A college which was controversially closed in the summer is set to be sold to a £12,000 a year state boarding school – raising hopes the site will continue to be used for education purposes.

Old Swinford Hospital, founded in 1667, has agreed terms to purchase the land and buildings of Stourbridge College from Birmingham Metropolitan College, following heightened concern that it could become housing.

BMet sold off Stourbridge College, which dates back over 100 years, in order to pay back debts which had totalled £8.9 million to the banks and £7.5 million to the Education and Skills Funding Agency by May this year.

Stourbridge merged with BMET in 2013 and was given a £5 million makeover two years later.

BMET said it would not disclose the price of the sale until the deal was finalised.

Old Swinford Hospital teaches students from years 7 to 13, where parents pay for boarding at an annual cost of £11,940. The Department for Education pays for the tuition.

BMET principal Cliff Hall said: “We are very pleased to have worked with Old Swinford Hospital to enable the Foundation to purchase the Stourbridge College land and buildings.

“It is important for us that this acquisition has the backing of Dudley Council and many other stakeholders in the local community.

“Continued use for education has been secured and we wish every success to Old Swinford Hospital and their partners in this new chapter of the development of the site.”

Speaking to regional newspaper the Express & Star, the chair of the boarding school said the purchase should ensure the site will continue to be used for education.

“Together with BMet College, we are delighted to announce this agreement after several months of discussions and negotiations,” said Malcolm Wilcox.

“The acquisition by the Feoffees (trustees) will allow the School of the Foundation, Old Swinford Hospital, the opportunity to expand, a development welcomed by the school’s governors and the headmaster Paul Kilbride.

“We shall also be working in partnership with Dudley Council who are supportive of our acquisition and school expansion as well as with other local stakeholders and providers to ensure the continuance of education on the Hagley Road site.”

Councillor Ian Kettle, Dudley’s cabinet member for regeneration and enterprise, added: “We are not able to comment on current negotiations as they are commercially sensitive.

“However, I can assure people that we are working proactively with all organisations involved and we are hopeful that the site will remain an education establishment in the future.”

When Stourbridge College was closed following a review by the FE Commissioner its learners were transferred to Dudley or Halesowen colleges, and some staff were also absorbed by the two colleges.

Local Conservative MP Margot James led a Westminster Hall debate on adult learning and vocational skills in the area last month following the announcement of the sell-off.

She called for the college to continue to be used for educational purposes: “The site has been associated with education for many years, and it is the deep wish of our community that the site be protected in future for educational use, at least for the most part, for the generations to come.”

After learning that Old Swinford Hospital will take over the site, James said: “I am pleased that the facilities at our former college will remain for the purposes of education and I am continuing to work with local colleges to ensure that part of the site is used for adult education and skills training and I am grateful to OSH for their support of this proposal.”

At the time Michelle Donelan, who is one of three ministers helping with the FE brief in the Department for Education, said selling Stourbridge was the “best option” to support BMet’s financial sustainability and, “crucially, to ensure that good-quality provision was available for current and future students”.

Donelan also confirmed that the FE Commissioner’s team, who intervened at BMet earlier this year, was planning to undertake a capacity and capability review to assess the group’s progress since a new leadership team arrived.

In August, the Head of the National Audit Office Gareth Davies told James the UK’s public spending watchdog was preparing to launch a value for money review on the management of colleges’ financial sustainability, after she had asked him to investigate BMet following its decision to sell off and close Stourbridge College.

An unidentified construction firm is propping up the troubled Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE), as it pivots from being a membership body to conducting research for the sector.

The revelation came in a blog published this week on the institution’s website, which also disclosed for the first time that it had paid its advocate, former skills minister Sir John Hayes, in an advisory capacity. He has told FE Week that this was worth £5,000 for five months’ work in late 2018.

The institution, which is very much the minister’s brainchild, received around £1.5 million in subsidies from the Department for Education (DfE), before public money was cut off this year.

The blog reads: “We have gained sponsorship from industry, from a major construction company, who like many employers recognises and understands the value of gaining chartered status.”

The institution, which grants chartered status to FE providers, claimed this funding means it is now free-standing and sustainable for the long term. It is, however, yet to file its accounts for 2017/18.

The institution did not respond to FE Week’s request to reveal the identity of this mysterious benefactor; nor did it reply to a request to put a figure on the sponsorship.

While it was being funded by the government, the CIFE had been focusing on attracting members – its chief executive Dan Wright said that it needed 80 to be self-sustaining.

