On Saturday FE Week hosted a webinar to provide an overview of the latest legislation and guidance from the government regarding the response to the coronavirus pandemic, for the FE and skills sector.
Presented by Shane Mann, publisher of FE Week, he was joined by Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes, Association of Employment and Learning Providers boss Mark Dawe, FE Commissioner Richard Atkins, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills Paul Joyce, and Holex director Sue Pember.
The government has celebrated nearly tripling the interest in apprenticeships after spending more than £1 million on the release of a grime song as part of its Fire It Up campaign.
FE Week can reveal the unusual partnership between a YouTube entrepreneur, rapper and the Department for Education (DfE) cost £542,009.65 to deliver, with an additional £323,446.42 spent on its partnership with The Guardian newspaper and £215,426.51 with streaming platform Spotify.
However, the DfE refused to disclose the individual fees paid to the famous participants on the grounds that it is “personal data”, which means the total amount is likely to be much higher.
FE Week has requested an internal review of our Freedom of Information request to find out these costs.
Jamal Edwards MBE, the founder of online music platform SBTV, collaborated with artist P Money, producer Teddy Music (aka Silencer) and director Matthew Walker, who previously worked with stars including Skepta, Stormzy and JME, to create the single and shoot the music video.
The DfE did confirm that it spent £44,000 on the production of apprenticeship track The Calling, and it said the launch event cost £8,800.
No fee was paid to SBTV, which uploaded a series of three behind-the-scenes videos to its platform with more than one million subscribers on YouTube.
The song has now had more than 100,000 views on P Money’s own YouTube channel (said to be much higher than the DfE’s usual organic figures) as well as almost 90,000 views on SBTV’s channel.
The partnerships contributed to a 171 per cent increase in the number of users of the apprenticeship website in January to March compared to the same period last year, from 300,380 to 814,991, and a 180 per cent rise in sessions, from 385,998 to 1,079,207.
An extra 270,000 people were also reached through YouTube and Instagram.
A DfE spokesperson said: “This campaign was designed to directly appeal to young people and their parents to showcase the huge range and diversity of apprenticeships on offer.
“The success of this campaign shows that by thinking differently, whether it’s by using grime artists or drones, you can successfully reach new audiences and open their minds to the idea that a life-changing apprenticeship could be right for them.”
In response to the FOI, the DfE added that it worked with partners it knew “young people, in particular, respond to, follow, trust and respect”.
For example, Edwards was selected as a digital influencer to increase reach and engagement for his “large and diverse” audience and background, which made him a “great fit” for the campaign.
The YouTube entrepreneur previously said he was “passionate about showing £1m rap collaboration sends apprenticeship site visits soaring young people that there are many ways to reach their potential” and that he hoped the track would “help get the message out” that apprenticeships are not just for trades such as plumbing and construction.
Seven apprentices volunteered to help record, produce and promote the song, working on sound and video production, drone engineering, logistics, lighting, hair styling, marketing and social media.
Their parents, teachers and employers also volunteered to take part.
Shola West, a 19-year-old level 3 digital marketing apprentice at WhiteHat Apprentice BAME Network, organised the launch party event, promoted it on Twitter and Instagram and recorded a voiceover for the Spotify advert as part of the Fire It Up campaign.
West previously told FE Week it was a “great experience” because it showed she was able to put the skills developed during her apprenticeship into practice.
She called the opportunity to work with Edwards and P Money “really exciting” and added that her involvement made the digital marketing apprentice consider working in creative industries in the future.
The Fire It Up campaign was first launched in January last year. The latest phase started in January 2020 and will run until the end of this month, which is considered a key application and recruitment period.
This evening the apprenticeships and skills minister, Gillian Keegan, wrote to all FE and sixth form colleges in England. Read the letter in full below, or download it from here.
Dear Colleagues,
I wanted to take the time to write to you and thank you for all of your hard work and continued commitment during what I know is a very difficult time.
