Reformed BTECs still produce higher grades than A-levels

Students still get higher marks in reformed BTECs than in A-levels – but the gap has closed, new analysis shows.

But research from FFT Education Datalab shows many schools and colleges are still delivering the old BTEC qualifications, even though they are no longer included in performance tables.

The blogpost, published today, reveals that just nine per cent of grades awarded in the reformed BTECs in 2018 were the highest score of starred distinction, compared with 37 per cent in the legacy qualifications.

As the grades awarded in the reformed BTECs tend to be lower than those in the predecessor qualifications, the results have become much closer to equivalence with A-levels. However, learners still tend to achieve the equivalent of half a grade higher in the new BTEC qualifications.

In 2018, 17,000 students entered at least one legacy BTEC and at least one A-level, while 15,600 entered at least one reformed BTEC and at least one A-level.

Analysis shows that those who entered the legacy BTECs achieved much higher level three average point scores in those qualifications than they did in A-levels. They achieved an average 43 points in the BTECs (equivalent to between grade A and B and A-level) and 28 points in A-levels, or just below a grade C. The difference of 15 points is equivalent to one and a half grades at A-level.

However, in the reformed BTECs the difference was much narrower at just five points, equivalent to half a grade at A-level.

 In 2017, before the reforms were introduced, students tended to score much more highly in BTECs than in A-levels regardless of their prior attainment. However, in 2018 this difference was much reduced.

The analysis also showed a big decrease in the number of students taking BTECs that are counted in 16-18 performance tables, with the number taking applied general qualifications falling from 125,000 in 2016 to 46,000 in 2018, and those taking tech level qualifications falling from 69,000 to 13,000.

The legacy BTEC qualifications will still be funded until the end of 2021 but are not eligible for performance tables. The data shows this has not put many schools and colleges off from offering them, though. If data included legacy qualifications, then an extra 62,000 pupils could be added to the numbers of applied general students in 2018, and another 35,000 for tech level students.

“The downside of the changes is that take-up of reformed BTECs has been relatively slow,” wrote chief statistician Dave Thomson.

“Many schools and colleges have continued to deliver predecessor qualifications. Up to now there have been no funding incentives to change and the incentive that publication of data in performance tables adds appears not to have had much effect.”

In September, another study by Education Datalab found pupils studying BTECs score an average of a grade higher than they do in GCSE English and maths.

In the summer, exam board Pearson had to hike up the grade boundaries of its BTEC Tech Awards just days before pupils were due to collect their results

Gender pay gap doubles for apprentices

The apprenticeships system is “continuing to let women down”, a union has said.

The claim came after it was revealed the gender pay gap for apprentices has almost doubled in recent years.

Male apprentices at levels 2 and 3 were paid nearly six per cent more than their female counterparts – £7.90 per hour compared to £7.47 – on average in 2018.

The gap was just 3.6 per cent in 2016 – £7.10 per hour compared to £6.85.

The figures were revealed in the biennial Apprenticeship Pay Survey, published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy last week.

Research by the likes of the Trades Union Congress has linked the gender pay gap to differences in the sectors in which men and women take up apprenticeships. These choices are often based on occupational stereotypes of “traditional roles” – and the pay disparity between them.

The 2018 Apprenticeship Pay Survey, for example, shows the female-dominated level 2 and 3 programme of hairdressing had the lowest mean weekly wage of £163. Electro technical apprentices on the other hand, the majority of whom are male, got paid £337 – the second highest total weekly earnings from basic pay.

Sophie Walker, chief executive of the Young Women’s Trust, said the survey “once again highlights the sexism and discrimination that young women face even at the very beginning of their careers”.

She added: “This discrimination not only shuts them out of apprenticeships such as engineering and construction that have the best opportunities for pay and progression but fails to provide high quality opportunities in childcare and social care in which the majority of young women apprentices work.”

The survey also showed that women were less likely to be taught their skills properly – while 57 per cent of men received formal training, only 40 per cent of women did. Female apprentices were also less likely to receive a wage that complied with the national minimum wage – 22 per cent, compared with 18 per cent of men.

Walker said more investment must be made in social infrastructure “so that working in these sectors is valued and offers the same level of pay and security as other apprenticeships”.

