Plans to place limits on apprenticeship providers described as ‘absurd’

The founder of one of the largest providers in the country has hit out at plans by the Education and Skills Funding Agency to limit the amount of apprenticeships cash he and other providers can earn.

John Hyde, who also co-founded the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said it would be “absurd” to introduce funding caps while billions remained unspent.

His remarks followed the announcement earlier this week by Keith Smith, the ESFA’s director of apprenticeships, that the agency intended to introduce a “financial cap in terms of how much we say you’ll be able to earn in the system” – which would apply to all providers, not just new ones.

FE Week contacted a number of the biggest apprenticeship providers for their views on the proposals.

Mr Hyde, chair of HIT Training, which had an apprenticeship allocation of almost £24 million in 2017/18, said he could “understand the rationale for doing this” but “if we’ve spent up to our cap then employers are going to walk away and look for other providers”.

The caps would have to be transparent, and made publicly available alongside information about any underspend, he said.

“It’s absurd to cap people if they have, as they do at the moment, £2 billion sitting around and not being used,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Learning Curve Group, which had apprenticeships allocations worth £7.6 million in 2017/18, said a cap on funding was useful “only if it is linked to quality and performance”.

“Care will need to be taken when implementing any cap scheme to ensure that large employers which use their levy-funding to scale are not prevented to choosing providers best-placed to deliver the best results,” he said.

Neither Lifetime Training, which had an allocation of £30 million last year, nor Babcock, which had funding worth £28.7 million, was able to respond to FE Week ahead of publication.

Mark Dawe, AELP chief executive, urged the ESFA to “adopt a risk-based approach” to introducing the caps.

“The final employer-driven model should allow employers of all sizes to freely choose a quality provider and not stifle the growth of innovative and responsive providers,” he said.

Speaking at the AELP autumn conference in Manchester on Tuesday, Mr Smith gave no detail of how any funding limits would be set or applied, and instead said the agency would be testing the approach.

“We’re going to work with you as a sector over the coming weeks to help us to identify what’s the best way to do that,” he said.

Their introduction is intended to ensure that “we have a process and a system to manage the way that organisations can be funded”, with a particular focus on new providers.

“It’s not intended to stop really super-big providers from becoming super-big, but it is there to control risk to a certain extent and it is there to control quality,” he said.

He insisted the plans were not “driven by any individual circumstances”, including the recent collapse of mega-provider Aspire Achieve Advance, leaving 4,500 apprentices and 1,500 employers without a training provider.

However, Meg Hillier, chair of the influential Commons public accounts committee, said the plans were a sign that the agency was starting to learn the lessons from both that and previous failures – including last year’s Learndirect debacle.

It also follows the collapse of First4Skills in March 2017, which held an annual £15 million apprenticeship allocation and trained as many as 6,500 apprentices a year.

“Frankly they were right in their face, thanks to some of the good work you [FE Week] did. Two big problems in the space of a year,” she said.

These problems were “foreseeable”, but “now at least they’re doing something about it”, she said.

“The limit itself may not be a complete panacea. It may be a start but there’s a lot of risks about how it may be implemented,” Ms Hillier said.

ESFA to launch new apprenticeship vacancy tool for employers

A new tool to let employers directly post apprenticeship vacancies is being launched by the Education and Skills Agency.

From this month, levy paying employers with an apprenticeship service account will find a ‘recruitment’ link on their account homepage, which will give direct access to the ‘recruit an apprentice’ tool.

The service will let employers create and post apprenticeship vacancies and manage any applications they receive, and aims to have all vacancies either posted or returned for amendments within 24 hours of them being submitted.

The Apprenticeships 2020 Vision guidance first laid out plans for the tool, but initially intended for it to be launched “by February 2016”.

It said: “We already offer ‘Find an Apprenticeship’ as a free online recruitment tool for employers to advertise for and fill their apprenticeship vacancies and for potential apprentices to look for and apply for opportunities.