We are facing an unprecedented challenge and I recognise that as teachers and leaders working to provide education and support to learners in your institutions, you are on the frontline of our national effort.
UK COVID-19 response
I appreciate that the decision announced by the Secretary of State on Wednesday 18 March, that FE providers should stop classroom delivery from 23 March, other than for vulnerable young people and dependents of critical workers, will have a huge impact on you as college leaders, as well as your staff members and learners.
I have already heard some hugely impressive stories on how colleges and other providers across the country are reacting – including using online resources to continue to deliver education for your learners, offering support to schools in your areas and establishing crucial communications channels with learners and parents. These illustrate how you are pulling together with ingenuity at this time and typify the spirit that runs through our brilliant further education sector. I’d like to thank you for all the work you have put in so far and for all that is surely to come in the coming weeks.
Funding
I understand that, alongside your priority to deliver learning and care for your students, the situation we are in does carry financial implications for many institutions. I am aware of some of the issues you are facing, including those raised by the Association of Colleges in a letter to the Secretary of State on 17 March, and we are working hard to mitigate this impact as much as we can. The Chancellor has also announced a series of wider measures to support employers and employees, recognising the significant impacts caused by COVID-19.
I can confirm that the ESFA will continue to pay grant funded providers their scheduled monthly payments for the remainder of the year. Your allocations for 2020/21 will have been confirmed by the end of March, and payments will be made as scheduled. I hope this can provide you with the funding certainty you require as you seek to address the impact of responding to COVID-19.
Because of the activity-based funding model for apprenticeships specifically and independent training providers generally, we are urgently looking at the impact of the current disruption and how we can help to mitigate that. For other funding streams, we will be making decisions on where existing rules and models may need to be modified in relation to any planned reconciliation and future year allocations.
For colleges in significant financial difficulties, the existing support arrangements remain in place including emergency funding. Please do speak to your ESFA territorial team about this.
We are also working on more detailed operational guidance, which will be circulated as soon as possible.
Alternatives arrangements for exams
You will also be aware that we have taken the difficult decision to cancel all exams due to take place in schools and colleges in England this summer. This is not a decision we have taken lightly, and we know that this will be disappointing for students who have been working hard towards these exams. So that we can ensure students can progress to the next stage of their lives, including going onto university, further study or an apprenticeship this autumn, we have been working closely with the exam boards and qualifications regulator Ofqual to put in place alternative arrangements.
There are a very wide range of different vocational and technical qualifications as well as other academic qualifications for which students were expecting to sit exams this summer. These are offered by a large number of awarding organisations and have differing assessment approaches – in many cases students will already have completed modules or non-exam assessment which could provide evidence to award a grade. We are encouraging these organisations to show the maximum possible flexibility and pragmatism to ensure students are not disadvantaged.
Ofqual is working urgently with the exam boards to set out proposals for how this process will work and will be talking to teachers’ representatives before finalising an approach, to ensure that the approach taken is as fair as possible. For more details please read our news story. More information will be provided as soon as possible.
Support
In terms of other avenues of support at the moment, Richard Atkins the FE Commissioner (FEC) and his team of highly experienced Deputy FECs and FE Advisers have offered their services to college leaders that would like to talk through plans, concerns and issues. Our pool of National Leaders of Governance (NLGs) also stand ready to offer any support they can. If you would like to arrange a phone conversation between yourself and a member of the FEC team or an NLG, please do email FEC.OPERATIONS@education.gov.uk.
Communication with the sector.
I recognise that the current situation is throwing up queries and concerns that many of you are working through and my officials are already speaking regularly with provider bodies including The Association of Colleges, and with unions, to make sure we are alive to the issues that you are all facing and the questions that you have. I am also in contact with representatives of the sector on the impact of COVID-19 and will continue to engage over the coming weeks.
To help maintain the flow of information and ensure we are alive to the issues affecting you all, I would encourage you to keep in touch and raise any queries via your ESFA territorial team.