But the blog post said the last 12 months had shown “this isn’t what the CIFE is or should be about,” so the number of members is no longer its “major priority” – instead it is shifting to being more about “quality than quantity”.

The CIFE says it is now a “truly independent voice for our sector”, and can provide “critical challenge and support to key sector stakeholders” and fight for the needs of its members.

Additionally, the blog post shows that the CIFE is trying to recreate itself as a research body for the FE sector: “We have a renewed focus and have partnered with industry to undertake research for the benefit of the FE sector.”

Its construction industry sponsorship means the CIFE will be conducting research into the skills needs and gaps of the future construction sector workforce, which it predicts will be launched at the House of Lords early next year.

But the CIFE says it will remain accountable to its 16 members, who pay an annual subscription fee of £5,000; but for interested parties there is also a £3,000 nonrefundable fee to have an application reviewed in the first place.

Hayes, the MP for South Holland and The Deepings, declined to say whether his advice was funded by membership fees, but told FE Week it was not unusual for an organisation to seek advice and guidance on what it was doing and what it could be doing.

Because of a potential conflict of interest, the former skills minister had to have the financial arrangement cleared by the watchdog for former ministers’ new jobs, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

He had estimated that he would gain £15,000 a year for between 100 and 120 hours’ work with the institution, which would include attending council meetings and advising on future strategy, according to the parliamentary analysis service TheyWorkForYou.

The work took place on a pro-rata basis between July and November last year.

Although the institution was set up by then-skills minister Matt Hancock, the plans for it were drawn up by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills while Hayes was skills minister.

He said his appointment “went through all the independent scrutiny and vetting process and was approved and registered in the proper way at time”.

FE Week has been reporting on the troubles with the institution since it was founded in 2012.

It did not answer whether this new sponsorship meant it would begin taking on employees again. It had to get rid of them all when its subsidies were cut off.

It has so far failed to publish its 2017/18 accounts, saying that a technical error had held this up, even though not publishing accounts is a breach of the institution’s own bye-laws.

(Pictured: Chartered Institution for FE members at their inaugural admissions ceremony in the House of Lords in 2016; John Hayes pictured front row third from right)

A sector leader has called for an investigation into whether sex discrimination lies behind some of the controversial apprenticeship funding rates.

Mark Dawe, boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, told his organisation’s autumn conference this week that training firms are dropping the adult care worker standard “left, right and centre” as they “can’t afford to run it”.

He said it was “ridiculous” that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (ifATE) has declined appeals to increase its funding band, which sits at £3,000, but “you can change a tyre on a big vehicle” on the specialist tyre operative standard and receive £12,000.

“I’m starting to think there is an element of sexual discrimination here”

Both standards are at level 2, and the funding duration for the tyre operative is just a third longer than for the adult care worker (18 months compared with 12 months).

FE Week analysis shows that of the 10,480 adult care worker starts recorded in the first three quarters of 2018/19, 85 per cent were female.

There were not enough starts for the tyre operative standard to compare, but the level 2 autocare technician standard, also funded at £12,000, had 270 starts in the same period and 96 per cent were male.

Dawe also pointed out that the powered pedestrian door installer and service engineer standard, which is essentially an “electric door opener”, is also given thousands more (£9,000).

“The more I look especially at level 2 and level 3 the funding bands for the different sectors, the more, on average, male-dominated sectors are getting vastly more money compared with the female sectors,” Dawe told FE Week.

“There is a bit of service sector versus engineering, but actually that is a historic bias and I’m starting to think there is an element of sexual discrimination here.”

He added this was an area where “we ought to start looking and seeing if there is some truth behind it” and called on the IfATE and Department for Education to do their own research as “they have the data”.

The IfATE makes the decisions on funding bands for apprenticeship standards before getting sign-off from the education secretary.

A spokesperson for the institute said: “All funding decisions for standards are taken on an individual basis, utilising quotes and costings data from providers delivering to the sector in question and following the same established procedures that balance the need for quality delivery with value for money for taxpayers.

“There is no variation in our approach by standard or sector.”

He added: “The institute is wholly supportive of diversity across technical education and promoting equality of opportunity, which we have demonstrated through our continuing gender-neutral language work.”

The spokesperson would not say whether the IfATE would launch research into potential sexual bias in apprenticeship funding decisions.

