Learners are “at the heart” of schools’, colleges’ and training providers’ decisions about the qualifications they offer, according to new research by Ofqual.

The finding comes just weeks after Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman reiterated her concern that some colleges fill their rolls with “superficially attractive” low-level arts and media courses simply to “attract funding”.

Her comments were based on a report from November 2018 – rather than inspection reports – the findings of which were from 15 college visits and learner surveys and found “the proportion of [level 2] students who went on to employment was small”.

In Ofqual’s research, it said there is “little data available about what drives schools, colleges and training providers to choose certain qualifications over others” for their 16 to 19 year old students.

The exams regulator commissioned YouGov to conduct a survey of over 500 staff and found there are a range of factors when deciding which qualifications to offer, which can be categorised as: “students’ needs; the capacity or facilities of the educational establishment itself; and the needs of employers”.

More than nine in ten respondents said they offered qualifications based on “learner interest”, and 83 per cent said their decisions were due to the qualifications “serving as prerequisites for further study”.

Funding was the least likely driver for why providers choose to offer qualifications they do.

“The research indicates meeting students’ needs and serving their interests – either directly, or by enhancing their prospects and future employability – is a common priority across educational settings,” today’s report said.

“This shared commitment to students may prompt centres to continue offering courses, even where they are not commercially viable.”

Ofqual found that the weight different types of educational providers give to other factors “varies”.

Employer-focused drivers were, for example, were “more a point of focus” for colleges and training-providers than schools.

It adds, however, that even though funding and fees were “found to be of little importance across the survey as a whole”, it “appears to be a more frequent driver of choice” in training providers and colleges.

Phil Beach, Ofqual’s executive director for vocational and technical qualifications, said: “It is encouraging to have for the first time research evidence showing learners are at the heart of schools’, colleges’ and training providers’ decisions about the qualifications they offer.

“It is important these decisions are the right choices for learners, supporting their development and employability – factors we will consider as we progress our research in this area.

“When making such decisions, both learners and centres need access to detailed information about the range of regulated qualifications available and their value to employers.”

Spielman, who is a former chair of Ofqual, was criticised by the college sector following her claim that a minority of colleges simply try to “fill their rolls and attract funding” with low-level arts and media courses.

Writing for FE Week shortly after her comments, Association of College’s boss David Hughes said singling out courses at lower levels was “wrong and unfair”.

Responding to Ofqual’s report, he said: “This research confirms what I already knew – that colleges continue to serve students’ interests and help prepare them for the world of work with the wide range of courses they offer and the transferable skills they provide.

“Student choices are informed in many different ways, not just immediate job progression opportunities, although that is one important component.”

 

“Thousands” of workers have been forced to pay the apprenticeship levy from their wages owing to a loophole in government rules, according to a union.

Unite alleges to have received “increasing” evidence that some employment agencies, umbrella companies and other “unscrupulous operators” are “corrupting” the policy in this way.

They say the construction industry is the main culprit, and the union claims it is now taking legal action against the companies involved.

Since April 2017, companies with a pay bill of more than £3 million have had to pay an apprenticeship levy to the government, equating to 0.5 per cent of their payrolls.

Wage deductions found by Unite often amount to less than £2 a week per employee, but rules state companies cannot deduct the levy from the wages of an earner.

The union would not reveal the names of these “unscrupulous” employers, or how many they have found to be deploying the practice.

The union’s assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail said: “The levy is entirely clear that it is the duty of the employer to pay it, the fact that it is being passed on to workers is entirely unacceptable and taints the entire system.”

During National Apprenticeship Week, Cartmail called on the government “to step in and ensure that no employer can pass the levy onto its workforce”.

“If it fails to do so then the general public will consider it a punitive tax on workers and the good intentions behind the apprentice levy will be entirely undermined,” she added.

Unite, which has warned about the practice since 2018, said although it is “highly immoral” to pass levy costs on to workers, it is not illegal provided the worker has agreed to the deduction.

A spokesperson said construction workers are usually compelled into operating via an umbrella or payroll company, and in order to obtain work they “don’t get an option how they are paid”.

