Emma Hardy is to be Labour’s new shadow FE and HE minister, with a pledge to continue “fighting” government for greater investment in the sector.
The MP for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle and education select committee member snapped up the position after it was offered to her by shadow education secretary Angela Rayner today.
She takes on the role from Gordon Marsden, who was shadow HE and FE minister until he lost his Blackpool South seat in last month’s election.
Speaking to FE Week, Hardy said it is vital that she and Labour continues to not let government “get away with anything” while the party undergoes its current leadership election.
“The majority they’ve [the Conservatives] got means they can push through pretty much anything and the role of the opposition becomes even more important.”
She joined parliament following the 2017 general election and is a former primary school teacher and union activist.
Hardy said her experience on the education select committee has been “absolutely vital in my learning for the other areas of education”.
“I want to continue what I’ve been talking about with apprenticeships, how do you take people from being 16 years old all the way through a clear pathway to become fully qualified in a profession if you are not going to go down the A-level route.
“At the moment it doesn’t feel like is a very joint up system and I think as shadow minister for both FE and HE allows me to bridge that gap to look at how they work together.”
But her main priority for FE will be funding.
“It is no surprise I want to talk about funding – I’ve lobbied on the Raise the Rate and Love Our Colleges campaigns and that is something I will keep fighting for,” she told FE Week.
“My concern with this government, however, is with the rhetoric that is coming out, that they might be looking at increasing the FE budget by decreasing HE. I am a bit concerned as they both play a vital role and are both equally important.
“FE has to have its status raised and valued way more than it has in the past but not at the expense of HE.”
Hardy also touched on T-levels, stating that she has “many reservations” and she will continue to challenge government on their development.
“The feedback I’m getting from colleges is that they are not keen on them so it might be one of those policies that falls at the first hurdle,” she said.
On her party’s idea for a National Education Service, Hardy said it is a “fantastic” idea with principles behind it that she “buys into” – but it will be for Labour’s new leader to decide if they want to continue developing the policy.
Hardy’s first appearance at the dispatch box will be on 20 January, which “of course I am looking forward to”, she says.
Since joining parliament, Hardy has contributed to multiple Westminster Hall debates on college funding. In May 2018 she joined Hull College staff on the picket line during strike action, and she has commented in FE Week on the ongoing government investigation at the college.
The chief executive of education giant City & Guilds is stepping down.
Chris Jones will leave on 31 January, after 12 years in post.
Managing director of City & Guilds, Kirstie Donnelly, will become interim chief executive while a permanent replacement is sought.
Announcing the move on Twitter, Jones said: “I’ve decided now is the right time for me to step down as CEO of City & Guilds and get on with doing something different.
“It has been an honour to serve as CEO of such a fabulous, purpose drive organisation and I know I am leaving the Group in capable hands with Kirstie Donnelly.”
I’ve decided now is the right time for me to step down as CEO of @CityGuildsGroup and get on with doing something different. It has been an honour to serve as CEO of such a fabulous, purpose drive organisation and I know I am leaving the Group in capable hands with @K_DonnellyMD.
The organisation’s chair, Sir John Armitt, said the board of trustees and City & Guilds Group colleagues “all wish to thank Chris for the significant contribution he has made to the organisation over the past 12 years and we wish him well for the future”.
Aside from leading City & Guilds, Jones has been the chair of college group Activate Learning since 2016.
He was chief executive of Harcourt Education from 2004 to 2008 and before that spent four years as senior vice president of LexisNexis Group.
Lecturers in FE have the lowest levels of positive wellbeing and “stand out” as having high levels of anxiety among educators, a study has found.
The Education Policy Institute (EPI) today published an analysis of national data examining the latest trends on teacher wellbeing in England following “a growing list of headlines” which indicated their mental health is worsening.
The think-tank said research has shown wellbeing is important as it affects staff retention and their students’ outcomes.
By looking at the Office for National Statistics’ annual population survey, the EPI found the anxiety of FE lecturers is “markedly above that of other graduates,” including school teachers.