“We are developing this further so that by February 2016 employers will be able to post their own vacancies on the system, working with education and training providers where they want to.”

However, in order to use the tool, employers must already have a relationship with a training provider.

The ESFA blog said this was because “user research” with potential candidates had shown that “individuals want to see which training provider will be delivering the apprenticeship”.

In order to post a vacancy, employers are “required to have a relationship with a training provider”.

Once submitted, vacancies will be “quality checked within 24 hours and are either posted, or returned for amendments and review”.

The recruitment tool comes on the heels of the ESFA’s new employer review feature.

The new Trip Advisor-style system allows employers to rank training providers and leave feedback on their strengths and weaknesses.

Employers that do not pay the apprenticeship levy and do not have an account on the apprenticeship service can still post their vacancies on Recruit an apprentice, either with the support of their training provider or by contacting the National Apprenticeship Service on 08000 150 600.

 

Ofsted slams private sector giant BPP for being unaware of the ‘slow progress’ apprentices make

A huge private university is expected to be banned from recruiting new apprentices after Ofsted warned it was making ‘insufficient progress’, mainly by managers being unaware of the “slow progress” learners make.

BPP University, part of the global BPP Professional Education Group, was criticised in its early monitoring visit report for making poor headway in ensuring it meets the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision.

Inspectors found that leaders and managers “do not have access to timely, accurate or reliable data on apprentices’ progress” and as a result do not have “sufficient oversight” of apprentices’ progress.

Managers were described as being “too reliant on subjective information from assessors on the progress of their apprentices, which at times misrepresents the slow progress that apprentices make”. 

Although BPP managers were said to “make clear to employers the importance of this off-the-job component”, inspectors found that “a minority of apprentices” employed by different companies said they “found it difficult to identify time to be release from work commitments”.

The university has around 15,000 students studying law, business and technology, nursing and health. BPP University turnover in 2017 was £85m, as one of many subsidiary companies to AP VIII Queso Holdings, based in the USA.

The Ofsted visit focused specifically on apprentices on programmes from level two to level five in professional vocational areas including legal, insurance, financial services and technology. At the time of the visit on September 26, BPP University had 350 apprentices aged 16 to 18 and 900 adults on apprenticeship programmes.

Too reliant on subjective information from assessors

The monitoring visit also said that “too many apprentices make slow progress”, with a “significant minority” failing to submit assignments on time. Assessors were also criticised for taking too long to intervene when an apprentice falls behind and giving “superficial” feedback on work.

However, the report also commended several positive traits in the provision. Leaders were said to have a “clear vision” for the organisation and “very strong links” to a range of “high-profile employers in the City of London and beyond”.

Staff ensure the apprentices they recruit are suitable and will benefit from apprentices, and have put in place sound management and governance structures to oversee the organisation.

Despite criticisms, inspectors conceded that assessors do well to engage apprentices and have a “broad wealth of specialist knowledge”, with apprentices speaking highly of the “value” they gain from their sessions.

The university was also said to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in ensuring safeguarding measures were in place.

A spokesperson for BPP said the company had not yet been told whether it would be banned from taking on new starts, and that it would continue to recruit until told otherwise.

She said the report “on the whole is positive” and BPP was “disappointed” with the criticisms of inspectors, which she insisted “relate largely to systems that track the progress of apprentices”.

“Unfortunately, inspectors were not able to judge our new tracking system in its entirety, which is in the process of being implemented and which has been successfully installed in our other businesses,” she said.

“We are confident that when it is fully operational it will address Ofsted’s concerns and we look forward to the full inspection in the near future.”

BPP appears of the register of apprenticeship training provider four times. As well as BPP University, it has the approved providers of BPP Holdings, BPP Professional Education and BPP Actuarial Education.

So far, all 16 apprenticeship providers found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in at least one area up until October 11 have been barred from recruiting new apprentices until their next full inspection.

The Education and Skills Funding Agencies can overrule the ban, but only if it “identifies an exceptional extenuating circumstance”.