Payslips are “then made so complicated that workers frequently struggle to understand what deductions are being made from their pay”.

And even if they are aware of the charge, most sign up in order not to lose the work they have been offered.

Unite added that there is a “double whammy” if an agency or umbrella company charges their entire workforce the apprentice levy because they will be making an additional profit, as they don’t pay the levy on their first £3 million of payroll.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “It’s really disturbing to hear that this is still going on.

“Employers are under contractual obligations with the ESFA to draw down the levy in the intended way with no requirement on the part of the apprentice to make a financial contribution and the government needs to crack down on any malpractice once and for all.”

It is not just construction companies that appear to be making their employees pay the levy for them. In 2017, FE Week’s sister paper Schools Week found that pay slips for supply teachers from umbrella company RACs Group included a percentage deduction attributed to the “apprenticeship levy”.

The group claimed at the time it was following the law and deducted the levy costs as a “business overhead” from the income it earns through agencies that send out supply teachers, rather than employee’s earnings.

An HMRC spokesperson said: “Employers cannot deduct the apprenticeship levy from the gross salary of their employees.

“However, an umbrella company can deduct amounts to cover its administration and other costs, including the apprenticeship levy, from their overall rates.”

The number of colleges entering formal intervention rose by two-thirds on the previous year, mostly due to historical “weak decision-making,” according to the FE Commissioner’s 2018/19 annual report.

In total, 13 colleges entered intervention – 12 for financial reasons and one which escalated from diagnostic assessment – five more than the previous year. None were the result of an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted grade.

However, the report states that 17 colleges moved out of intervention last year, meaning the overall number of colleges in FE Commissioner intervention has dropped from 27 in 2017/18 to 23.

FE Commissioner Richard Atkins said intervention cases are “frequently” the result of “poor governance and leadership over a number of years, resulting in weak decision-making”.

But “we are making progress”, he insisted, as many of those moving out of intervention were “the most challenging cases – where the restructuring facility has resolved problems that were previously very entrenched”.

The report only covers August 2018 to July 2019. Since then a number of high-profile colleges have moved into formal intervention; these include Highbury, Gateshead, Richmond-upon-Thames and East Sussex College Group.

Following the end of the post-16 area reviews, Atkins’ focus has shifted more towards diagnostic assessments: the commissioner’s team conducted 33 diagnostic assessments in 2018/19, four more than 2017/18.

These assessments include members of the FE Commissioner team visiting a college before major problems arise to “help strengthen improvement plans and then work with the college to ensure it is on the path to a strong and sustainable future”.

The increases in interventions and assessments has been met by a rise in the number of national leaders of further education and national leaders of governance under his command.

It was announced last month the commissioner had almost doubled the number of principals and governors serving on the two teams by recruiting leaders and governors from colleges such as London South East Colleges, Luminate Education Group, and Education Partnership North East.

One area where commissioner activity has decreased is structural reviews, which reduced from 20 to 13, with Atkins attributing it to the government’s restructuring fund no longer being available.

The report also details how 74 per cent of eligible colleges had applied to the £15 million Strategic College Improvement Fund and 91 per cent of applicants have secured grants ranging from £60,000 to almost half a million pounds.

In his introduction to the 2018/19 report, Atkins said: “There is a much more positive perception of further education colleges today than was the case some time ago.

“The increases in funding announced in August 2019, together with the success of the ‘Love our Colleges’ campaign have increased awareness of the sector and helped to create a more optimistic climate within institutions.”

Over 500 people working in technical roles are to be enticed into training to be further education lecturers as part of a £24 million support package.

The Department for Education has fleshed out the details of the investment, after it was previously revealed when chancellor Sajid Javid announced a £400 million boost for the sector in August 2019.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson has said ambitions for a world-beating technical education system “can only be achieved if we have outstanding teachers who will inspire the next generation”.

Included in the funding is £10 million to support up to 550 more people to train as lecturers in a range of technical subjects as part of the Taking Teaching Further programme.

Delivered by the Education and Training Foundation and first launched in 2018, the scheme has so far supported around 100 people to work in FE.

