Harper come over from Talent to work for AMS?
Mr Hargreaves: There was a contractual relationship with him where he did certain business-development exercises. But that was it, it was under a consultancy arrangement.
Reporter: Did he carry on working there when you left AMS?
Mr Hargreaves: I finished on a Wednesday in early June and on the Thursday I got a flight out of the UK into the Pacific for a month so I have no idea.
Reporter: Talent Training has a legal case against the ESFA. Are you aware of that?
Mr Hargreaves: Seriously I have no idea about that at all. I had nothing to do with Talent for maybe four or five years so what they were doing or trying to do before they went into administration, what they’ve done afterwards, I literally have no idea. I left AMS I think on the 19th June and seriously since then I’ve not spoken to any of them or heard anything, other than a few weeks ago I heard about some of the guys being made redundant which was unfortunate.
Reporter: Why did you leave AMS?
Mr Hargreaves: I was 60 in the summer, I retired.
Reporter: We understand Ofsted came in for a monitoring visit. Were you there at the time it happened?
Mr Hargreaves: No.
Reporter: During the period you were there Ofsted had not come in at all?
Proposals to deny student loans to learners who achieve fewer than three Ds in their A-levels have been branded a “retrograde step” by school and college leaders.
The Sunday Times reported yesterday that the ongoing independent review of higher education, chaired by former investment banker Philip Augar, will recommend proposals to shake-up the university sector.
That includes barring learners who do not achieve three Ds in their A-levels, or equivalent qualifications, from accessing student loans to fund a university degree.
Instead those learners, estimated to be around 20,000, will be offered loans for cheaper technical or vocational courses in further education colleges.
The review is also expected to recommend that tuition fees are slashed from £9,250 per year to between £6,500 and £7,500.
But Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (pictured above), said the union would be “very concerned about any move which reduces the opportunity of young people to go to university”.
“Given the importance of improving social mobility, it would be a retrograde step to do anything which would reduce access to university,” he said.
“Students accepted on to courses with lower grades may need appropriate support during their studies but we should not shut the door on them.”
The proposals, leaked to the Sunday Times, come as figures last month showed more than one in three school pupils who applied to university this year had some kind of unconditional offer.
The research seemed to support schools’ fears that these offers – which promote university places to pupils regardless of their A-level results – result in pupils making less effort in their final year.
Today the Office for National Statistics also announced changes on how the government accounts for student loans, with loans that are unlikely to be repaid now to be classed as government spending.
Currently 45 per cent of student loans handed out in England are not expected to be paid back in full, leading to estimations this will increase annual public sector net borrowing by the equivalent of £12 billion pounds.
There has been suggestions this change could also impact the higher education review, with the government now warned against decisions that could result in the return of a cap on student numbers.
Barton added: “It is certainly the case that university might not always be the best option, and there should be a range of high-quality routes available.
“But students should be able to make an informed choice on what route works best for them rather than it being determined by an arbitrary threshold around the eligibility of grades for student loans.”
It’s been a big week for new providers, with five first-time inspection reports published – three of which resulted in a ‘good’ rating.
Elsewhere a college was downgraded from a grade two to three, while seven monitoring visit reports were published.
The Results Consortium Limited, an independent learning provider, got a ‘good’ result this week in a report published December 10 and based on an inspection in late October.
Directors at the provider, which offers loans-funded provision in business administration and adult social care, were praised for “investing significantly in developing technology and digital learning” that enabled “learners to learn around their existing work and home commitments”.
“Most” learners attend lessons “frequently” and “diligently work independently outside of lessons to produce a good standard of written work”.
“Learners improve their confidence and acquire good work-related skills that enable most to progress to, or remain in, employment or learning at a higher level,” the report said.
Barrett Bell Ltd, another independent learning provider, also received a grade two in its first ever inspection, carried out in late October and published December 10.
The provider offers training to become a gas engineer primarily for learners referred by JobCentre Plus, and inspectors noted leaders’ “clear vision and high ambitions” centred “successfully” on “helping unemployed learners achieve their aspirations”.
Learners “achieve well” – thanks to tutors’ “significant industry experience” – and develop their employability skills “exceptionally well”.
“Learners are proud of their achievements and appreciate the positive impact on their lives and the lives of their families,” inspectors found.
The Ridge Employability College, an independent specialist college, was rated ‘good’ in a report published December 10 and based on its first ever inspection, carried out in early November.
Leaders at the college, which offers FE and training for learners aged 16 to 25 with learning difficulties or disabilities, have “successfully established high-quality provision”.
They use high-needs funding “effectively” to “provide an ambitious learning environment” that helps learners “develop good practical skills”.
Learners “benefit from high-quality work experience with local employers” and “develop strong work-related and organisational skills that help them to move on to appropriate jobs”.
The Colchester Institute lost its previous grade two rating in a report, published December 12 and based on an inspection in early November, that rated the college ‘requires improvement’.
The college’s “quality assurance processes and improvement planning” were found to “lack clarity”, while leaders did not “focus on the impact of teachers’ practice on learners’ progress”.
“As a result, essential improvements are not made to teaching, learning and assessment,” the report said.
The college’s apprenticeship provision as rated ‘good’, and most employers “value the technical off-the-job training provided”.
Independent learning provider Dhunay Corporation Ltd was rated ‘requires improvement’ in its first report, published December 12 and based on an inspection in early November.
Governors’ challenge of leaders and managers at the provider, which offers adult learning programmes, traineeships and apprenticeships, was deemed “insufficient”.
“Governors do not receive enough information to give them an accurate oversight of the quality of provision,” the report said.
Staff and assessors were criticised for failing to check apprentices’ and learners’ “prior skills and knowledge in enough detail”, and for consequently not teaching sessions that “build on these skills to challenge all apprentices and learners”.
But adult learners on some pre-employment courses “makes very good progress and achieve their qualifications”.
As previously reported by FE Week, independent provider Beyond 2030 was rated ‘inadequate’ in its first ever inspection this week, which found evidence of copy and paste assignments and raised concerns over safeguarding.
Five apprenticeship early monitoring visit reports were published this week.
Two of these, for Crosby Management Limited and the IT Skills Management Company Limited, found the provider to be making ‘significant progress’ in one theme under review and ‘reasonable progress’ in the remaining two areas.
The three other providers – Capital 4 Training Limited, Ricoh UK Limited, and Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – were all found to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in all three themes.
A further two monitoring visits, to providers currently rated ‘requires improvement’, were published this week: Hertford Regional College, and Lakeside Early Adult Provision – LEAP College (Wargrove House Ltd).
Naomi Clayton, deputy director of research and development, Learning and Work Institute
Start date: January 2019
Previous job: Policy and research manager at Centre for Cities, and deputy director at the What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth
Interesting fact: Naomi spent her summers in between university as a park ranger – it was an eye opening experience!
Joe Dromey, deputy director of research and development, Learning and Work Institute
Start date: January 2019
Previous job: Senior research fellow, Institute for Public Policy Research
Interesting fact: Joe started his career as an employment advisor on a welfare to work programme where he helped over 100 long-term unemployed people into work
Jake Tween, Head of apprenticeships, DSW Apprenticeships
Start date: December 2018
Previous job: Head of apprenticeships, ILM
Interesting fact: Jake is a keen songwriter and musician and has shared a stage with some household names.