According to IfATE figures, starts on the adult care worker standard have soared from 513 in 2016/17, to 14,744 in 2018/19.

In May, however, a review by the institute kept the funding band for the standard at £3,000, despite calls for it to be doubled.

This caused a significant provider of the two, Professional Training Solutions, to stop recruiting apprentices to the programme, as revealed by FE Week.

A follow-up survey by the AELP found more than half of providers who offered the standards were reducing their starts, or pulling the programme altogether.

Many other providers said they were being forced to introduce “cost efficiencies”, such as fewer in-person monitoring visits, reducing the number of tutors to learners or charging employers more.

In June, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on social care reported that as many as 500,000 unqualified people could be passing themselves off as trained care workers, putting millions of senior citizens at risk.

“There is a care crisis in this country, we need hundreds of thousands more care workers. We haven’t got the training workforce we need and apprenticeships were a key part of that,” Dawe told FE Week.

“Now we are putting those apprenticeships in a position where they are not viable to deliver, so it is going to get worse rather than better.”

A college is struggling to get up to snuff ahead of a demerger, as independent providers see ups and downs in this week’s run of Ofsted reports.

After the watchdog found them to be ‘inadequate’ last year, a recent monitoring visit judged Easton and Otley to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in ensuring learners make good or better progress in developing their English and maths skills and securing high grades in both.

It achieved ‘reasonable progress’ scores in four other areas.

The college is scheduled to be split up between City College Norwich and Suffolk New College by the end of the year, on the orders of FE Commissioner Richard Atkins.

Inspectors found that at the college, which was formed by a merger of Easton and Otley colleges, leaders and managers had been unable to recruit and retain qualified and experienced staff to teach English and maths for much of 2018/19.

“This overshadowed much of learners’ experiences, which were not good enough,” the report reads.

Managers have now recruited suitable staff, and Easton and Otley’s senior leaders and governors were noted for their “strong commitment” to ensure each learner has a good experience.

Independent learning provider JRV Associates made ‘reasonable progress’ in all three areas of a monitoring visit of its provision to 36 apprentices.

Ofsted found its leaders and managers “have a broad understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the quality of education”.

The “challenging and ambitious” curriculum means apprentices develop substantial new knowledge, skills and behaviours.

The provider has planned the contents of programmes with employers to stimulate apprentices to learn more and to meet the needs of employers and apprentices; so, a programme was redesigned to include additional maths and English classes for apprentices who spoke English as an additional language.

Aldridge Adult Learning, an independent provider to around 1,200 learners annually, made ‘insufficient progress’ in ensuring apprentices benefit from high-quality training and positive outcomes.

Managers, teachers and assessors were “unclear about how to launch and run apprenticeships,” according to the report.

Spectator safety apprentices have been in their roles for several years and had already acquired most of the knowledge and skills to carry out their roles by the time they started the programme.

The apprentices, who are employed on zero-hours contracts, do not spend enough time each week working in stewarding roles – just one day a week – and are not paid for the time they spend studying for the off-the-job part of their training.

Aldridge did make ‘reasonable progress’ in the other three areas of the monitoring visit.

The worst result of the week, however, belonged to APA Procurement Training which made ‘insufficient progress’ in every area of an early monitoring visit.

Before September, trainers did not assess apprentices’ starting points and their roles and experience “too often” match the apprenticeship – so they are not developing new skills, knowledge or behaviours.

APA’s leaders have not established effective safeguarding measures, inspectors found.

Only a small minority of apprentices can remember anything about safeguarding or the ‘Prevent’ duty from their initial induction.

But apprentices do benefit from well-planned and sequenced off-the-job training, learning around which is related well to their workplace contexts.

A number of full inspection reports, the inspections of which were conducted under Ofsted’s new framework, were published this week for Bedford College, Lakeside Early Adult Provision, Northwest Education and Training, People Solutions Training and Tyne Coast College. FE Week’s analysis of those results is here.

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Bedford College	23/09/2019	28/10/2019	2	2
Easton and Otley College	03/10/2019	30/10/2019	M	4
Tyne Coast College	08/10/2019	29/10/2019	2	2

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Aldridge Adult Learning	10/10/2019	31/10/2019	M	N/A
APA Procurement Training Limited	08/10/2019	28/10/2019	M	N/A
JRV Associates Limited	09/10/2019	30/10/2019	M	N/A
Northwest Education and Training Limited (NWEAT)	24/09/2019	29/10/2019	2	M
People Solutions Training Limited	24/09/2019	28/09/2019	3	M

 

Sixth Form Colleges (inc 16-19 academies)	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Thomas Rotherham College	10/10/2019	28/10/2019	2	3

 

Specialist colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Lakeside Early Adult Provision – Leap College (Wargrave House Ltd)	25/09/2019	28/10/2019	2	3

The deadline for the 2020 FE Week and AELP AAC Apprenticeship Awards has been extended due to demand.