We are certainly in an extraordinary situation and I am extremely grateful for the huge amount of work being done across the sector to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on our staff, students and institutions.
Yours sincerely,
Gillian Keegan, Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills
A north-west England university technical college has become the latest of its type to move towards joining a multi-academy trust – but this time the tables have turned.
The leader of UTC Warrington, Lee Barber, has been appointed by the North West Academies Trust (NWAT) to be the interim headteacher of Rudheath Senior Academy, following the resignation of its second headteacher in as many years.
Rudheath, which teaches pupils aged 11 to 16, joined NWAT 18 months ago following a fire that burned down half the school, and its departure from University of Chester Academies Trust, which collapsed in 2018 after forecasting a £3 million deficit.
This marks a rare example of a successful UTC supporting a multi-academy trust (MAT) with a struggling school. MATs have traditionally come to the aid of at-risk UTCs in the past.
UTC Warrington, which teaches students aged 14 to 19 and specialises in science, engineering and cyber, is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted.
Barber said, although Rudheath is also rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, it “has suffered significant turbulence, fallen on tough times and needs some strong leadership and management”.
While discussing with NWAT the opportunity for UTC Warrington to join the trust, the idea of Barber working across both schools “seemed like an obvious start to a strong future partnership,” he said.
While he splits his time between the two, the UTC’s vice principal Amanda Downing has become associate principal and conducts the day-today running, though Barber insists he is still “proactively” involved at Warrington, and staff at both providers are supporting one another.
Barber says that as Rudheath’s curriculum is very academically focused, the UTC is taking the opportunity to inject some technical education into its provision.
The school’s students have gone to the UTC for engineering and construction taster days. There is even talk of the UTC delivering specialist GCSEs for Rudheath from September.
The boards of NWAT and the academy will be discussing the UTC possibly joining the trust in the coming weeks and months, Barber said.
The chief executive of NWAT, Steve Docking, called this a “great opportunity” for both organisations to benefit from working together and sharing resources.
He also believes the partnership will strengthen their work ensuring “every student deserves the best possible education”.
UTCs that have been brought into MATs following academic or financial difficulty include Sir Charles Kao UTC, which joined the Burnt Mill Academy Trust and rebranded itself the BMAT STEM Academy in May 2018.
After Ofsted slapped it with a grade 4 in its first-ever inspection, UTC Swindon joined the Activate Learning Education Trust in 2017, which also includes UTCs in Reading, Oxfordshire and at Heathrow.
UTC Bolton was told to join a MAT in March 2018 when it was issued with a notice to improve because the Education & Skills Funding Agency found it had “inadequate” financial controls. It was announced last month UTC Bolton would be joining The Keys Federation MAT and renaming itself the University Collegiate School.
UTC founder and former education secretary Lord Baker has previously warned that UTCs would be “watered down” if they joined a MAT.
Speaking at a public accounts committee hearing on Monday, the Department for Education’s permanent secretary Jonathan Slater said that around 30 UTCs will be part of a MAT in the next year. There are nearly 60 UTCs open in England.
A university technical college has pulled itself out of ‘inadequate’, while two other FE providers, including an accountancy giant, slumped to the lowest rating this week.
Health Futures UTC has been given a grade three, nearly two years after the 14 to 19 provider was hit with a grade four.
Inspectors said it was previously “not clear” that the college had a health focus, but students are now in “no doubt” it aims to provide a career in health-related industries.
The reception area is “flanked by mannequins dressed as paramedics and surgeons,” the report reads, and at key stage 4, students study health and social care alongside English, maths and science.
While this provider escaped a grade four, others were less successful: Shrewsbury Colleges Group told FE Week it would be appealing after Ofsted dropped it from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’ this week, because it found “not all students feel safe”.
Meanwhile, one of the ‘big four’ accountancy firms, KPMG, was also slapped with the grade for a lack of unbiased careers advice and poor support for high needs learners with dyslexia for its 933 apprentices who all work in the civil service.
