The new chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has given her backing to scarce levy funding being spent on controversial management qualifications.

Jennifer Coupland also stood up for the employers that the quango represents, warning the Treasury and Department for Education that the £2 billion budget “is not government money, it comes from the levy that was levied directly to support apprenticeships”.

“It’s not government money, it comes from the levy that was levied directly to support apprenticeships”

The levy is paid to the Treasury, which means it is technically public funding, and its use for management qualifications has come under criticism from Ofsted’s chief inspection, Amanda Spielman, who said “we see levy funding subsidising re-packaged graduate schemes and MBAs that just don’t need it”.

The National Audit Office last year reported that these “new types of apprenticeship raise questions about whether public money is being used to pay for training that already existed in other forms”.

“Some levy-paying employers are replacing their professional development programmes – for example, graduate training schemes in accountancy or advanced courses in management – with apprenticeships,” they added.

“In such cases, there is a risk that the additional value of the apprenticeship to the economy may not be proportionate to the amount of government funding.”

And in recent weeks a former adviser to the skills minister, Tom Richmond, claimed £1.2 billion was being wasted on “fake apprenticeships”.

Richmond said: “Employers have used up over £550 million of levy funding on rebadged management training and professional development courses for more experienced employees.”

But speaking to FE Week, Coupland said using public funding on management apprenticeships is “a perfectly legitimate use”.

“Yeah, I absolutely think that is right [to use public funding for management apprenticeships]. Most organisations you’ll find people get promoted out of being good at a particular role, and then they find themselves leading a team of people which is a completely different job to the one that may have got them promoted to that role in the first instance.

“So those people will need to have opportunities to gain significant and substantial skills in that leadership and management role,” she said.

FE Week was the first to report on the rapid rise of state-subsidised management courses, even before the introduction of new higher and degree-level standards and the levy-funded apprenticeships in May 2017.

In October 2016, analysis by this newspaper found management frameworks were already the third most popular apprenticeship subject, based on the number of starts.

Three years on, Richmond, in his research, claimed “the most popular ‘apprenticeship’ in the country is now becoming a ‘Team Leader / Supervisor’ – accounting for almost 1 in 10 apprentices”.

“People will need to have opportunities to gain significant and substantial skills in that leadership and management role”

And the previous skills minister, Anne Milton, told FE Week last March: “What sticks in people’s throats is people on £100,000 a year and the state subsidising their MBA.

“There is no easy answer. You put more money in the pot, or you restrict what you are doing. Those are the choices.”

Having left a civil service post at the Department for Education, Coupland was using her first outing with the media to call on the government to invest an extra £750 million in apprenticeships for small employers.

The National Audit Office had last year reported that the £2 billion per year apprenticeship budget is running dry. Employers are increasingly choosing higher level and higher cost qualifications, such as in management, for existing employees.

But Coupland said there was no cause for concern.

“On management and leadership apprenticeships I think we’ve got a significant productivity gap with our competitor nations – and about 20 per cent of that productivity gap is made up of a lack of skills,” she said.

“On management and leadership apprenticeships I think we’ve got a significant productivity gap”

“There is quite a lot of evidence to show there is a significant lack of skills in our leadership and management tier within organisations within this country. So if we are going to plug that, one element has got to be looking at that leadership.”

Asked whether an extra £750 million would be enough to fund everything employers wanted, Coupland would not Coupland: ‘Public funding for management apprenticeships is perfectly legitimate’ be drawn on what the DfE permanent secretary referred to as the potential for “tough choices”.

“We’ll work within the policy parameters that we are set”, she said.

“At the moment we are looking at an all age, all level programme and as we look at each apprenticeship standard, standard by standard, we are looking at how we settle appropriate funding cap for those standards.”

Coupland went on to say that the IfATE needs to “make sure that we are generating as much value out of the programme as possible, in order to generate as many apprenticeships with as many organisations as we can.

“So we are looking across the suite, but I think at the heart of it, we do want the apprenticeship programme to reflect the needs of the economy – and for me that means having apprenticeships at level 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 and so forth.”