Amy Dowling, from the National Society of Apprentices, told FE Week the union shares the frustrations “that women continue to be let down by our apprenticeship system”. She added that the government need “to make sure women’s work is fairly funded”.

She said: “We knew it [the gender gap] was coming, but so did the government. When the government first looked at the funding arrangements for each apprenticeship, they recognised that women would lose out. Last year the Department for Education was warned that its efforts to widen participation were ‘inadequate’ and that there were no gender based targets at all.”

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, pointed out that while the mean hourly rate gap between male and female apprentices is large, the “median figures are actually very close” at £7.10 and £7.06 respectively.

He agreed the gender difference could “perhaps be explained by some of the higher paid standards being male dominated, rather than differences between genders within a standard”.

Dawe said the way to address this “is to make further progress on how we inform pupils, parents and teachers about apprenticeship choices in terms of tackling gender stereotyping”.

Solutions offered to reduce the gender pay gap include combating unconscious bias, directing women to better-paid industries and reducing sexism and discrimination in the workplace.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “This gender pay gap is partly the result of women being overrepresented in lower paying sectors and under-represented in higher paying sectors, such as science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

“We are working hard to encourage women into STEM sector apprenticeships through our Fire it Up Campaign and our Apprenticeship Diversity Champions Network.”

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education announced it would trial the use of “gender-neutral” language in May 2019, after research found “masculine” words in job adverts, such as ‘ambition’, ‘challenging’ and ‘leader’, deter women from applying for science, technology, engineering and mathematics apprenticeships.

An IfATE spokesperson told FE Week: “The Institute continues to develop a long-term programme to ensure that gender-neutral language is embedded in all areas.

“The use of language across all new digital standards is now reviewed as part of the Institute’s approvals process. This will be rolled out across all standards looking ahead.” 

Most learners don’t know they’re apprentices at management provider, Ofsted finds

A provider of management courses has been declared ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted after it was found learners and their bosses did not know they were on the apprenticeship programme.

EQV (UK) has been handed a grade four for its provision to nearly 80 apprentices, who are either on the level 3 team leader or level 5 operational manager standard.

The Leicester-based training firm was previously suspended from taking on new starts in July after being found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in all three areas of an early monitoring report.

In today’s full inspection report, Ofsted reported that apprentices “do not benefit from a well-planned programme of study” and “most” apprentices and their line managers “do not know that they are on an apprenticeship”.

“Too many” apprentices also do not develop the “wider range of knowledge, skills and behaviours needed to progress in their careers”, they “just complete their management qualification”.

The provision mostly focused on learners completing qualifications from the Institute of Leadership and Management, the website for which offers diplomas at both level 3 and 5 which can be run alongside the team leader and operational manager apprenticeships.

Ofsted said too many apprentices leave their training early, having not received feedback or support to make better progress and while “a small minority recognise they have gained new knowledge and skills”, the majority “only have their existing knowledge and skills confirmed”.

Inspectors reported that managers, trainers and assessors do not use an apprentice’s prior learning to plan the curriculum: level 5 apprentices who completed a level 3 in management cannot identify any new knowledge gained.

Assessors and trainers do not work together to ensure apprentices, who are pulled from the public and private sector, can develop greater knowledge in workshops and then apply this to the workplace and their assignments.

But leaders and managers do not review the performance of trainers and assessors. Instead, they relying on feedback from awarding bodies and “very brief critiques” of workshops.

The watchdog did say most apprentices gain new confidence in their roles while at the provider and both feel and are safe, thanks to effective safeguarding measures.

Following EQV ‘insufficient progress’ monitoring report in July, a follow-up monitoring visit in August found the provider was making ‘reasonable progress’ in safeguarding.

As of last week, the register of apprenticeship training providers still showed EQV as being banned from new apprentices.

Private providers that receive a grade four from Ofsted typically have their funding contracts with the Education and Skills Funding Agency terminated early.

EQV was approached for comment.

Cornwall campus closure – MP demands government probe

The local Conservative MP for Saltash has called for a government investigation into Cornwall College Group after it announced plans to sell-off a campus in her constituency.

Sheryll Murray wrote to education secretary Gavin Williamson this week after being “so disappointed” to hear the site was closing down.