BPP University is the third university to receive a monitoring visit from Ofsted, but the first to have been rated ‘insufficient’.

 

 

DfE accused of wasting public money with new £10m ‘register of external experts’

The Department for Education will spend £10 million on 200 “external experts” to advise it on policy areas including university technical colleges, vocational education and sixth forms.

A tender document published this week reveals that the department is searching for organisations to join a “register of external experts”, made up of “individuals who have expertise and experience at a senior level in the education sector”.

In particular, the government is looking for experts in safeguarding, counter-extremism, free schools, university technical colleges, the curriculum and general education. The register will initially only include a maximum of 200 experts, but may be reopened in the future, the tender document states.

When FE Week enquired about the decision to have no FE-specific representation in the six categories, a DfE spokesperson claimed that the sector would be covered under “general educationalist”.

He said further tender documents state that this category has a subsection for FE and sixth forms, vocational education and studio schools.

Kevin Courtney (pictured), the joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said the planned £10 million register was a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“If the government’s education policy was coherent and well-thought-through, they would not need to throw taxpayers’ money away on experts employed to put a spin on the problems they have caused,” he said.

“To avoid yet more mistakes and to ensure that children and young people get an education system that works, the DfE should be seeking advice from the teaching profession.”

The government is likely to face particular criticism for its plans to spend even more money on advisers for free-school and UTC programmes, after FE Week’s sister paper FE Week revealed last year that the DfE spent almost £100 million on advice for these projects in just three years.

According to the tender document, the new register of external experts will encourage applications from those “with a broad range of experience and expertise” from across England’s nine regions.

However, appointment to the register will not guarantee the award of any work, but will allow advisers to “bid for specific work opportunities made available by the DfE”.

A DfE spokesperson defended the register.

“We are doing exactly as suggested – using experts from the education profession to support the department’s decision-making,” she said.

“We regularly use a range of education experts. This includes individuals with years of hands-on experience working as teachers and leaders within the education profession.

“This procurement will focus on securing important operational expertise at improved value for money.”

Bonfire of the qualifications – is that what’s next?

Take the politics out of funding vocational qualifications and trust in the technical expertise of the bodies that have been set up by parliament to regulate and fund them, urges Tom Bewick

Remember the “bonfire of the quangos”? In 2009, David Cameron pledged his future administration would put on a Guy Fawkes night to remember; as his coalition government set about reducing around 900 quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisations – the definition of a quango.

Nearly a decade on, the Institute for Government estimates that 600 “arms lengths bodies” still exist, with even more public bodies performing various technical functions. Brexit is expected to add many more. In other words, like an organisational phoenix rising from the ashes, we are pretty much back to square one.

Government also talks about reducing the number of vocational qualifications. One lever for achieving this aim is changing the rules around so-called section 96 funding, which sets out what qualifications the taxpayer will support. In the firing line is applied general qualifications, such as BTECs, as they will in future have to potentially compete with a new government backed level 3 qualification – T-levels.

And there is the rub. Both the Department for Education and Education Skills Funding Agency are conflicted in their respective roles. On the one hand, these bodies are responsible for developing and funding a new suite of technical qualification called T-levels; and on the other, civil servants have the role of recommending to ministers which existing qualifications should be considered as worthy of funding in future.

This is like the R&D department of a major company being handed the role of which successful products one of its major competitors should be forced to stop selling. The temptation will always be there to knock out a competitor’s products to help smooth the way for one of their own offerings. Which rather neatly brings us back to the bonfire analogy.

Cameron set three tests for the continued existence of a public body. These included whether they offered a precise regulatory or technical role (Ofqual would fall into this category); was it necessary for impartial decisions to be taken about the distribution of taxpayers’ money (ESFA fulfils these criterion); and does it fulfil a need for facts to be transparently determined, free from political interference (aspects of the role of the Institute for Apprenticeships would fulfil this requirement).