Graph from the EPI analysis
The report said: “FE lecturers stand out with high levels of anxiety and the lowest levels of positive wellbeing among educators, a worrying observation given that FE has also suffered the greatest cut in funding of any phase of the past decade.”
In addition, the EPI highlighted that “all educators, with the exception of FE teachers, report worthwhileness levels well above the graduate average”.
The EPI said this data could be considered the closest measure to occupational wellbeing.
The future prospects for staff in the sector did not appear to be optimistic either.
The report concluded “wellbeing amongst senior leaders [in schools] and FE lecturers is either plateauing or falling, and anxiety is not improving”.
It said a possible explanation is that both FE lecturers and school senior leaders have had to deal with “increasing pressure from accountability systems and, particularly in the FE sector, budget squeezes”.
This decline took place while most educators’ wellbeing improved over the past seven years.
Other sources used in the research included the Department for Education, the Work Foundation, the National Foundation for Education Research, the Education Support Partnership, Ofsted and our sister newspaper FE Week.
The shadow education secretary Angela Rayner will run to be Labour’s deputy leader, she will announce today.
The Ashton-under-Lyne MP had been touted as a potential candidate to succeed the party’s leader Jeremy Corbyn, who announced his plans to stand down following Labour’s losses in last month’s election.
But the Mirror newspaper reports today that Rayner, who has held the shadow education brief for more than three years, will announce plans to run for the deputy position instead, and back her colleague and flatmate Rebecca Long-Bailey for the party’s leadership.
It is not yet known whether she will seek to keep her education brief if she wins the deputy race. Tom Watson, who stood down as deputy leader and as an MP last month, was also shadow culture secretary alongside his leadership role.
Among Rayner’s backers for the role include shadow international trade secretary Barry Gardiner and shadow policing minister Louise Haigh.
In a speech at a community centre on the estate she grew up on in Stockport, Greater Manchester, Rayner will warn that her party must “win or die”, but will saw it should not return to the “vanilla politics” of the past.
However, she will also warn the party must also avoid using the language of “revolution” if it is to win over the British public.
“The quick fix of a new leader will not be enough. We must rethink and renew our purpose and how we convince the people to share it,” she said.
“Either we face up to these new times or we become irrelevant. The next five years will be the fight of our lives and I’m standing here today because I don’t run away from a fight.”
A relatively unknown MP when she was appointed to the shadow cabinet in 2016, Rayner has become one of Labour’s most prominent front-benchers. During the election campaign, she stood in for Corbyn in televised debates, and was frequently deployed as a party spokesperson.
She left school at 16 without qualifications, becoming involved in politics through her involvement in the trade union movement while she worked in care.
As shadow education secretary, Rayner has presided over the development of Labour’s plans for a “national education service”. This year, she announced proposals for sweeping changes to lifelong learning and set out the party’s plans to replace Ofsted.
Hadlow College has begun transferring campuses to other providers after it became the first to enter education administration last year.
The Mottingham campus, which has 186 learners and 23 staff, was taken over by Capel Manor on 1 January.
Hadlow’s interim principal Graham Morley called it an “important step” towards resolving the financial issues facing the college which “removes some of the uncertainty for both the staff and students with regards to the future direction of the campus”.
He gave his thanks to the staff for their help in making the transfer possible: “It is sad to have to say goodbye to valued colleagues, all of whom have displayed the highest levels of professionalism in exceptionally challenging times.”
Hadlow went into administration in May with £40 million in debts, after accusations of wrongdoing by its former leadership team piled up.
A report by administrators BDO released this morning revealed that by the end of March, East Kent College is expected to have taken control of Hadlow’s Canterbury and WKAC’s Ashford campuses.
Meanwhile, North Kent College will run the Hadlow campus and its Greenwich facilities, as well as WKAC’s Tonbridge provision and its Princess Christian Farm – a facility for people with learning disabilities in Kent.
Both colleges have been approached for comment.
Capel Manor College is a land-based college, like Hadlow, with 3,000 students and 300 learners spread across five campuses in London.