Fellow independent provider B-Skill Limited was branded ‘requires improvement’ for its provision to 274 adult learners and 423 apprentices, as while all of them “demonstrate a keenness to learn and take pride in their work”, the report said “too many” apprentices do not receive their full off-the-job training entitlement.
After avoiding losing its contracts after a grade four report in 2018, DV8 Training (Brighton) Limited has improved to ‘requires improvement’ in a report published this week.
While the great majority of students, of which DV8 has 178, complete their studies, “too many” do not attend lessons and when they do, they often arrive late.
Leaders were pulled up on this as it was an area for improvement from their last inspection, but inspectors did report progress had been made in improving the quality of education.
Cherith Simmons Learning & Development LLP made ‘insufficient progress’ in all areas of a monitoring visit as no apprentices have completed their qualifications, despite passing their end dates.
Leaders and managers “did not understand the need for end-point assessment to be completed by the planned learning end date” for apprentices commencing programmes before August 2019”, inspectors found.
They “expected this to take place after apprentices complete their planned training”.
Doncaster Conferences, Catering and Events Limited made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of an early monitoring visit: leaders and managers do not enrol apprentices onto “sufficiently challenging” programmes, instead requiring them to complete specific courses irrespective of prior experience.
New independent specialist provider The Michael Tippett College made ‘significant progress’ in an early monitoring visit of its provision to 30 students.
Leaders were commended for their “enterprising actions” in developing provision: they have put in a café where students can learn catering skills and set up pop-up outlets in the local community for students to sell products.
Phoenix4Training LLP made ‘reasonable progress’ in two areas of a monitoring visit conducted after it made ‘insufficient progress’ in safeguarding at a previous one.
Since then, leaders and managers have “worked quickly and effectively to correct and deal with concerns identified” and have established relevant policies and procedures.
Waltham Forest College, which this week revealed to FE Week it was due a diagnostic assessment from the FE Commissioner, had a monitoring visit after concerns were raised about its culture of safeguarding and its responses to notified concerns.
Inspectors found a “suitable” culture of safeguarding, but a few staff were dissatisfied with the outcomes, so decided to air their grievances outside established procedures.
UTC Sheffield City Centre achieved a grade two this week, its second consecutive one, because of a “well thought through” curriculum and because the provider “understands its specialist character well” and students are drawn to it in the hopes of becoming engineers or digital designers.
Hertfordshire County Council also kept hold of its grade two, after senior leaders acted “very swiftly” to further education colleges reducing local provision, by opening three new area.
Teachers at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, which has maintained its ‘good’ rating, structure classes “very well” to build on what learners know, and learners “demonstrate high levels of motivation and are keen to share their enthusiasm”.
Caroline Pauling and Equestrian Training Limited both made ‘reasonable progress’ in every area of an early monitoring visit.
Our bread and butter, as thriving knowledge-based organisations, are about serving the qualifications and assessment needs of thousands of learners and apprentices in both the UK and overseas.
Without general qualifications, such as GCSEs and A-Levels, young people and adults would struggle to progress in their lives. And without applied generals, apprenticeships, vocational awards and other types of work-based end-point assessments, whole sectors of the economy would grind to halt. In short, our work is all about providing the supply of occupationally competent people for a complex workforce.
We have been working in lockstep with the key statutory agencies
A shut-down of the active labour market is what is now unfolding.
Which is why this is such an unprecedented crisis. It has huge ramifications for the entire education and skills sector. Even during the Blitz the government managed to keep the schools open. People went to work. In the long history of national summer examinations, the government has never felt the compulsion to cancel them.
Since the crisis of Covid-19 first broke, the Federation of Awarding Bodies has been forced into non-stop contingency planning mode. Every single aspect of the AO and EPAO ecosystem is being ripped up as we think about mitigating ways in which we can keep the show on the road.
