Colleges and training providers are being asked how prepared they are for Brexit by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

The latest update from the agency, published today, asks FE providers to complete a survey on their level of “readiness and confidence” ahead of the UK’s planned departure from the EU.

“The results from these surveys will be used to determine what further advice sectors may need from government to support their preparations ahead of 31 October,” its introduction reads.

Questions cover whether providers have informed students and staff from the EU about the immigration arrangements after Brexit in the event of a deal or a no deal, and arrangements for all EU and non-EU migrants from 2021.

The ESFA also wants to know if FE providers have advised prospective and current students “how they can find more information about their eligibility for funding and places in relation to academic year 2019 to 2020 and 2020 to 2021”.

It also asks whether providers have contacted food suppliers to make sure they are planning for the potential impacts of a no deal Brexit by ensuring their secondary suppliers are prepared and plans are in place to adapt menus.

“As a priority, the department would be grateful if providers could arrange for an appropriate person to complete the short survey by Friday 27 September,” the ESFA said.

The Department for Education put out advice for FE and apprenticeship providers earlier this year which said EU, EEA, and Swiss citizens who qualify for the EU Settlement Scheme would remain eligible for funding for FE courses and apprenticeships in England after Brexit.

It also said the UK could only continue to participate in the European Social Fund programmes until their closure if the UK left with a deal.

Apprentices at an employer provider are expected to be on unpaid leave for two months during a business shutdown while still on their training programme, Ofsted has found.

Outdoor learning business Kingswood Learning and Leisure Group will likely be suspended from new starts after the early monitoring visit found it had made ‘insufficient progress’ in all areas of its provision to 100 apprentices on framework and standard apprenticeships in activity leadership level 2 and outdoor activity instructor level 3.

The core business of the employer, which has nine centres across the UK and one in France, is to provide outdoor learning experiences to school children.

While apprentices are sent home for two months during quiet periods, Ofsted found they do not get enough sufficient time to continue training when the business is busy, so most fall behind.

Leaders and managers were criticised by the education watchdog for not having up-to-date information on apprentices’ progress and assessors do not consider a learner’s prior knowledge.

Nor are training plans personalised for the learner, and as a result “many apprentices do not see why the training is relevant to them, and their subsequent progress is slow,” inspectors wrote.

Apprentices and their centre managers do not get detailed knowledge about the requirements of end-point assessment, so learners do not know how to achieve high grades.

Also holding learners back is a lack of high-quality English and maths support, meaning too few apprentices develop those skills to a sufficient standard for passing external tests.

The report reads: “Assessors do not always highlight to apprentices the areas of their skills that need further development.

“In the few instances where they do, apprentices do not re-submit their improved work.

“A significant number of apprentices are currently not on track to finish their apprenticeship.”

Kingswood, the website for which shows it provides activities like archery and zipwire for schoolchildren, was also found lacking in safeguarding: apprentices at some centre do not feel safe as leaders and managers do not identify and coordinate their safeguarding adequately.

For example, when apprentices return to work from injuries, they are not sufficiently risk assessed to determine whether they are fit to carry out certain activities.

Ofsted did find some positives at the provider: Kingswood apprentices do “benefit from good quality on-the-job learning from centre managers” and they develop knowledge and skills that enable them to facilitate a wide range of activities, like abseiling and team sports, safely and independently.

A spokesperson for Kingswood said: “We are clearly disappointed by Ofsted’s findings, we have been actively working on the issues highlighted.”

This includes investing in more people to support apprentices, ensuring the existing systems are more robust and are being properly implemented at every level, and going to the National Apprenticeship Service for guidance and support.

The spokesperson added: “Safeguarding is at the heart of what we do, whether that is supporting the young people who attend our centres or our colleagues.

“Our policy is that anyone who has been absent through injury or illness cannot return to work unless they have been confirmed as being able to work by a medical practitioner.

“Our apprenticeship programme is very much in its infancy and we believe the positive steps we have already taken will pay huge dividends in the future for the apprentices themselves, our customers and the business as a whole.”

The provider declined to comment on the rationale for not paying apprentices during the business shutdown period.

The Department for Education has surpassed the government’s public sector target for recruiting apprentices for the second year in a row, the education secretary has claimed.

Ever since the apprenticeship levy was launched in April 2017, public-sector bodies with 250 or more employees have been set a target of employing at least 2.3 per cent of their total staff as new apprentice every year until 2021.

The DfE said today that it has had 354 apprentices in training since the rule came into force, in areas such as cyber security, digital marketing, project delivery and software development at all levels.