Taking Teaching Further is aimed at supporting recruitment to priority sectors ahead of the introduction of T-levels later this year, such as in education and childcare, digital, and construction, as well as engineering, manufacturing and other STEM subjects.

David Russell, chief executive of the ETF, said: “I encourage all colleges and FE providers to register and apply to take part in this important programme.”

The £24 million also includes £11 million to provide bursaries and grants worth up to £26,000 to attract people to train as FE lecturers.

There will also be a £3 million mentor training programmes, delivered by the ETF to FE lectures in the early years of their career.

Williamson has used the opportunity to pay tribute to the FE lecturers doing “fantastic jobs and changing lives,” while saying the investment is a “clear signal” of the government’s commitment to helping the sector recruit and retain staff.

News of the funding boost has been welcomed by sector organisations, with the deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges Kirsti Lord saying they are “delighted” with the new investment, as “supporting FE providers to recruit and retain the best possible teachers must be a top priority for the government”.

“We believe this marks an important step in giving FE teaching the recognition and support it rightly deserves,” she added.

College principals have previously spoken with FE Week about their struggles with recruiting lecturers in specialist subjects, with one saying they are often “constrained by affordability”.

And the Augar Review, released last May, recommended investment in the FE workforce should be a “priority,” and there ought to be clear progression routes and development opportunities put together by the Association of Colleges and government.

The Department for Education has today also revealed plans for mandatory data collection on the workforce of every directly-funded FE provider.

The government is to force all colleges and training providers to submit workforce and pay data to “ensure” they can “benchmark themselves against one another”.

Following a consultation last year, which attracted 40 responses, the Department for Education said today the ESFA will gather workforce records for 2020/21, before making compliance mandatory for 2021/22.

Sanctions will be imposed if providers fail to submit the data, which the DfE has said could include a letter from ministers and being publicly named and shamed.

The new data collection will involve the thousands of FE providers in receipt of ESFA funding. Minister Michelle Donelan claimed it will “ensure transparency of workforce data and will seek to ensure that providers can benchmark themselves against one another”.

Thousands of subcontractors will, however, not be involved in the collection for 2020/21 as “data from subcontractors with multi-provider contracts could cause confusion” – so the results would still show a very partial picture.

Data likely to be collected includes staff pay, age, gender, what qualifications they hold, and their contract type (see table).

And it will encompass the whole workforce such as back office support staff, not just lecturers.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers boss Mark Dawe said: “Until we see the detail of what is being collected, it’s very hard to comment.

“But the last thing the sector needs is more bureaucratic burden, so the new system should be designed to limit the administrative impact on all providers.”

The Education and Training Foundation already conducts an annual FE workforce survey, but it is not mandatory and does not usually attract a high number of responses.

Its latest survey, for 2017/18, reflected 90,792 records submitted by just 193 providers, of which 118 were colleges.

University and College Union head of further education, Andrew Harden, said the optional approach to workforce data collection has “failed and we welcome this move to compulsory collection”.

“Good quality data is essential if are to paint an accurate picture of how staff are being treated by employers across the sector,” he added.

In her ministerial forward to the department’s consultation response, Donelan said FE providers “make a real difference to the prospects of learners and local communities” and to support them with policy intervention, government “needs an evidence base that is comprehensive and complete”.

“We will not be designing an FE workforce data collection from scratch,” she added.

“We will draw lessons from practice in existing collections. These changes will give FE workforce data the same status as that of schools and higher education, where we have near full coverage across our workforce datasets.”

The single DfE-led data collection will “sit alongside and complement the other collections that the ESFA is responsible for, such as submissions of learner data, and the functionality will be co-designed with the sector to offer coherence to those inputting data”.

The consultation said officials recognise that collecting information on the entire FE workforce from all providers is a “complex ask”, so it will lead an “extensive programme of user testing with the sector in the lead up to launch, to make sure the collection avoids duplication”.

“We will continue to consider how this approach might be applied to the same providers that are funded by Mayoral Combined Authorities or the Greater London Authority and do not also receive funding from the ESFA,” it added.