This is proving very difficult. Our industry is renowned for being both high-tech and high-touch. People –learners and employers – are at the heart of everything we do.
I’m proud of the way our industry has stepped up to the challenge.
The CEOs of awarding bodies and EPAOs have dropped everything to help guide government officials with understanding the front-line impact of coronavirus. FAB and many of my colleagues have been working in lockstep with the key statutory agencies to produce comprehensive guidance on everything from special dispensations for learners who are forced to take a break in their apprenticeships, to how to conduct a valid end-point assessment remotely.
We have set up a Covid-19 web page with a dedicated webinar
People working in the sector are looking to their peak-level representative bodies like never before
to represent and support them. At FAB we have set up a dedicated COVID-19 web page for AOs and EPAOs to access all the up-to-date information they will need. This will include dedicated webinar and linking all responsible officers with FAB, via WhatsApp.
We are bringing forward our pre-existing plans of becoming a best-in-class digital trade association by moving all of our training programmes and events online over the coming weeks. As a virtual organisation our staff already work mainly from home. We’ve invested in smart teleworking technology like HiHi2, which gives us a streamlined and integrated way of communicating across our business.
It also means we can do some morale boosting things like coffee catch-ups on video and sharing stories about a menagerie of pets (mainly cats).
As the total lock-down of our society looms, now, more than ever, is the time to promote a real sense of community and to be there for one another.
We owe our staff, students and other stakeholders good leadership – but remember to show a human face as well
If there’s one word that sums up the challenge facing educational institutions in the current environment it’s uncertainty. There’s a lot of it around and a lack of clarity makes it hard to know what is the best action to take.
At this time, the most important thing that will reduce uncertainty is good communication. Students, parents, staff and other stakeholders are looking for leadership from your institution on how the emerging situation affects them.
More importantly, they want a human response. Think about those with concerns or who will be anxious, or disappointed. How does the 15-year-old teenager feel when they realise they have unwittingly left school for the last time?
In my work across different education sectors (primary, secondary, FE and HE), I’ve been offering support and developing plans for this situation over a few weeks now. The following are my five key steps to help your communications reduce uncertainty.
1. Be clear and truthful
Choose your words carefully People need to hear a clear message, using a few carefully chosen words. For example, state that your site, campus or office is closed to everyone for the foreseeable future. Detail any exceptions, provide contact details and explain alternative ways that support or services can be accessed.
The purpose is to avoid students or staff turning up in person. Consider how humiliating it would be for already anxious students to arrive at a locked building because they didn’t understand the clever phrase you’d come up with.
Captain ‘Sully’ Sullenberger was genius at this. You’ll remember he was the pilot who landed his Airbus A320 in New York’s Hudson River. His message to 155 passengers was clear and simple: “This is the Captain. Brace for impact.”
Explaining this choice of words in a Tweet, he said: “I wanted to sound confident because I knew courage can be contagious. In our aviation vocabulary there are certain single words that are rich with meaning. ‘Brace’ is such a word. And I chose the word ‘impact’ to give passengers and crew alike a vivid image of what to expect.”
2. Be accessible, be visible
The worst thing that an institution can do is to appear to be hiding from those who need support. You may not be able to resolve all of their concerns, but by being accessible and visible, you provide a human contact, which in itself is reassuring. That may be through email or other digital channels, answering the phone or in person. Take the time to listen to concerns, show empathy and ensure those you talk with feel informed and involved.
3. Keep communicating
Planned, regular communication is really important. Let your stakeholders know what information they can expect and when. Include a date and time when publishing or circulating information. Things are changing rapidly so share up-to-date information, and ensure anyone reading it knows when it was updated.
Your choice of communication channels (email, text, Messenger, social media, website, telephone or post) should depend on your audience. Don’t make assumptions. According to the UK Office of National Statistics one in eight 11-18 year olds can only access the internet at home using a mobile phone – and a large number of others have no way of getting online at home.