She said it was “particularly disappointing” considering Cornwall College Group received a £30 million bailout from the government last year. This followed some £4.5 million emergency funding in 2016/17 and another £3.5 million in 2017/18.

Murray wants the investigation to take place “both into how the bailout was used and to see if anything can be done to keep this facility available for further education provision”.

She met with Cornwall College Group’s principal, John Evans, last Friday to discuss this “important local issue”.

The Saltash site is 35 years old and joined the group in August 2001, when it merged with St Austell College.

A total of 74 jobs are now at risk because of the closure. Around 500 students will be affected – although the majority will have completed their courses by the end of this academic year.

The University and College Union is currently involved in redundancy discussions.

Their regional official Nick Varney said: “The closure of the Saltash site is a big blow for the local community and all those affected.

“We are consulting with the college on how to minimise the impact on staff and students; our top priority is to protect jobs and student provision, and we will be strongly opposing any compulsory redundancies as a result of this decision.”

The campus boasts a higher education centre, a construction skills training centre, commercial hair and beauty salons and a “state-of-the-art” training kitchen that only opened permanently in 2018.

Cornwall College Group is currently working with agents to sell the site, although it has not yet been valued.

Evans, who took over as principal in October 2019, told FE Week that the site needs “significant capital money to make it fit for purpose” which he doesn’t have access to.

He said just closing the campus down will save the group hundreds of thousands of pounds.

“As it currently stands the move will stop us losing money on that site,” he added. “The contribution it was making was almost negligible due to the class sizes.

“It does not make economical or educational sense to run small group sizes at Saltash.”

Evans added that it was an “incredibly sensitive and difficult decision to make” but the “steer from government has been to minimise duplication in the FE sector in order to create financially resilient colleges”.

He explained that the Saltash campus is 19 minutes from City College Plymouth, 23 minutes from Duchy College Stoke Climsland and 50 minutes from Cornwall College St Austell – all of which offer the same programmes.

Evans said the decision has been forced on the college due to “reduced funding for post-16 learners in colleges” (read the full interview here).

Cornwall College Group has 11 different campuses in total. A spokesperson confirmed that “all other sites will remain open”.

The college is working with affected learners, who will be offered “progression opportunities” at the other nearby colleges.

The college will also offer staff “redeployment and retraining where possible”.

How colleges can recruit the community governors they need

Becoming a college governor is an intimidating prospect, writes Mark Trinick. Recognising that is the first step to recruiting your college community’s brightest and most committed

Community governors bring real value to a college’s decision making. This much is clear to me now, but I faced some barriers to becoming one, and I’m not uninformed about the sector. I have been a Group Board Governor at London South East Education Colleges for just over a year, but when I was first approached, though humbled, my initial reaction was to decline. If principals and their executive teams are serious about recruiting the untapped talent in their communities, they need to be aware of what keeps it away.

What’s obvious to insiders isn’t always obvious to outsiders. You might know that any and all experience is relevant, from running your own business to helping with a local charity or club, or simply being an interested neighbour, but your interested neighbour may not.

And while we know that a governing body is there to challenge and provide a fresh perspective, for many the idea of challenging an executive board can be intimidating. This is especially true of a sector reputed for its use of jargon.

Lastly, skilled and critical people are in high demand. Nobody wants to take up a position to make a bad job of it or to pull back again because they can’t sustain doing it, and being a governor is very obviously a commitment.

The truth is that a board of governors is broadly equivalent to a board of directors or trustees in commercial or charitable organisations – an important role that provides the checks and balances to ensure good governance of the institution, including spending of public funds. To many, that’s an unimaginable proposition.

People like this aren’t born; they are made

Yet we need ‘critical friends’ to push us forward and keep us grounded. To draw them in, we need to recognise these challenges and be the ones to tackle them. Fundamentally, they boil down to three questions: What could I possibly bring? What do I know about running a college? Will I have time?

To recruit the greatest range of voices then, executive teams should ensure they explicitly state they welcome applications from anyone with an interest, they should do it in the clearest and most open terms possible, and they should offer training upfront. In fact, is your college ‘recruiting a governor’, or is it really offering an excellent training opportunity to a lucky member of its community?