The timing of the collection period has not yet been decided, however. The consultation said there was “no clear consensus” on this, so the ESFA will “consult further”.

 

Views are being sought by the Education and Skills Funding Agency on proposed changes to their subcontracting rules – as officials bid to cap deals and “eliminate” poor arrangements.

A consultation went live today and responses to 10 recommendations will need to be submitted by 17 March.

One key proposal is to strengthen controls on the volume and value of provision that can be subcontracted by a prime provider.

A percentage cap is proposed on subcontracted provision of 25 per cent of ESFA post-16 income in 2021/22, and further reducing that percentage to 17.5 per cent in 2022/23 and to 10 per cent in 2023/24.

The ESFA also wants to “exercise greater oversight of the volume and value of provision that can be delivered by a single subcontractor”.

Its consultation said where the aggregate value of a subcontractor’s delivery exceeds more than £3 million of ESFA funded provision, the agency proposes to make a referral to Ofsted for the subcontractor to be subject to a direct inspection.

Another key recommendation is to introduce “stronger criteria for subcontracted provision delivered at a distance”.

The ESFA said that as a “broad rule of thumb”, it believes that subcontracting partners should be no more than one hour away from the prime contractor by car.

Prior to entering into any distance arrangements, the agency proposes that providers “will be required to submit a case to ESFA for approval within a specified period, and must obtain the agreement of ESFA before delivery can commence”.

And from 2021/22 the ESFA proposes to introduce stricter controls on the circumstances in which the whole of a learner’s programme can be subcontracted.

Whole programme subcontracting “divorces the learner from the provider with which they are enrolled and raises questions about the extent to which they can be properly considered to be learners of the directly funded provider,” according to the consultation.

In future, providers that wish to subcontract the whole of a learner’s programme will be required to make a case to ESFA and must obtain agreement to such arrangements before delivery can commence.

The ESFA said it is “particularly concerned” about the delivery of subcontracted sport related provision.

“Problems have arisen as there is generally also a sports club involved as a third party in the programme which may provide specialist coaching, and the boundaries between the funded education programme and the associated coaching activities become blurred,” the consultation document said.

The ESFA proposes to “make it a requirement that the lead provider must have a direct contractual arrangement with both the subcontractor and the sports club”.

There would be no financial transactions between a subcontractor and the sports club – all financial arrangements would be directly with the lead provider.

The ESFA is also looking to introduce a new “rationale for subcontracting” requirement as part of provider subcontracting declarations. They will need to “state the educational intent for entering into subcontracting arrangements and that governors and boards have agreed this”.

The consultation states that “entering into subcontracting arrangements for financial gain” will not be considered as an acceptable reason for doing so.

FE Week analysis of ESFA data shows that subcontracting accounted for £650 million in government funding for adults in 2018/19, and the practice fully or partially funded 25,230 students aged 16 to 19 at 587 subcontractors.

The agency has, however, not updated its list of declared subcontractors since 5 November 2018. It has also not published actual subcontracting fees and charges for all providers for 2017/18 as it promised to do.

The review aims to “ensure public funds are properly spent, maximising the benefit for learners” and “improve oversight of subcontracted activity”.

It will also “eliminate subcontracting that is undertaken for purely financial reasons” but “retain subcontracting that meets niche or specialised needs, improves access and provides opportunities for disadvantaged learners”.

Eileen Milner, the chief executive of the ESFA, said: “Where subcontracting is done well and for the right reasons, it can fill gaps in niche or expert provision, provide greater access to training facilities or offer an entry point for disadvantaged groups.

“However, as highlighted in my letter to the sector in October which announced ESFA’s subcontracting review, despite tightening arrangements, there is still room to improve.

“We continue to receive information and investigate cases where subcontracted provision is not appropriately controlled, overseen or managed by the lead provider, this is a concern.

“We expect consistently high quality provision of education and training in the post-16 space.”

The ESFA plans to start implementing rule changes at the start of 2020-21.

The first 16 to 19 funding rate increase since 2013 fails to even pay for inflation, a minister has admitted.