To date, we’ve seen no published principles or tests that the government will be using to judge whether a qualification deserves future funding or not. The department has told the awarding sector nothing about how it manages to handle such an obvious conflict of interest in its role of qualifications developer, in one guise, and qualifications funder on the other.

Like an organisational phoenix rising from the ashes, we are back to square one

If ministers were prepared to act in the public interest, they could learn from Cameron’s three tests. They should task Ofqual, the IFA and ESFA with establishing an independent reference panel to advise them on the future of section 96 funding. This would include not only technical experts on qualifications, but the consumers of the current system – employers and learners – who could help dispassionately work out what remains of value for taxpayer support and what might cease to sit on the funding framework in future.

It is worth highlighting that nearly 8,000 of the 12,751 VTQs who sit on the section 96 register were approved, after the Wolf Review, under the current government (England only).

The reason we see such a complex vocational qualifications landscape is because our country operates in a complex and highly segmented economy. Applied generals offer students career-focused education and progression onto an array of valuable routes. If they didn’t, the market would not support them.

Of course, we need a world-class technical route via T-Levels. Minster Anne Milton made that clear recently. But we also need to take the politics out of funding vocational qualifications and trust in the technical expertise of the bodies set up by parliament to regulate and fund them. The reason why the “bonfire of the quangos” experiment failed was because, in the end, society had a need for their existence. The same is true of many of our tried and tested vocational qualifications.

What does the budget mean for FE?

This was certainly not a budget for FE or education generally. No additional money was given or promised (apart from a token gesture for schools).

This is despite hard evidence that funding per pupil has been falling in real terms and that post-16 education has fared worse than any other area of education. The latest education spending review by the Institute for Fiscal Studies gives a comprehensive overview, focusing on FE in particular.

Falling funding has real consequences for learners, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We have shown this in relation to schools, with a scientific design that enables us to get at causal impacts of changes in expenditure on outcomes. Depressingly, we should expect educational outcomes to get worse in the future because of this neglect.

This is something the country can ill-afford to do. The OECD survey of adult skills (PIAAC) shows that England is one of the only countries where the skills of young adults are no better than those of their grandparents’ generation. How is the country supposed to cope with major challenges – Brexit, the desire for lower immigration, artificial intelligence and other new technologies – if it doesn’t increase investment in education and skills?

In FE, the answer can’t only be T-levels and apprenticeships. The former are aimed at those ready for level 3, whereas many school leavers are not (most of whom go to FE colleges).

The latter are supposed only to be for those making the transition from school to the labour market or for those training for a completely new job. Research by Steve McIntosh and Damon Morris at the Centre for Vocational Education Research shows that apprenticeships are more beneficial (in terms of future earnings) for younger people than for those already established in the workforce.

In FE, the answer can’t only be T-levels and apprenticeships

Furthermore, there are many people who need training, for whom an apprenticeship is not a suitable vehicle or who are not eligible for one. It is well established that adult training has been falling generally (see work by Francis Green and CVER).

It would be good to see more creative thinking about how to increase skills in the workforce through other policies. For example, the treasury could create incentives for training through human capital tax credits, as they do with tax credits for research and development. A CVER briefing note has made that case.

The budget did have something to say about apprenticeships. Small and medium-sized enterprises will now have to contribute 5 per cent to the direct costs of apprenticeships rather than 10 per cent (with the government paying the rest). This does seem a move in the right direction. However, government support only covers the direct cost of off-the-firm training. But as Hilary Steedman points out in a CVER paper about car services, technical apprenticeships make heavy demands on small firms. Even funding the full direct costs of off-the-firm training would not be enough on its own.

The budget has also made provision for large firms to transfer some of the support they receive (though digital training accounts) to firms in their supply chain – increasing this from 10% to 25% of their allocation. It will be interesting to see how many firms actually make use of this sharing facility.