It is rated as ‘good’ by Ofsted, most recently at a short inspection in 2016. Its 2017/18 accounts show it generated a surplus of £357,000, had 261 employees and a financial health rating of ‘outstanding’.
It is envisioned Mottingham will be fully-integrated into its new parent college, and new courses will be put on at the campus, including in horticulture, garden design, turf management, environmental conservation and arboriculture.
Capel Manor principal Malcolm Goodwin said they are “truly excited” about including Mottingham in their existing family of campuses.
Hadlow has already had to sell off its Betteshanger country and business parks to developers, which today’s BDO report showed brought in £1.47 million for the college.
During an intervention by FE Commissioner Richard Atkins, it was found the boards both failed in their fiduciary duty and put the “sustainability of both colleges and learners at risk”.
The principal and deputy principal of both colleges, Paul Hannan and Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, as well as Hadlow chair Theresa Bruton all resigned from their roles after the commissioner visited.
The highest-paid principal in the country, who led a college which is under investigation after it found an unexplained deficit of around £6 million, has retired with immediate effect.
Judith Doyle stepped down from her role at Gateshead College on December 31.
FE Week understands Doyle had previously informed the board of her intention to retire at the end of this academic year.
A spokesperson for Gateshead College said the decision to bring this forward was “hers in the belief that it was in the college’s best interests to step aside now enabling the new three-year plan to be delivered by the team with the support of the ESFA and FE Commissioner”.
In December, FE Week revealed an investigation had been launched at the college following an unexplained deficit in the last financial year.
It was also understood that its finance director went on sick leave after the finding.
Doyle has spent 33 years in the FE sector and was appointed principal of Gateshead in 2013, having previously held the position of deputy principal.
The college received an ‘outstanding’ grade from Ofsted following a full inspection in July 2015.
Prior to this, Doyle was a student at the college and then worked as a part time English teacher.
She was the highest paid college leader, according to published accounts last year, receiving a salary of between £340,001 and £350,000.
The college previously told FE Week that “the published accounts take into account an accrual for a remuneration scheme payable in respect of a three-year period”. Her salary for 2019/20 was set at £252,000.
Deputy principal Chris Toon has taken over as acting principal with immediate effect.
John McCabe, chair of the board of governors at Gateshead College, said: “We are really sorry to see Judith retire and are very proud of her many achievements at Gateshead College.
“I know I am joined by the board, her colleagues from across the college, the FE sector and wider North East region when I say she’ll be greatly missed.
“Gateshead College means everything to Judith. She has worked here for such a long time and her dedication, strength of leadership and sense of team has had a huge impact on the college, her staff and colleagues and the thousands and thousands of students that have passed through the doors on her watch.”
Doyle was made a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours in 2018.
A provider to the Premier League has scored well while a national laboratory training firm has done even better over a quiet festive break for Ofsted reports.
The only two other reports published during that period for FE were less impressive: FBP Ventures made ‘insufficient progress’ in one area; while HOB Salons failed to improve on a grade three.
But Skills Republic, an independent training provider, was found to have made ‘reasonable progress’ in three areas of an early monitoring visit concerning its provision to 52 apprentices.
The majority undertake apprenticeships in hospitality, project management and accounting, while 12 have recently started the level 3 sporting excellence professional standard.
A large majority of Skills Republic’s apprentices work with a single employer in the Premier League football sector – the provider’s website lists Chelsea football club as a client – and Ofsted reported their programmes “align very closely” with employers’ needs and students’ career aims.
A strong relationship between managers and apprentice supervisors allows employers to contribute to both the development and delivery of programmes, and learners develop transferable skills and behaviours for “a range of challenging and fast-paced work environments”.
Fellow independent provider NPL Management outpaced Skills Republic by making ‘significant progress’ in two areas of an early monitoring visit, which covered its provision of the level 3 metrology technician standard to 12 apprentices.
The standard teaches apprentices how to perform measurement tasks and offers “significant benefits” for apprentices at the provider, which is based at the National Physical Laboratory which sets measurement standards on things like medicine dosages and climate change data for the UK.
Learners have access to “good employment prospects” once they are qualified, as well as “valuable” jobs during training, inspectors wrote.