A total of 116 of those apprentices were new starters at the department in 2017/18, which the DfE said equated to 2.5 per cent of its total workforce.

In 2018/19, this rose to 177 apprentice starts – 2.9 per cent of the DfE’s 6,080-strong workforce.

The department also claimed today that it is “on track” to exceed the target again in 2019/20.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said: “It is fantastic news that we have exceeded our target for two years in a row – making us one of the top recruiters of apprentices across government.

“There are some brilliant apprenticeship opportunities within the department as well as across the public sector. Our apprentices are working in a range of exciting roles from cyber security, public relations and accountancy.”

Data released today via a freedom of information request showed that the DfE has drawn down £983,000 since the levy’s introduction in April 2017 up until 31 July 2019.

“This is the amount that we have spent on learning in that period and doesn’t include any other incentive payments,” the DfE said.

The public-sector apprenticeship target covers the period April 1 to March 31 each year.

It’s an average target across the years 2017/18 to 2020/21 to “give flexibility to organisations to manage peaks and troughs in recruitment”.

Overall progress towards the target stood at 1.4 per cent after 2017/18.

Public sector bodies have until the 30 September to submit their figures for 2018/19.

Former Richmond-upon-Thames College principal Robin Ghurbhurun has been made managing director of FE at Jisc, after recently resigning from the college for “personal reasons”.

FE Week reported in July Ghurbhurun had gone on leave from the college around the time the FE Commissioner’s team were investigating financial failings amid plans for an £80 million investment in a new building.

The college, which generated a £2.4 million deficit in 2017/18, later confirmed he had left with immediate effect.

This morning, Ghurbhurun’s LinkedIn page has been updated with the information he has become Managing Director (Further Education and Skills) at education technology company Jisc, with effect from this month.

He had previously been a trustee and non-executive director of Jisc up until July, one of a number of roles he combined with his work as a high-profile leader of Richmond-upon-Thames since 2014.

Roles such as chair of the Association of Colleges technology portfolio group, board member of the association’s London Regional Committee, committee member of the Richmond-upon-Thames Chamber of Commerce, and director and trustee of The Richmond-upon-Thames School.

His new job is one of a number of leadership roles within Jisc, which has a ream of executive directors and officers on its leadership team.

A Jisc spokesperson confirmed that Ghurbhurun will join the firm on 23 September, and will focus on ensuring the company supplies coordinated and responsive digital services to the FE and skills sector.

The spokesperson said he will be reporting directly to the chief executive, Paul Feldman.

Ghurbhurun has been approached to comment.

The UK is the only country where more than half of people feel university did not prepare them for their career, new research by Pearson has found.

A total of 51 per cent of 1,001 UK respondents aged 16 to 70 said as much for Pearson’s first ever Global Learner Survey, while only 45 per cent of respondents from Italy, Spain, Germany, France believed the same.

The figure was even lower in the US, where 45 per cent said university failed to prepare them for their working life, and in Brazil and China where 33 per cent felt this.

In the UK, 73 per cent believed a degree gives students an advantage in getting a job – the lowest of any surveyed area – compared to 77 per cent in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt; and 66 per cent in the UK think a vocational qualification is more likely to result in a good job with career prospects than a university degree is.

More people in the UK and Australia (57 per cent) said “you can do ok in life today without a university degree” than any of the other countries surveyed.

Pearson’s findings will raise concerns about the value people in the UK are getting from higher education, with the education publisher’s head of innovation communications Laura Howe saying: “There are a number of indicators that people are supportive of higher education, but they’re looking for additional options to what universities are providing now.”

The importance people are placing on lifelong learning is also reflected in the survey, with 74 per cent of UK respondents agreeing colleges and universities should offer better options for working adults, while 55 per cent agree the world is shifting to a model where people participate in education over a lifetime.

An even greater percentage, 86, believe people need to keep learning or retraining throughout their career to stay-up-to-date.

Pearson’s head of UK schools Sharon Hague said one of the “strong messages” from this report “is there is going to be a really growing need for upskilling, retraining, and short courses”.

Laura Howe added: “Working adults really want universities to be part of the lifelong education solution”, and said the report was a “massive opportunity” for providers to expand their offering.

Although Chancellor Sajid Javid announced a £400 million boost for learners aged 16 to 19 in his spending review, there was nothing for adult education.