The application window is open for another seven days for entries to the route awards category and the national awards category; which includes apprenticeship diversity, outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships, and apprentice provider and employer of the year.

Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week publisher Lsect, said: “These awards are an excellent opportunity to celebrate the incredible work in the apprenticeship sector that is being carried out by both employers and providers.

“It is not too late to put them forward for the chance to receive some well-deserved, and well-overdue, recognition for providing world-class apprenticeship learning opportunities for people across the UK.”

This is the third year the awards have been running and after the success of last year’s awards in Birmingham, which were attended by more than 500 people, the event will be returning to the city’s ICC alongside the Annual Apprenticeship Conference and Exhibition.

Winners included the Royal Air Force, which took home apprentice employer of the year, AELP chair Martin Dunford won the lifetime achievement prize, while apprentice provider of the year went to In-Comm Training.

The AAC conference will take place between 2 and 3 March next year.

To enter the 2020 awards, visit http://aacapprenticeshipawards.com/

The full list of awards is below:

Route awards:

• Agriculture, Environmental & Animal Care Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Business & Administration Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Care Services Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Catering & Hospitality Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Construction Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Creative & Design Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Digital Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Education & Childcare Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Engineering & Manufacturing Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Hair & Beauty Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Health & Science Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Legal, Finance & Accounting Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Protective Services Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Sales, Marketing, Procurement Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Transport & Logistics Apprenticeship provider of the year

National awards:

• Promoting Apprenticeships campaign of the year
• Apprenticeship Diversity Award
• SEND Apprenticeship Champion Award
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (individual)
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (employer)
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (provider)
• Apprenticeship Provider of the year
• Apprentice Employer of the Year
• Lifetime achievement award

Forty-five colleges and school sixth forms across England will need to find hundreds of 45-day industry placements as part of new “digital” T-levels next year.

But last month Scarborough Sixth Form College pulled out of the programme as the principal did not feel confident in securing enough placements – a move which was applauded by education secretary Gavin Williamson, a former student of the college.

FE Week investigated whether other providers would struggle to find relevant employers in their patch.

“The time it is taking to fulfil requirements is huge”

Weston College, based in Weston-super-Mare and one of an initial six providers set to deliver the digital T-level in the South West of England, has admitted to concerns over finding sufficient employer partners to deliver industry placements.

“We are confident that we can embrace the delivery of the digital T-level, but recognise that it is a difficult agenda,” principal Dr Paul
Phillips said.

“We are well on the way to finding our placement providers, but again the time it is taking to fulfil requirements is huge.

“There is, however, a reality here – this is the future and therefore we have to find a way to deliver this successfully and we will.”

The “Digital production, design and development” qualification will be one of the first three T-levels to be available at select colleges, schools and other providers across England in September 2020.

The two-year course will follow GCSEs, be equivalent to three A-levels and include classroom learning.

A mandatory industry placement of at least 315 hours (approximately 45 days) is arguably the most critical component of the T-level.

A student could be on the programme for the full two years but prevented from passing if the provider cannot find an employer to place students with – something that sector leaders have long expressed concern about, especially for those in rural areas.

To encourage enough providers to sign up to offer the new qualifications, colleges have been given monetary incentives including a hefty £38 million capital funding pot which 13 have benefitted from so far.

But this year the National Foundation for Educational Research released research, based on interviews with half of the first 50 providers to deliver T-levels in 2020, which found providers faced huge challenges in securing work placements, specifically in the digital sector.

This was reportedly “due to the small size of many of these businesses, as well as intellectual property and safeguarding issues”.

Recognising this threat, the Department for Education (DfE) announced in May that students would be able to split their industry placements between two employers, in order to enable more choice.

They also stated that digital placements could be undertaken within “common sets of occupational areas” as opposed to those only relevant to students’ specific specialism.

FE Week analysis of the latest employment data from the Office for National Statistics attempted to identify the potential cold-spots of digital jobs in England.

It showed the North East had the fewest Information and communication jobs, as of June 2019.