The government will write to all colleges and universities with residential learners aged 16 to 18 after officials found “data inaccuracies” which have prevented Ofsted from conducting inspections.

It follows an FE Week investigation that revealed how a tower block with Grenfell-style cladding that houses students at Highbury College and failed a fire safety test had gone 18 years without oversight from the education watchdog.

The college started moving classes and residents out of the building with “non-compliant” panelling earlier this week as it prepares for a multimillion-pound renovation to remove the material.

Highbury had previously advertised to parents that the residence was subject to Ofsted inspection, but in November, FE Week found the education watchdog had not regulated the halls since they were constructed in the 1970s and re-clad in 2001.

At the time the Department for Education told this newspaper that it was unaware of the residential provision, and therefore had not informed Ofsted it was in scope for their oversight, as the college had not declared it on the Get Information About Schools (GIAS) website.

A spokesperson added that all post-16 providers with residential provision for people aged under 18 are “required to inform the department about students in residential accommodation” and have a “responsibility to self-record this information on Get Information About Schools”.

An Education and Skills Funding Agency update, published on Wednesday, confirmed “the move from EduBASE to Get Information About Schools has resulted in some data inaccuracies relating to FE colleges and special post-16 providers (SPIs) in respect of the recording of residential provision”.

It said: “We will write to all colleges and those SPIs in scope directly now for the 2019 to 2020 academic year, and on an annual basis thereafter, to gather this information on the age and status of residential learners. It is important that we have accurate data to support Ofsted in meeting its responsibilities.

“Ofsted is required to inspect residential provision in colleges and some SPIs for all student residents under the age of 18 or under the age of 25 for those with an education health and care plan and rely on our data collection to ensure that they schedule inspections appropriately.

“All FE colleges and SPIs should continue to self-report information on GIAS and complete the appropriate fields on the individual learner records.”

Higher education providers which receive ESFA funding for residents aged 16 to 18, including Nottingham Trent University and University of the Arts London, are also in scope for “social care” inspections.

Courses run by universities for 16- to 18-year-olds include the art and design foundation studies programme, which among others is offered by Loughborough University.

Highbury’s residential provision was finally inspected after FE Week’s revelations in November 2019, the report of which was published last Friday.

It found that the halls “require improvement to be good” under the judgment, which scrutinised “how well young people are helped and protected”.

The report noted the cladding replacement project and said that “specific plans are in place and additional measures have been applied to address the concerns in the meantime”.

These included additional staffing at night and “ensuring that every student is aware of what to do in the event of the need to evacuate the building”.

Regular checks of the building and fire systems as well as fire drills “ensure that awareness is maintained” and “importantly, managers have sought advice and checks from the local Fire Rescue Service to ensure that the measures in place are likely to be effective”.

Work to remove non-compliant panelling at Highbury College is planned to get under way in the spring and is anticipated to take up to 12 months.

It remains unclear whether the Department for Education has signed off on the college’s £5 million application for financial support to fund the project. A DfE spokesperson said the outcome would be revealed in “due course”.

There are 18 students currently housed in the ten-storey block in Portsmouth, eleven of whom are aged under 18. They will have to move before it closes on January 31.

Students have been offered alternative living arrangements for the rest of the academic year, including local host family accommodation.

A statement from the college said the renovation project includes “upgrading the external cladding system and the replacement of all external doors and windows with new energy-efficient models designed to reduce utility costs and background noise”.

The apprenticeship levy could be in for a shake-up, following the appointment of Baroness Alison Wolf to the policy unit at Number 10 to advise the Prime Minister on skills.

In early July 2015 the Social Market Foundation published a report authored by Wolf, entitled Fixing a Broken Training System: The case for an apprenticeship levy.

Exactly one week later, the then Chancellor of Exchequer, George Osborne, announced to general surprise that the government would indeed introduce a levy to fund apprenticeships.

But, the levy would only be charged to employers with a payroll in excess of £3 million per year, making up less than 2 percent of all employers.

Wolf thinks limiting the levy to only the largest employers was a mistake.