“They find the work fulfilling and interesting and relish working on, for example, research projects with universities,” the report continues, while employers also value the opportunities NPL makes available for its employees.
Employer provider HOB Salons, which operates 25 hair salons in London and the home counties, failed to make the cut for a higher grade than its existing ‘requires improvement’ rating.
It delivers to 72 apprentices in hairdressing, as well as four traineeships, but inspectors found leaders and managers “have not done enough to ensure that the quality of education is good” across all of their provision.
But, they remarked, leaders have made gradual improvements to the training and have “effectively” improved the quality of training in salons through more regular tuition.
Also, they have worked with salon managers to ensure learners are fully supported to cope with the challenges of a full-time apprenticeship programme; but with not enough impact on stemming the number of apprentices leaving the programme early.
FBP Ventures, an independent provider, received one ‘insufficient progress’ rating for its provision to 38 apprentices as it was found most were on zero-hours contracts and “too many” of them do not get paid for all the off-the-job training they undertake.
But it was also reported that the off-the-job training was an “effective programme” designed by tutors and employers, and managers understand end-point assessment for apprentices so most aspire for either a merit or a distinction grade.
The prime minister’s inflation-busting apprentice minimum wage increase is “manageable” and will not impede businesses from taking on new apprentices, employer representative organisations have said.
From 1 April, the apprentice minimum wage will shoot up by 6.4 per cent from £3.90 to £4.15.
Boris Johnson revealed the increase two days ago alongside his announcement that the National Living Wage would be rising from £8.21 to £8.72.
He said this is the “biggest ever cash boost” to the minimum pay levels, and added that “hard work should always pay, but for too long, people haven’t seen the pay rises they deserve”.
The Federation of Small Businesses said the increase, which is four times the rate of inflation, should be welcomed with caution.
“The government must always consider the impact these changes could have on firms who are struggling to make ends meet,” the organisation’s national chair, Mike Cherry, said.
“We must ensure that apprenticeships work, both for the apprentice and the employer. Our own research has found that some employers who had previously employed apprentices on shorter programmes did not budget for increasing the wages for apprenticeships lasting longer than a year.
“It’s vital that everyone is paid fairly, and small firms, who are the backbone of the economy, are ably supported by government so these changes are manageable and don’t impede businesses from taking on new apprentices in the long term.”
Matthew Percival, the director of people and skills policy at the Confederation of British Industry, agreed that there is an “important balancing act” to setting the apprentice minimum wage as large increases can make it less affordable for some firms to continue their apprenticeship programmes.
However, he added that most apprentices are already paid “well above this rate” and the CBI’s most recent survey showed that 63 per cent of employers plan to increase the size of their apprenticeship programmes, so April’s increase is “unlikely to have a large impact on apprentice recruitment in 2020”.
The government said the new rates for minimum wages were recommended by the Low Pay Commission, after they consulted stakeholders such as unions, businesses and academics.
Around £1.2 billion has been “wasted” on “fake apprenticeships” that have taken up half of all starts since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in May 2017, according to new research.
The study by think tank EDSK goes on to recommend that apprenticeships should be for level 3 only, while standards at level 2 and degree-equivalent courses should be defunded.
This is the third report into the apprenticeship system by EDSK director Tom Richmond (pictured), a former senior adviser to previous skills ministers Nick Boles and Matt Hancock, who told FE Week with this latest publication: “We have the full two years of data on the levy and we can now see exactly what is happening.
The apprenticeship levy is now descending into farce
“In the past, I have looked at the foundations of the reform and the history and what might have happened.
“Now we can see, and I don’t think anyone has done this analysis before, who is being supported, what is being supported and why it’s being supported.”
What he has found is that the levy is “descending into farce” because employers and higher education providers are “abusing” it by “rebadging existing courses and degrees for their own financial gain”.
He said employers have used up over £550 million of levy funding on rebadged management training and professional development courses for more experienced employees. As a result, the most popular apprenticeship in the country is now becoming a ‘team leader / supervisor’ – accounting for almost 1 in 10 apprentices.