Time commitment may actually be the biggest barrier, and there is really little excuse not to set that out very clearly from the outset. And while every college hopes for a public-spirited volunteer who will give the role more than what is expected as a strict minimum, the truth is that people like this aren’t born; they are made.

From my initial appointment, I have in the space of a year come to sit on two sub-committees. If I’d been asked to do that from the outset, my mind would probably have been made up to decline the role. But I have grown quickly into it as I have received training and, importantly, started to feel part of a team. Other Governors and our clerk to the board were fantastic at helping me to settle in too. Let them be all the advertising you need for the position you need to fill.

And it’s not all about public-spiritedness. With my employer hat on, the role is an unparalleled opportunity to help steer the education of my future workforce, and to understand what influences them. Employers are often quoted pointing out perceived failings of education and you’re giving them the opportunity to do something about it. So don’t be shy about telling potential recruits what they stand to gain.

Education, and especially further education, inspires passion in good people who are willing to devote every waking moment to. But it can’t afford to stop at the college gate. Those who eat, sleep and breathe it need independent governors to remind them about the world they are preparing their students for, and recruiting them is a serious business.

Time to get serious about developing governor capacity

As the role of college governor grows, the need for more support grows too. Help is already at hand, explains Mark Wright

The role of the governor has become hugely more challenging in the past few years. Colleges are growing in size and complexity, and financial pressures mean there is an increasing need for forensic scrutiny of leadership decisions. Effective governance is crucial to the success and sustainability of colleges, but is the sector at risk of asking too much of what remains by and large a voluntary role?

As the Government sets out what new funding is to be made available, including for capital investment, governors will be required to ensure the appropriate investment of public funds. Given these responsibilities, as well as a time commitment that increasingly resembles that of a part-time job, some may say this gives credence to the argument that governors should be remunerated for their efforts.

In fact, some chairs are already being paid. But while broadening this could help with recruiting and retaining governors, there is also a need to consider professionalising the role more broadly.

An essential part of that effort is to offer development opportunities, tailored to the demands of the job, that enable governors to successfully steer their colleges. The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) has been working with the sector to provide this support with a series of DfE-funded initiatives that form part of a drive to create a sector culture in which governor development is the norm.

In the Spring, we will be launching the Governor Development Programme following an extensive development stage during which many governors and clerks will have road-tested each of the 24 modules.

All colleges will be able to sign up to the programme on an annual basis giving their governors access to modules that include online content, podcasts, and face-to-face delivery. Those who have tested it have valued the range and flexibility of the learning opportunities on offer. Governors are time-pressed people too, and being able to listen to a podcast while getting on with other tasks was particularly appreciated.

Governors are time-pressed people too

The programme will be hosted on the ETF’s Foundation Online Learning website, and governors will be able to develop their own personalised learning plans, working through the most appropriate suite of modules for them in terms of content and level of difficulty – from those new to governance right up to experienced governors who need to ensure they stay up to date.

Professionalisation means a certain amount of ongoing management of governors’ development needs. The work of mapping where governors are on their development journey could become the responsibility of the clerk or governance professionals, working in partnership with the chair and board members themselves to determine the development needs of individuals and of the team.

The programme complements the work that has already been done to boost the capacity of chairs of governors, in particular through the Chairs’ Leadership Programme. According to Simon Perryman, Chair of Governors at Barnsley College, this programme provides “powerful insights on the role of boards in setting strategy, maintaining oversight and managing reputation, as well as a valuable opportunity to work with other chairs on the real issues and challenges of the role”.

And our commitment to professionalising governance doesn’t stop there. Efforts to develop a programme aimed specifically at the development of clerks is already underway in partnership with the DfE.

The ‘College of the Future’ has become a common topic of conversation across the sector, and rightly so. This decade will herald new challenges and also importantly new opportunities but some things are timeless. Effective leadership and governance is one of those things, and developing people – be they our students, our staff or our governors – is another. In the end, amongst a multitude of other things, we now need great governance to navigate our way safely to new horizons.

Preventing college and ITP failures is a matter of relationships

If the sector’s reputation is ever to recover from the damage caused by college and ITP failures, the ESFA needs to be more than just a ‘funding body’, writes Tony Allen

As an ex-deputy director of the SFA, news that Dame Mary Ney’s anticipated report into college finances will highlight serious shortcomings on the part of the organisation has piqued my interest. The report is likely to focus on some of the more technical aspects of college finances.