She told the education select committee in June 2016 the decision to introduce the levy seemed to have been made “the night before” the budget announcement.

“One of the mysteries to me remains why – well, I can imagine why politically – we created another problem for ourselves by saying there is only going to be limited number of employers who are involved in this, and there’s going to have to be a completely separate system for small businesses.”

The professor, who was part of Lord Sainsbury’s panel looking into technical and professional education reforms as well as the more recent Augar Review, continued: “Nobody in government has given me an explanation, and why would they?

“I suspect it was one of these things that was decided the night before.”

As FE Week reported at the time, she went on to say: “If you’re going to have a proper apprenticeship system, and one that’s attractive to young people, you’ve got to get small and medium employers involved.”

Extending the levy to smaller employers is an option being explored by the recently re-elected chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon.

In 2018, the former skills minister said: “Once we are clear about what works best, we could then make a powerful case for expanding the levy.”

And in an interview with FE Week this week, he said: “I do definitely think we need to look at the levy. I don’t have all the answers because I would love our committee to hopefully do an inquiry on reform of the levy.”

He anticipates that there “will be reforms” by this government and says his preference is for the levy to be extended by the number of companies that pay it.

Halfon said the £3 million threshold could be reduced to £2 million.

And the Guardian is reporting today that the Chancellor will announce, what the newspaper calls, “a further expansion of apprenticeships”.

 

A college has questioned the “rationale” of Ofsted inspecting them within days of the new academic year starting. However, others believe there are advantages to it – so, should the watchdog be visiting providers in September? Fraser Whieldon investigates

The Sheffield College (pictured) received an inspection between September 24 and 27, with inspectors reporting learners enjoy their education but leaders needed to quicken the pace of improvement at the college after its third consecutive grade three report.

It came just 15 days after the college officially opened for the 2019-20 academic year – a time when student inductions were still being carried out and normal teaching hours were only just getting under way.

Governors later questioned the “rationale for the timing of the visit”, according to minutes from a December board meeting, and discussed whether they could seek an early re-visit from inspectors.

The chair even met with the inspectorate’s deputy director for further education, Paul Joyce, to raise the issue.

Governors were said to be “pleased” Joyce “had listened to the college’s feedback and offered to engage further on the matters discussed”.

The college declined to comment any further about their concerns about the visit’s timing, but did say they welcomed Ofsted’s new education inspection framework and are “pleased grade three colleges will be given longer to improve”.

Following Sheffield expressing concerns, FE Week spoke to a number of sector leaders, as well as colleges and training providers which were inspected around the same time, and asked them what pros and cons are there to an inspection taking place at the start of a new academic year.

Should Ofsted stop inspecting in September?

The Association of Colleges’ director of education and skills policy David Corke thinks it would “always be sensible for inspections to be undertaken outside induction weeks” so that learners can settle in properly and staff can begin to embed their curriculum for the year.

But, he reasoned, Ofsted only has a narrow number of weeks during which to conduct an inspection because of holidays and exams.

North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College was inspected at exactly the same time as The Sheffield College, but achieved a grade two.

One advantage of an inspection so early on in the academic year, according to NWSLC’s vice principal of quality Ben Crook, was that any messages to students given during induction are “fresh in their minds”.

Additionally, student attendance is higher and the energy levels of staff and students are “obviously higher at the start of the year”.

Another plus is that NWSLC can work on any areas identified as needing improvement throughout the year, whereas “if you wait six months after the start of the year for an inspection, you are constantly in this state of inspection preparation, so it can have a fatiguing effect”.

When asked, Crook did not go as far as to say that there should be certain times of year (when the college is open) when Ofsted should not inspect.

Another college that received a grade two after a September inspection was Bedford College Group.

Chief executive Ian Pryce said they were “surprised” to be visited so early in the year, but overall found the inspection, the inspectors and the new inspection framework “worked well for staff and students”.

He added: “We had no issue with the timing of our Ofsted. We were two years into a merger, which seemed a reasonable time frame to judge progress.”

FE Week also contacted Coventry College, which was inspected a week before Sheffield and also achieved a grade three, but they would only say they were “encouraged by the outcome of its recent Ofsted inspection”.