And after education secretary Gavin Williamson wrote in FE Week he was “determined to put FE centre stage”, adult education expert Sue Pember told him to realise: “FE is not all about 16 to 19, but also covers adult learning and all levels of educational ability”.

The scale of the challenge in providing lifelong learning to the UK has been raised by education select committee chair Robert Halfon, who called for an adult community and learning centre in every town at the launch of his committee’s inquiry into lifelong learning.

The Labour Party’s own commission on the subject found “deep-seated” challenges, including a fall in real-terms funding of nearly a half since 2009-10 for adult education and apprenticeships.

Addressing the desire for retraining, the Augar review of post-18 education and funding called on the government to introduce a lifelong learning loan allowance at levels 4, 5 and 6 for adults without a degree.

Nicola Dandridge , chief executive of the Office for Students, the regulator for higher education in England, said: “There are clear personal and societal benefits to higher education. The skills and knowledge learned in our universities, colleges and other higher education providers set people up for life.

“We know – for example – that on average graduates earn significantly more over the course of their careers than non-graduates. And there are many wider benefits to higher education which continues to offer enormous benefits to our economy and wider society.

“Higher education has never solely been about future career prospects, but higher education providers should be mindful of students’ concerns around how their course can more effectively prepare them for the world of work.”

Cyber criminals have hacked into the personal data, and potentially bank details, of students and staff at Swindon College, in the latest computer crime to affect a further education institution.

A statement from the college says the data breach happened in the latter half of last week, and it has affected both past and present students and staff, but the college has not confirmed how many.

Swindon College’s phone lines were offline as a result, and its website has been updated with the college’s logo and a message saying: “Important announcement for staff, former staff, current and former students and apprentices. Data breach – immediate action.”

The college’s statement said: “Swindon College’s network system has been subject to a targeted cyber-attack this week that has resulted in unauthorised access to personal data”.

“You are potentially at risk,” it reads before it advises people to contact their bank to find out of there is any suspicious activity on their account.

The college will be able to contact anyone who has been personally affected by the breach early this week.

The breach has reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office and the National Crime Agency, however officers from Wiltshire Police’s digital investigations and intelligence unit are investigating the cyber attack rather than the agency.

A spokesperson for Wiltshire Police said the crime was reported on 12 September, and “enquiries are currently ongoing”.

An ICO spokesperson said: “Swindon College has reported an incident to us and we will assess the information provided.”

Important announcement for staff, former staff, current and former students and apprentices

Data Breach – Immediate Action pic.twitter.com/Od37c8viPZ

— Swindon College (@SwindonCollege) September 13, 2019

This is the latest act of cyber crime to affect an FE college, after South Staffordshire College fell victim earlier this month to an ‘ethical hacker’, who, the college claimed sent emails doctored to include a racist word to media, staff and a local councillor.

Following the hack, principal Claire Boliver said: “The contents of the email with an alleged racist remark is fabricated.  There is clear evidence that proves the email has been edited.”

Police have been investigating the case since.

In June, fraudsters hacked into the email account of Lakes College principal Chris Nattress and sent a link to his contacts to “review and sign”, in what is known as a phishing scam.

The ESFA released guidance for colleges on phishing scams, where a criminal will be disguised as a trustworthy source in an electronic communication to trick people into giving them their personal details.

Computer users, the ESFA advised, should ensure they have firewalls, strong passwords and anti-virus software in place, be alert to emails containing seemingly legitimate links, and check whoever sent the email is genuine before the user sends them passwords, data, or payment.

Users have been asked to email fraud.reports@education.gov.uk if they become aware of any phishing attempts.

If you have you been targeted by this scam, send the ‘phishing’ emails you have received to news@feweek.co.uk.

Simon Connell, the new chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust, is on a mission to change perceptions of university technical colleges, he tells Billy Camden

 

Things are changing at the organisation that runs university technical colleges.

The Baker Dearing Trust’s new chief executive Simon Connell is determined that it will move from “quantity to quality” with no more of the 14 to 19 providers opening anytime soon. Instead, he says, it will “consolidate” after nearly ten years of “high growth”.

Connell, 48, took over the top position this summer from Charles Parker, who led the trust since its incorporation in 2010.

“I want people to talk about UTCs like they do about the Russell Group”

He is under no illusion that UTCs have continued to struggle and a big push is needed to get their quality and student numbers “right” to improve the programme’s reputation and win people over.

He says there aren’t many things that he and the scheme’s architect Lord Baker have a difference of opinion on, but the “size of growth for the programme in the short term” is one of them.