As announced by chancellor Sajid Javid last year, every college and sixth form will receive at least £4,188 per student in this age group from August 2020.

This is a 4.7 per cent increase on current funding levels, which have been stuck at £4,000 since they were introduced in 2013.

But by using the most recent gross domestic product (GDP) deflators to calculate the value of the 2013 rate at 2019-20 prices, it “produces a figure of £4,435”, according to interim FE minister Michelle Donelan (pictured).

She disclosed the figure in an answer to a parliamentary question tabled by shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, who has hit out at the government’s “utterly meaningless” promises to reverse FE funding rate cuts.

“The Tories have delivered devastating cuts to further education, and if they will not provide the funding needed then their promises to provide additional funding are utterly meaningless,” she told FE Week.

“Despite promising an end to austerity, it is clear that it will continue in colleges across the country, with the vast majority of Conservative cuts left in place in the years ahead. 

“A refusal to reverse their cuts in full proves the Tories are not serious about investing in further education. They only ever give with one hand after taking far more with the other.”

The 4.7 per cent base rate rise forms part of a £400 million package set aside for 16 to 19 education in 2020/21.

In her answer to Rayner’s parliamentary question, Donelan said this funding will be used to “ensure we are building the skills that our country needs”.

“This is the biggest injection of new money into 16 to 19 education in a single year since 2010, with funding increasing faster for 16 to 19 education than in five to 16 schooling,” she added.

“This includes a 4.7 per cent increase in the base rate to £4,188. With other funding announced, such as an additional £120 million of funding for high cost and high value subjects and £35 million to support students with Maths and English GCSE retakes, this represents an increase of around 7 per cent in overall 16 to 19 funding.”

Funding for future years beyond 2020-21 will be “considered as part of the next spending review”.

The government is set to launch its consultation on a radical overhaul of subcontracting rules this week – and it is expected to include a proposal to limit out-of-area deals.

Eileen Milner, the chief executive of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, sent a sector-wide letter in October warning of rule changes and that she will take strong action against any provider that abuses the system.

She said there were 11 live investigations into subcontracting at the time, with issues underpinning them ranging in seriousness from “complacency and mismanagement”, through to matters of “deliberate and systematic fraud”.

As per Milner’s letter, areas expected to be under consideration in the consultation include “placing limits on the permitted geographical distance between a directly funded institution and the location where subcontracted provision is delivered”.

It comes just months after the Greater London Authority announced plans to end out-of-area providers subcontracting in London.

This year, the GLA provides around £14 million of AEB grant funding to providers located further than what is considered to be a “reasonable travel-to-learn distances for London learners”.

Officials say the majority of this funding is subcontracted to training providers based in London who are then charged a “substantial” management fee.

Mayor Sadiq Khan has now announced plans to stop funding for providers based outside the capital’s fringe – typically more than 30 miles away from central London.

Aside from out-of-area subcontracting, the ESFA’s consultation is expected to cover how much funding can be subcontracted by a single provider, actions to prevent non-compliance, failure and fraud, and potentially precluding the use of some subcontractors.

It is not expected that the ESFA will suggest imposing a cap on management fees under subcontracting arrangements, as called for by sector bodies such as the Association of Employment and Learning Providers.

Milner said at the time of the October letter that where “poor subcontracting practice is evident to us we will act decisively”.

The review will be concluded this academic year and the ESFA plans to start implementing the changes at the start of 2020-21.

There have been a number of high-profile subcontracting scandals in recent years, including the Luis Michael Training case where its owners, which included two former professional footballers, created “ghost learners” and were jailed for over 25 years combined.

The most recent subcontracting scandal, exposed by FE Week, involved Brooklands College and resulted in the ESFA demanding a £20 million clawback.

Milner has said the ESFA will, in future, be “more forensic in our examination of the data and information available to us to hold individuals and organisations to account”.

“We will recover public money where appropriate,” she added in her letter from October.

The ESFA isn’t the only body taking a closer look at subcontracting: Ofsted announced in November that it was launching research into the practice.