To the extent that this provides incentives for employer cooperation that goes beyond a (rather limited) transfer of government support, this might prove worthwhile. Otherwise, it seems rather inefficient and obtuse compared with a direct mechanism for which any non-levy payer might apply for additional government support from unused levy funds.

Why is the sector celebrating greater dependence on the public purse?

In the past, the government paid 50 per cent of the costs towards the training of apprentices aged 19 and over.

This rose to 67 per cent during the trailblazer pilot, then it rose again to 90 per cent in May 2017 once the new system was rolled out across England.

Now, to stimulate more demand from smaller employers, it is to rise to 95 per cent, in a surprise policy change announced by the Treasury this week.

In practice, this means employers will be contributing just five per cent of the costs towards apprentices for all new and existing staff, at all levels from two to seven.

Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers was “ecstatic” at the decision.

It certainly is a significant concession, although AELP had been campaigning for the complete scrapping of employer fees and only at level two and three.

My own view is that reducing employer fees just 18 months into the programme is a mistake for four reasons:

1. Most providers admit that the employer co-investment requirement isn’t the biggest problem holding back starts. When surveyed, just 14 per cent of delegates at the AELP autumn conference this week said it was the biggest problem, compared with 37 per cent for the off-the-job training requirement. And, where fees are found to be holding back starts, what evidence is there that halving a £500 fee to £250 would change employer behaviour?

2. Tinkering with the co-investment fee damages the benefits of stability in the system, something most in the sector claim to want. It sends the message that, if employers hold out a little longer, the government will simply drop the fee all together.

3. Shifting the funding balance further away from fees in this way makes providers more dependent on public money for survival. Surely no business would want more eggs in that basket at present? It’s also forcing providers to turn away income from fees to be replaced with government funds, something the National Audit Office calls “dead weight”.

4. Management courses for existing staff become even cheaper for employers. For example, an £18,000 MBA employer fee will fall from £1,800 to just £900. Nobody can explain to me why the public paying the remaining £17,100 is good value for money. If the ESFA wants to be sure a fee cut will stimulate demand, they should simply pilot it at the lower levels in sectors with a high proportion of small employers, such as hospitality and childcare. It would also be wise, as with most price cuts designed to stimulate sales, to call it a promotional offer that lasts for a limited period.

There are also critical details about the fee cut that have yet to be determined.

Such as when it would apply from and whether it would include levy-paying employers without funds in their account.

Employers should be willing to pay for high-quality training and history has shown that virtually giving it away has never ended well.

Ofsted boss backs calls for more 16-to-18 cash to combat falling standards

Ofsted’s chief inspector has offered her “strong view” that 16-to-18 funding should be increased in the forthcoming spending review, after inspections found a lack of cash has directly led to falling standards in FE.

Amanda Spielman (pictured) backed sector calls for more money in a letter to the Public Accounts Committee, dated October 30, which talked about what Ofsted considers to be “major risks” to the quality of education.

She said that while it “is true to say that spending per pupil in primary and secondary schools has increased significantly in real terms since the early 1990s”, the same is “not true for further education and skills spending”.

The chief inspector then reiterated her view that the “real-term cuts to FES funding are affecting the sustainability and quality of FES provision”, but for the first time said this was now “based on our inspection evidence”, and called on the government to take action.

“My strong view is that the government should use the forthcoming spending review to increase the base rate for 16 to 18 funding,” she concluded.

Ms Spielman’s remarks follow disappointment across the sector that this week’s Budget from chancellor Phillip Hammond offered no more funding for FE.

This was despite a national ‘Colleges Week’ campaign, which involved a march on parliament, and the launch of the ‘Raise the Rate’ campaign. Both called for an initial funding increase for sixth form education of £200 per student.

FE Week asked Ofsted for the evidence the chief inspector was referring to in her letter. The watchdog pointed us towards three reports – one from 2016, which rated the college as‘outstanding’, and two from 2015, where both providers were rated ‘good’.

All three spoke briefly about stretched resources, but none actually said quality had reduced because of funding issues.