4. Keep yourself and others updated
Curate relevant information for your audiences. Bournemouth & Poole College does this with a dedicated COVID-19 page on its website. It provides links to official government and health websites plus FAQs for complex information. Chunking information into easily digestible segments makes relevant information quick and easy to find.
5. Keep the media close
Understandably, COVID-19 is currently the only story in town and journalists are looking for every angle to cover it.
Check that emails or texts couldn’t be misconstrued if leaked to the media.
Watch out for potential disgruntled parents or students, as the press like such stories.
Remind staff of who to contact should there be any media enquiries and of relevant policies on media relations.
Engage positively (when possible) if contacted by the media – they can be valuable when you’re trying to engage your community
FE Week meets a principal whose career has been defined by quiet consistency, and who has a few parting words for the sector’s leaders
It was a college principal who suggested I go and interview John Clarke, the retiring boss at Southport College in Merseyside and FE career veteran of 35 years. I’d asked for suggestions for interviewees, prompting the tongue-in-cheek response that Clarke was “worth celebrating” since he’d managed to “leave FE without a scandal – how many can say that?”, winky emoji face, etc. I was intrigued.
Speaking to Clarke, who confesses to keeping his “head below the parapet” during his career, it becomes clear why his record is both well-respected and super-clean – the man strikes you as especially modest. Despite years on leadership teams, there’s not a whiff of authoritarianism about him and, as it turns out, a dislike of overly hierarchical and rule-bound environments is a defining part of his personal character and professional motivation. In fact, an aversion to the same almost kept him out of FE altogether.
1st year at Watford Grammar School, 1966
It was 1981 and Clarke was doing well. He’d just completed a PGCE specialising in adult literacy at the University of Leicester after three years as a community arts worker in Liverpool. But Clarke’s trainee experience in colleges, following the creative, grassroots engagement he was used to, left him cold. “I decided I’d never work in an FE college in my life. They were too stuffy, too bureaucratic. The staff room was dominated by filing cabinets and people didn’t seem to speak to each other. The culture put me off. I swore I wouldn’t.” He quickly follows this up by saying that perception was probably his own fault, being young and unused to paperwork. But on one point he remains firm. “It was massively overregulated.”
Clarke himself had had a fairly free existence, born in Ripon in Yorkshire to a father in the RAF, before settling with his parents and younger sister in north London. His father re-trained as a civil servant and his mother was a housewife. “I grew up in a settled, middle-class existence.” A clear memory sticks out from primary school. “One day we were escorted to the gym but I don’t think we were told what we were doing. We took a test and I think we might have been the last year that did the 11-plus.”
At first the young Clarke didn’t find friends at Watford Grammar School For Boys, which he describes as “setting itself up like a public school” with the teachers all in gowns. But by sixth form he was enjoying himself and won a place to read history at Churchill College, Cambridge – a college set up to take in state-educated children. “I was overawed that I was mixing with a lot of people from public school. What struck me was their confidence in themselves.”
It was there that he heard about a scheme in Liverpool working with disadvantaged young people and adults. On his final day at Cambridge, Clarke didn’t look back.
“Community development was recognised as a profession. That has gone by the board now”
“It was almost literally the day after I graduated. I didn’t go home. I got on the coach up to Liverpool.” He had a job in arts engagement on the local authority’s “community council”, a long-gone late-70s Labour Party initiative. “It was when community development was still recognised as a profession. All that has gone by the board now.”
Clarke’s speech picks up speed as he describes with quiet passion the three years he says had a “massive influence on me, in terms of my thinking in further education”. Nearby Toxteth had one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and riots broke out shortly after Clarke left. “I’d studied history and sociology, and I arrived on this estate where virtually no one had gone to university. But I very quickly realised I was mixing with people as intelligent and able as the students I’d mixed with at university and from public schools. That sounds like a strange thing to realise, as obviously I understood the concept of disadvantage, but it was such a stark thing.”