However, there is one important and easy-to-grasp reason why colleges and independent training providers (ITPs) fail, and I hope Dame Mary will touch on it: the lack of effective contract management and support from the ESFA.

In many respects, Ian Pryce, CEO of Bedford Colleges Group summed it up perfectly when he said “you spot things early when you have strong human relationships”.

From its inception as 47 LSCs in 2001, up until 2015, by which time it had become the SFA, the sector could rely on effective contract management for all providers. Towards the end of this period, colleges were managed by regional teams, and the employers and largest ITPs by a national team. Their role was to get to know the colleges and ITPs, to provide support, protect public investment, and to promote government priorities. Unlike our current reactive way of working, always on the back foot as it responds to problems, the system was proactive in encouraging the ‘right’ behaviour.

Whatever the actual structures involved, having people within the SFA who regularly interacted with senior staff at colleges and providers brought many benefits. We had a much better sense of what was going on. We advised and supported, managed risks, and dealt with issues as they were arising. Face-to-face support by individual and group methods headed off many early problems. The nature of the relationship meant that colleges and providers were much more likely to share their concerns and worries than they are now.

It was believed that risk could be managed by a service desk approach

In 2016, as part of DfE-mandated staffing reductions, the SFA decided that ‘supportive’ contract management as we had known it was no longer needed. It was made clear that giving advice and support to colleges, and especially ITPs, was not part of a ‘funding body’s’ role. Frankly, it was believed that the risk could be managed by a service desk approach, and by analysing data in Coventry. Nobody was interested in the positive side of contract management or the benefits that could accrue, such as promoting apprenticeship growth.

As I was leaving the then-SFA, I pointed out to the senior team the implications of what they were doing, but the value of what we had been doing for many years was effectively dismissed.

Yet there is a clear correlation between the lack of supportive contract management and what has happened since. We have seen a number of high-profile college ‘financial’ failures, not to mention the demise of Positive Outcomes, First4Skills, 3AAAs and Learndirect, to name but a few on the ITP front.

Realistically, even if the ESFA, as it is now called, still had teams in place managing colleges and providers as effectively as in the past, they would not have been able to altogether prevent some of the more recent failures. The sad fact is that a determined individual in any organisation can hide the truth from those above.

However, at worse, the ESFA would have had their finger more closely on the pulse, and would have been aware much earlier of the problems that some colleges and large providers were facing. Even that worse-case scenario would have been better than what we have now.

No other part of the public sector allows an organisation with a contract worth millions of pounds a year to effectively be told to ‘get on with it’, and the only meaningful contact with the regulator being when it looks like things are going wrong.  

Whatever other reforms Dame Mary’s report suggests, until we restore proper, consistent and supportive regulatory oversight based on relationships, we will simply continue to see college and ITP failures. Our sector deserves better than to keep seeing its reputation battered in this way.

Apprenticeship take-ups suffer from pro-university data bias

The Government’s continued failure to deliver on its own apprenticeship take-up target is, in part, a symptom of its failure to properly inform school leavers of the realities of higher education, warns Lawrence Barton

The Government is failing to achieve its own targets for the take-up of apprenticeships. Meanwhile, the symbolic target of 50 per cent of people going to university was met at the start of this academic year, 20 years after first being announced by the Blair government. Aside from the contrast in political effort to meet these targets, the bias towards university is reinforced by poor information about the relative value of these alternative pathways. In essence, taxpayers and students alike are being misled.

While the number of apprenticeship starts has increased from 2017/18 to 2018/19, figures remain down on those preceding the introduction of the apprenticeship levy in May 2017. In 2018/19, 19 per cent (75,100) of learners started at a higher level compared to 13 per cent the year before. But despite this growth, the take-up of higher apprenticeships is relatively modest.

If we compare the recent trend for apprenticeship growth to that for higher education a different picture emerges. Barring a dip following the introduction of the Government’s tuition fees reform, over the past ten years 18-year-old entry rates have consistently increased. In 2018, the 18-year-old entry rate stood at a record high of 33 per cent.