“Individual inspection reports may not detail examples where quality has been directly affected by funding as that is not part of the framework,” a spokesperson said.

“However the chief inspector’s comments are based on the aggregation of our inspection evidence, our published reports and our insights.”

She added: “Many colleges are in a fragile financial situation, as reflected by the number that are currently in financial intervention or receiving exceptional financial support.

“Over time our evidence shows that many colleges have reduced the teaching time allocated to some programmes of study, reduced the number of teaching and/or support staff employed, reduced the number of courses offered and reduced the amount of enrichment or extracurricular activity provided. These measures all have an impact on the
provision offered.”

Ms Spielman has previously admitted that colleges “have the biggest funding challenge” and said that Ofsted has seen “disappointing outcomes” in FE.

During her speech at the launch of the Ofsted annual report in December 2017, she said that the “sector will continue to struggle” without an increase in the base rate funding for this age group.

The report showed that the overall ratings at general FE colleges plummeted for the third year running, and that just 69 per cent of them were rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ in 2017.

The sector can expect Ms Spielman to say more on the struggles that FE is facing because of a lack of funding in Ofsted’s forthcoming annual report for 2018, which is due out on December 4.

A report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies last month found government funding for 16-to 18-year-olds has been cut “much more sharply” than funding for pupils in pre-school, primary, secondary or higher education.

The base rate for all 16-18-year-old students has been cut twice since 2010 and frozen at £4,000 per student, per year since 2013.

The ‘Raise the Rate’ campaign, led by the Sixth Form Colleges Association, wants funding to increase to £4,760 per student in the spending review, which is taking place next year.

Principal steps down at college group to ‘expedite’ government bailout

The head of a college in severe financial trouble has resigned from his post with immediate effect to “expedite” its government bailout.

An email, seen by FE Week, was sent to staff at Cornwall College Group yesterday announcing that the board of governors had accepted the resignation of Raoul Humphreys (pictured).

It is understood that an all staff meeting will take place today.

The email, from chair of the board Ian Tunbridge, said Mr Humphreys has “led the college through a challenging time to a point where its finances are significantly improved”, and thanked him for his “unstinting commitment”.

It also included a message from Mr Humphreys, who has been at the college for 24 years and took over as principal and chief executive in April 2017, who said he was “proud of the contribution that I have made in leading the college’s recent financial recovery and getting close to finalising a re-financing package through the Fresh Start programme.

“To expedite this process, I have decided to step down with immediate effect to allow a new team to implement the next phase of the college’s development.”

Mr Humphreys took over the top job following the resignation of the former principal Amarjit Basi in July 2016. Mr Basi received a pay out of over £200,000 when he left his post, despite his premiership being plagued by troubles including financial warnings from the government and staff redundancies.

Cornwall College Group received £3.5 million in emergency government funding in December 2017, after it ended the year with £2.25 million less in the bank than planned, and ahead of an application to the restructuring facility. The year before, in 2016/17, it also received £4.5 million in exceptional financial support, although the board’s annual report in July 2017 said this was all paid back.

In March 2017, the area review report for the south west said: “With regard to financial sustainability, this college is not currently viable or resilient, with weak solvency and forecast operating deficits for the duration of the financial plan to 2019/20. The ‘fresh start’ approach will provide the means to support accelerated recovery and move gradually and securely towards the key benchmarks.”

The fresh start approach was recommended to a number of colleges after area reviews, or as a result of FE commissioner interventions. The process means that colleges must commit to significantly changing their business or operating model, and the process can include a change in senior leadership.

Mr Humphreys is the seventh in a series of high profile resignations across the college sector since September 25.

He follows out the door Birmingham Metropolitan College’s Andrew Cleaves, West Notts principal Dame Asha Khemka, NCG group’s Joe Docherty, RNN group’s John Connolly, principal of Peterborough Regional College Terry Jones, and Maria Thompson from Havering College at the end of September.