Trying to provide better opportunities has driven Clarke ever since, using the style he learnt on the community council – “engage and involve people, allow them to shape some of what they’re doing”.
Pictured with Swedish partner(s) in an educational transnational European project led by Bolton Community Educational Service, 1996
Still he stayed away from colleges, doing his PGCE but becoming an area youth worker in Oxford for four years, instead of becoming a lecturer. Eventually, he inched a bit closer to them. He took a job running a community education centre at Bolton College in Greater Manchester – almost, but not fully, inside the machinery of the FE sector. “It was a halfway house,” he laughs. “One of the big motivating factors for people, if you leave aside monetary rewards, is having control over what you do and freedom to take responsibility. Because I was working at the community end of things at Bolton, I did have some freedom, so that was good.”
Then incorporation of further education colleges arrived in 1993. Bolton College was removed from the local authority but councillors weren’t keen to lose the community education centre. “The council was very proud of it, and they decided they didn’t want it to go with the college. We thrived in the 90s.” Clarke led on European projects looking at adult education abroad and also helped set up a higher education access course at his centre. Bolton College, meanwhile, “hit the financial buffers”. By the end of the decade David Collins, who later became the FE commissioner and was then head of South Cheshire College, was brought in to save the situation. The first of two significant mergers in Clarke’s life was about to begin.
“He had a plan to bring the local sixth-form college and community education into the FE college.” The sixth-form college never joined, but Clarke soon found himself on the top team at the college as quality manager and then director of adult and community services. “I suppose it was the two or three hardest years of my life, because you were trying to turn around a college with big problems. But it worked.” It also brought to an end a division Clarke had always had concerns about – the separation of adult education from 16-19 further education. They belong together, he says.
It is perhaps ironic that the college in which Clarke found the greatest inspiration was run by a hierarchical and brilliant leader, John Smith at Burnley College in Lancashire. Here, as assistant principal under Smith, rules took on their proper meaning for Clarke. “I had huge respect for John. Personality-wise he was very resolute, he took no prisoners, and he was hugely driven. It was very hierarchical in lots of ways, it was very structured. But ultimately his view was, you have to give people the freedom to move on from the structures so they have the space to implement their own ideas. He had a saying: ‘You can manage people to be good, but they have to want to become excellent’.”
Graduation from Cambridge University with BA Honours in History, 1977
It was Smith who encouraged Clarke to apply for principal at Southport College. He has led it for almost nine years, and is currently handing the reins over to new college principal, Michelle Brabner. The college’s most recent Ofsted came out this Wednesday, with glowing references in particular to the merger Clarke spearheaded with the local sixth-form provision, the King George V College. The report reveals Clarke’s steady hand: “managers have introduced a more rigorous approach”, “senior leaders have made significant progress”, and more. But Clarke clearly sees the overall ‘good’ grade, which both establishments had already, as a modest achievement. Twice he mentions that he regrets not taking the college to ‘outstanding’ for the community, like his most admired mentor. He notes without a sense of martyrdom the huge effort required by a merger: “It might be the right thing to do morally, educationally and business-wise, but it probably distracted us for a year.”
“More than schools and universities, we are subject to a plethora of regulation”
For someone who has achieved so much, and worked so hard for others, Clarke is seriously unboastful about those facts. He says he has changed his view from that held in his youth, when he was “naïve to think I could make a difference to whole communities – I’ve scaled that down to making a difference to individuals.”
But he holds one conviction which has only deepened throughout his years in FE. “We’re still a massively overregulated sector.” The other day Clarke’s finance manager worked out that there are about 24 funding streams for colleges to struggle with. He presses his point home to me. “More than schools and universities, we are subject to a plethora of regulation. Someone, somewhere, has to simplify the regulation in FE.”
The sector has been lucky to have this even-tempered (and scandal-free) person. Let’s hope ministers listen to his parting words.