The benefits and downsides of a September inspection are less keenly felt in the independent sector, where they teach learners throughout summer.

N-gaged managing director Neil Brayshaw said it was “good to get it out of the way,” rather than having it “hanging over you”. N-gaged received a grade three after being inspected at the same time as Sheffield College.

Brayshaw has been at providers where they have been on constant “Ofsted watch”, which is “not good for anybody”.

Having also served as an inspector and said that he could not see much difference between providers being inspected in September and later in the year. “Stronger providers are ready for an inspection whatever time of year.”

What has Ofsted said?

Ofsted bullishly defended its policy when asked by FE Week if it would consider reviewing its timings, stating it “reserves the right to carry out an inspection or monitoring visit to any provider at any reasonable time”.

“Ofsted puts the interests of learners first, and we are keen to make sure that we see colleges and providers as they actually are,” a spokesperson said.

“If a provider is teaching or training and learners are learning, they are delivering a publicly funded service and may be subject to inspection.”

But, he added, they work with providers to ensure the time of an inspection is “reasonable,” and a college may request a deferral if there are extenuating circumstances.

The Sheffield College declined to disclose whether they had requested a deferral.

One in ten 15 to 18-year-olds are being encouraged to take up an apprenticeship by their schoolteachers, a new YouGov survey has revealed.

The research was commissioned by training provider JTL ahead of National Apprenticeship Week, which starts on Monday, February 3.

It found that 73 per cent of students reported that the most likely recommendation from their school or sixth form would be to follow a university route.

There was an increase of three percentage points in the proportion of those surveyed being encouraged towards apprenticeships since JTL’s last survey – from eight per cent in 2017 to 11 per cent in 2019.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe said that considering that the Baker Clause – a legal requirement for schools to promote apprenticeships and other skills programmes – has been in force since 2018, this report “makes depressing reading”.

He questioned how the “disastrously low figure” of 11 per cent was possible, considering that the Careers Enterprise Company “is claiming 74 per cent of all schools are engaging with them”.

Dawe called on Ofsted to “crack down really hard in its inspections on schools’ non-compliance with the Baker Clause”.

The policy stipulates schools must ensure a range of FE providers have access to pupils from year 8 to year 13 to provide information on technical education and apprenticeships.

All schools are required to publish a policy statement to show how they ensure education and training providers can talk to students.

However, a 2019 report by the Institute for Public Policy Research found two-thirds of schools were flouting the controversial rule a year after it came into force. The DfE later confirmed “no action was taken” against schools that failed to comply.

The results of the YouGov survey also indicated that just ten per cent of 15 to 18-year olds are “very content” with the amount of technical job support or practical skills, such as engineering or plumbing, they receive in lessons.

In addition, a gender gap was revealed in relation to students being directed to certain professions – only five per cent of females surveyed felt they had been encouraged to become a skilled tradesperson compared with 14 per cent of males.

Jon Graham, chief executive of JTL, said: “These results are disappointing. They show there is still much more work to be done in ensuring school leavers are fully aware of the benefits of undertaking an apprenticeship – and in helping their parents or guardians feel confident and empowered in choosing this route”.

He claimed that the UK is experiencing a skills shortage, particularly within the building services engineering sector, so apprenticeships “offer a fantastic opportunity for school leavers to embark on a career in a highly skilled and well-paid job”.

“We really want to challenge people’s understanding of what an apprenticeship involves and importantly what it can lead to, so that all school leavers are fully informed,” Graham added.

“We also want to encourage more female and BAME learners, who are massively underrepresented within the trades, to consider an apprenticeship as an option.”

YouGov surveyed 1,060 children aged 15 to 18 in December 2019 to collect the data.

For this year’s National Apprenticeship Week, the Department for Education has asked employers to “open their doors in a nationwide series of ‘Look Beyond’ events to bring apprentices, parents and teachers together and fire up conversation around apprenticeships”.

Activities include Twitter Q & As with employers and apprentices, as well as a ‘Big Assembly’ online interactive webinar for teachers.