Despite this, Chris Toon, deputy principal at Gateshead College, was optimistic about finding enough work placements.

“North East England has one of the fastest growing digital and tech sectors in the UK,” he said.

“It’s our continuing role as a college to ensure those businesses that choose to thrive here in the region have access to a talented workforce; people with the skills, experience and ambition who can hit the ground running.”

The college “successfully trialled” digital T-levels work placements as part of the DfE pilot last year, according to Toon.

As a result, he said it already has commitments from leading tech firms in Gateshead and the wider North East region going forward.

Derby College is the only planned provider of the digital T-level in the East Midlands, a region with the second fewest digital jobs according to the data from the Office for National Statistics.

Kate Martin, vice principal of Derby College Group who is heading the introduction of T-levels at the college, sought to allay apprehension over placement options in the area.

She said: “Our partnership working with local and regional employers – which has been rated as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted – gives us a head start on the work experience requirements under the T-level programmes.

“We have a dedicated team whose focus is to provide current students with diverse opportunities with employers, including work experience.

“Partner employers in the first tranche subjects – and many others – are fully on board to work with us to provide students with the work-based elements of the T-levels.”

Yorkshire and The Humber was the region with the third smallest workforce employed in “digital” jobs.

But a spokesperson for Barnsley College, which is based in the region, said it had “no intention to withdraw” and planning for delivery was “well underway and on track.”

Barnsley College is the prime college beneficiary of capital funding for T-levels so far, having received £2.2 million.

David Akeroyd, vice principal of technical and professional education, explained how the provider secures work placements.

“We are working closely with Barnsley Metropolitan Borough Council in relation to the town’s proposed digital campus, which will open up new opportunities for business start-ups and the relocation of existing digital employers to Barnsley,” he said.

“The town also has easy access via public transport to the key cities of Sheffield and Leeds where we have many links with digital employers who are supporting T-level delivery.”

Barnsley’s digital campus is set to open in September 2020, according to the college and the council.

The principal of Shipley College of Further Education, Nav Chohan,
echoed the expectation of meeting the T-level industry requirement in the Yorkshire and the Humber region.

He stated: “Given our positive experience in finding opportunities with employers under the Work Placement Capacity and Delivery Fund, we feel confident that sufficient industry placements can be found.”

Leeds-based Notre Dame Catholic Sixth Form College also said it was “confident” that it will deliver a successful T-level digital programme, including sufficient amounts of industry placements.

The highest proportion of digital jobs in England are based in London but there are only four digital T-level providers in the capital and none of the largest London colleges will be offering the new qualification next year.

Part of the reason for this was the stipulation that grade three colleges could not apply to deliver the first wave of T-levels; nor could merged colleges that no longer have an Ofsted grade, such as London South East Colleges. 

At the start of October, when Scarborough Sixth Form College officially pulled out of delivering the digital pathway, education secretary Gavin Williamson said his former college made the “right decision”.

Despite Williamson also pledging to convene employers to “make sure” enough work placement opportunities are available to colleges, his words could be taken by rural colleges as encouragement to bail out now if they also have concerns over work placements.

But Becci Newton, deputy director of public policy research at the Institute for Employment Studies, cautioned against a decision not
to attempt delivery of the T-level in locations that are not known as digital hubs and claimed it would be “a hugely limiting decision in terms of young people’s future careers”.

“Obviously places such as Reading, Brighton and London have high numbers of digital employers, however, it is also the case that all organisations use digital skills in some way, and often these provide a suitable match for FE level digital skills,” she added.

Other digital T-level providers across the South West – the same region where Weston College acknowledged difficulties in preparation – expressed their confidence in the successful delivery of the programme.

Matt Reynolds, a vice principal in teaching, learning and assessment development at Cirencester Sixth Form College, said: “We’ve had a healthy response from employers of different sizes who are willing to get involved with T-levels.

“The key is in being flexible and understanding to help bring the employers into the programme as a partner, and also in having top quality communication between the college and business.”

Bridgwater & Taunton College and Truro and Penwith College both told FE Week they were on track to deliver the new digital T-level successfully, but would not comment specifically on whether they will secure a sufficient number of work placements.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We have worked closely with large and small businesses to make sure we get the delivery of T-levels right.

“As we progress towards September 2020, we expect a certain amount of fluctuation among T-level providers and the pathways they offer – but these changes are not anticipated to be a matter of concern.”