A further £235 million of levy funding has been used to deliver various “low-skill and generic jobs” that are now counted as an apprenticeship, including working on a shop checkout and serving drinks in a bar.
The most “surreal” example of a rebadged apprenticeship Richmond could find was the level 3 sporting excellence professional, which challenges learners to “competently perform the professional sport in which they train”.
“In other words, the apprentice will be playing sport,” Richmond writes.
He also highlighted a new cabin crew standard that has a minimum duration of 12 months for training, whereas airlines are currently advertising cabin crew training – not through the apprenticeship route – that lasts just three-weeks.
Meanwhile, he says, universities rebadging bachelor’s and master’s degrees as apprenticeships have used up £450 million of the levy to date, even though these degrees can already be funded through the student loan system.
Richmond said they’re allowing employers to draw on huge amounts of levy funding to use courses like the level 7 ‘accountancy/taxation professional’, which spent £174 million since 2017 by claiming to cover a number of different accountancy and auditing roles.
A member of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, Layla Moran, said she had “serious concerns” about the government allocating one provider up to £40 million in nine months to teach this controversial management consultancy apprenticeship, following FE Week analysis in March 2019.
Richmond’s report, entitled Runaway Training, recommends rebranding the apprenticeship levy as the technical and professional education levy to incorporate all work-based learning from level 4 to level 7.
The term “apprenticeship” should be newly defined and restricted to training at level 3 only, which should be fully-funded by government like A-levels.
It adds that Ofsted should be made the sole regulator for any apprenticeships and technical and professional education, including provision in universities.
Currently, Ofsted and the Office for Students (OfS) share responsibilities for inspecting apprenticeships, with the latter monitoring higher levels, a decision Richmond says is “hugely problematic” as the OfS has “no expertise” in the area and does not have the power to enter premises to conduct on-site inspections.
An OfS spokesperson said the watchdog’s “quality assessment process” includes “on the ground quality and standards reviews”.
“We also have clear powers to require information, set specific conditions and impose sanctions if providers fail to meet rigorous standards,” she added.
The report is being released ahead of an expected budget from the Treasury next month and the later spending review, which will set the apprenticeship budget for the next five years.
It also comes at a time of increasing pressure for the levy: after the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education predicted the levy would be overspent this year and the National Audit Office expressed concern about the financial sustainability of the apprenticeship system, the DfE’s top civil servant warned of “hard choices” that needed to be made.
A Department for Education spokesperson said their reforms “mean apprenticeships are better quality”, lasting for a minimum of 12 months with at least 20 per cent off the job training.
She added that legislation introduced in 2017 meant an apprenticeship had to meet set criteria and the minimum quality requirements.
A spokesperson for the IfATE said it works “closely with thousands of employers as well as many other stakeholders to make high quality apprenticeship standards available across the whole economy”.
“This has led to a broader variety of apprenticeships up to degree-level being available to employers, a far better reflection of the nation’s skills requirements than if apprenticeships were limited to level 3,” he added.
Sector reaction
Sector organisations have reacted strongly to the report, with Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Mark Dawe stating that Richmond “sounds like a scratched record”.
He said apprenticeships “should be available to employers of all sizes to access to the full range of apprenticeship programmes from level 2 through to level 7”.
“AELP totally rejects his claim that the new level 2 standards in England fall short of the International Labour Office definition of a ‘proper apprenticeship’ and the caricatures used bear no resemblance to the reality of what is actually being learnt by the apprentice,” Dawe added.
University Vocational Awards Council chief executive Adrian Anderson believes EDSK has “got the wrong end of the stick,” as the apprenticeship system is about “enabling employers to invest in their staff to increase productivity”.
David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, warned that “simply stopping level 2 apprentices will not solve the problem; in fact it would risk shutting some of the most vulnerable people out of education and training”.
“Problems also exist at the highest levels – MBAs and other high-level training being rebadged as ‘apprenticeships’ need to be examined,” he added. “Their growth has been at the expense of chances for younger people looking for their first opportunity in the workplace.”