Yes, even the fanfare about the 50 per cent target is somewhat misleading. The DfE’s figure counts people set to go to university up to the age of 30, not school leaver entrants as might be expected.Contrasting perceptions of apprenticeships and university degrees are a significant driver behind the disparity in uptake. A large proportion of young people and their parents remain wedded to the idea that university is the key to a successful and prosperous future, unaware of other avenues open to them.

Policymakers often herald the ‘graduate premium’. In 2017 university graduates earned on average £10,000 more than the average non-graduate. But this figure is misleading. It makes no account of the institution attended, the subject studied, the degree classification obtained, or the premium relative to other qualifications. It lumps the earnings of a Cambridge educated particle physicist in with those of somebody with an Honours degree in ‘Drawing’ from Falmouth University.

Taxpayers and students alike are being misled

A 2014 independent analysis by the Million Jobs campaign investigated these nuances between graduate and apprenticeship earnings. It estimated that over a third of all graduates (39 per cent) enjoyed lifetime earnings below those of the average higher apprentice. While nearly half (46 per cent) of those from post-1992 universities earned less than higher apprentices.

The study found these differences become amplified when subject studied is examined. For some ‘new’ university courses, such as media studies, as many as three-quarters of graduates earned less than the average higher apprentice.

The study is not conclusive. It relies on various estimates and patches together data sets from different sources to produce its estimates. Nevertheless, it raises significant questions that remain unanswered. The Government and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) have taken steps to improve the granular detail in terms of graduate outcomes, but shortcomings make it difficult to determine trends from year to year and to compare these to those of apprentices.

There is also yet to be movement on the publication of loan repayment rates by institution attended. Surely, both the prospective student and the taxpayer are owed a duty as to the likely outcome of their investment?

While attitudes towards apprenticeships are changing, there remains much work to be done. The lack of a coherent, detailed evidence-based case with which to go head-to-head with universities is hampering the industry’s ability to challenge misconceptions that remain prevalent in the minds of many school-leavers, parents and teachers. It is only when these misconceptions are addressed that we will begin to see the uptake of higher-level apprenticeships at the rate that is required for them to make a meaningful contribution to our economy.

This call to action comes at an opportune moment. The Prime Minister’s Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings, has recently outlined his own ambitions for a more informed, data-driven approach to Government decision making. Accurate and transparent information about the relative outcomes of further and higher education is an excellent place to start.

Suspended principal to leave earlier than planned

A college principal who was suspended following government intervention has brought forward her retirement date.

Stella Mbubaegbu announced today that she will officially leave Highbury College at the end of April 2020, instead of July 2020.

The college said she has decided to leave early to “enable the college to accelerate the search for her successor, and to put in place new leadership”.

The FE Commissioner’s team was sent into Highbury by Department for Education minister Lord Agnew in October after FE Week revealed the principal claimed £150,000 expenses in four years.

The spending included numerous first class flights, five-star hotels, travel in luxury cars, a £350 bill – including a £45 lobster and nearly £100 on cocktails – at a Michelin star restaurant, and a £434 pair of designer headphones.

Mbubaegbu was suspended in November.

Highbury said today that following separate whistleblowing allegations suggesting wrongdoing by the principal, over a year ago a “thorough and independent” investigation was commissioned.

The investigation concluded that Mbubaegbu “had, throughout acted in accordance with extant college policies and procedures, and with the approval of the college chair at the time”.

In December, Penny Wycherley took over as interim principal and Martin Doel became interim chair of Highbury.

In announcing her decision to retire, Mbubaegbu said: “I am enormously proud of all that we have achieved together at the college, and in particular the success of our students and staff.

“You have inspired, challenged and motivated me to do better and I wish every one of you continued future success.

“I have now decided that I will leave on 30 April 2020, in order that the college can accelerate its plans to recruit an appropriate successor to my role.

“Until then I will work remotely to facilitate an effective handover to the new leadership.”

The college said Doel “thanked Stella on behalf of the college board for her many years of dedicated service to the college in which much was achieved that will have a lasting effect upon the lives of countless students and the communities that the college serves”.

Since the FE Commissioner’s intervention, Highbury has been moved into “supervised college status” and a notice to improve was published yesterday.

Mbubaegbu was awarded a CBE in the 2008 New Year honours for services to further education.