More than 350 other events are planned across the country to “celebrate the diversity and value that apprenticeships bring to employers, apprentices and communities”.

FE Week will produce our annual supplement celebrating the week on February 7.

FE expert Baroness Alison Wolf is set to become the skills and workforce policy adviser to the Prime Minister, according to news website Politico Europe.

The King’s College London professor of public sector management will join the Downing Street policy unit with initial focus “on skills and apprenticeship policy across all government departments”.

Wolf is currently on sabbatical from the university and a source close to her told FE Week that she will be advising the Prime Minister three days a week.

She was commissioned by the government to author a report into 14 to 19 vocational education in 2011, which informed future skills policy, and was nominated for a life peerage by then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014.

Wolf made the case for an employer levy to fund apprenticeship training in a report published days before the government first unveiled the charge.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, told FE Week: “I’m really pleased that Alison has been brought in to advise the government on its skills and post-16 policy.

“Alison knows a lot about the sector and has taken a lot of interest in trying to make it work more effectively and we look forward to working with her.”

In June 2019, Wolf said further education funding had “been devastated,” when writing for Conservative Home – after being a member of the Post-18 Review of Education and Funding Independent Panel (the Augar Review) .

She added: “Courses teaching technician and advanced craft skills are vanishing from English education at speed, even though the economy is crying out for these skills.

“…Augar does its sums and recommends more money for the neediest – cash to get FE back on its feet, to invigorate technical education, to allow adults to retrain and progress, and to reinstate maintenance grants for the poorest students.”

After graduating from Oxford with a degree in politics, philosophy and economics in the early 1970s, Professor Wolf moved to America and worked for the National Institute of Education and the US Government, advising on educational matters, before returning to the UK in the mid-1980s.

In the early 1990s, Professor Wolf secured Nuffield Foundation funding for research into the evaluation of GNVQs, which took her back to a policy role and into the media spotlight.

She worked for the Institute of Education before joining King’s College and being invited to advise the government, which adopted her principle of study programmes for learners aged 16 to 19 among other policies.

 

 

Awarding bodies are being invited to develop qualifications for wave three of the T-levels programme, which is due to be delivered from September 2022.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education today opened up a £35 million tender for eight qualifications, based on three routes: legal, finance and accounting; engineering and manufacturing; and business and administration (full list below).

Chris Morgan, IfATE’s deputy director for commercial, called it a “really exciting opportunity for awarding organisations to bid to take on T-levels for several key sectors”.

IfATE welcomes “widespread interest” and are looking forward to receiving their submissions, he added.

T-levels are two-year courses which will be equivalent to three A-levels and will include a combination of classroom learning and a mandatory, 315-hour industry placement.

The bidding process will involve two stages: the first will close on Wednesday 12 February and applicants which pass this hurdle will progress to stage two, where they must complete their bid submission by 28 April.

The winning organisations will develop and then implement qualifications based upon outline content created by T-level Panels – employer-led groups which come up with the key knowledge and behaviours a T-level student ought to learn.

The Department for Education opened up applications for providers to deliver these T-levels earlier this month.

The awarding organisations developing wave one of T-levels for delivery from this year onwards were announced last February: NCFE was awarded a contract to deliver the education and childcare pathway, while Pearson was commissioned to deliver T-levels in design, surveying and planning as well digital production, design and development.

NCFE is also developing qualifications for digital business services, digital support and services, health, healthcare science and science for the second wave next year.

City & Guilds is working on the onsite construction and building services engineering qualifications to be delivered from the same time.

The procurement documents to develop wave three of T-levels can be found at procontract.due-north.com/Login

The bidding lots are as follows:

• Lot 1: Legal: £3,080,000
• Lot 2: Finance: £2,640,000
• Lot 3: Accountancy: £3,190,000
• Lot 4: Manufacturing, Processing and Control: £4,600,000
• Lot 5: Maintenance, Installation and Repair: £5,700,000
• Lot 6: Design & Development: £4,470,000
• Lot 7: Management and Administration: £7,860,000
• Lot 8: Human Resources: £2,940,000