It is well-known that the former education secretary wants as many UTCs across the country as possible. Connell says his focus will, however, be on filling existing colleges over the next three years.

“It would be a shame to lose complete momentum in the programme by not having any new openings, but we need to get capacity up significantly from where it is at the moment – and at the same time improve the perception of the programme.

“I want the education secretary and others to talk about our group of schools in glowing terms, in the way they do about leading educational establishments, such as Russell Group universities. I want everyone to be impressed with what we do and that has to be the focus.”

Forty-eight UTCs are now open, a number that will be the same this time next year when Doncaster UTC opens after being in the pipeline for years, but South Wiltshire UTC closes – the eleventh to shut.

Dwindling learner numbers persist at most UTCs: FE Week analysis of data on the government’s “Get information about schools” website shows that numbers fell in nearly half (43 per cent) from 2018 to 2019.

And the average number of learners across all UTCs sits at 282 (46 per cent) for 2019 against an average capacity of 615.

Ofsted performance is, at least, slowly improving. Of the 16 UTC inspections in 2018-19, 11 (69 per cent) were “good” or better. But overall just 59 per cent of all inspected UTCs currently sit among the higher two grades – nearly 20 percentage points lower than general FE colleges in 2017-18.

Connell is a numbers man. He has a double first in maths from the University of Cambridge and has spent most of his career in London working for big investment banks such as Merrill Lynch.

So how does he plan to improve UTC figures?

“The two big thrusts of my strategy are to ensure there is a uniform standard of employer engagement around the programme – I want every UTC to be doing as well as the top third are,” he says.

“Second is that Baker Dearing needs to be promoting student stories.

“Often they don’t start at a good place when joining the UTC, but they come out the other end a really well-rounded highly valuable member of society. And they’re employable, that is critical.”

He believes that Ofsted ratings will only get better as the watchdog’s new inspection framework will focus on the quality of education rather than “teaching to the test”.

“Over the next couple of years that will filter through to local community perception and that will help to grow student numbers.”

Looking back on the Baker Dearing Trust, Connell says there perhaps was a “little bit” of a view that it is “UTCs or nothing”.

“If we can win over the system by raising our game and integrating a little bit better with everybody else, then we have that platform for growing as we’ll have more supporters.”

One way that UTCs have begun integrating is through joining multi-academy trusts, a move that Lord Baker once said would “water down” the programme.

“Are MATs part of the solution? Yes,” Connell says, adding that half of UTCs are now part of trusts.

“One thing we didn’t expect when we launched this movement ten years ago was how hostile local schools would be to UTCs.

“There are three reasons for that: money, a focus on results and a land grab where MATs have wanted to control their local area. If that is the way it is, we don’t want to be fighting them, we want to be working with them.”

Connell is also open to UTCs changing the 14 to 19 student age range. It could be a “pragmatic” solution to those technical colleges that have struggled to recruit, he says.

But his analysis shows that it is not the starting age that determines whether a UTC is full. “If you’re in a reasonably populated area, have a good education defined by Ofsted and you have a distinct proposition with good employer engagement and great project based learning, you are going to be close to full whether you start at 14 or 11.”

However, he says it is “really important” to use “UTC” in the names of the technical colleges.

“Those that have taken it out, we want to change that,” he says. “The reason for this is because we want them to be proud of being a UTC.”

In November 2017 UTC Cambridge rebranded as the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology after joining Parkside Federation Academies, a multi-academy trust. And in May last year Sir Charles Kao UTC changed to the BMAT STEM Academy when it joined the Burnt Mill Academy Trust.

“We don’t want to be fighting MATs, we want to be working with them”

Connell says these decisions haven’t “damaged relationships” between the colleges and Baker Dearing, but “success will come when they call us up and say ‘we were wrong to do this’”.

Many education leaders have made their views known on the UTC programme: they think it is Lord Baker’s vanity project that has wasted millions of taxpayers’ money as a result of government bailouts and rebrokerage costs to MATs.

Does Connell believe they provide value for money?

“The way I think about value for money is the return on investment,” he says.

“What we have to show is that young people who go to UTCs, if that provision of education costs more, then down the line there needs to be a larger payback to society – the reality is it is too early to say.

“Our education system needs to keep pace with the fourth industrial revolution and we need to invest in our core business, that’s a fact of economics. Investment costs more, so I think it is right and proper that the government supports the UTC programme. But it is also right that Baker Dearing works hard with UTCs to ensure taxpayer money is wisely spent.”

The government should pay an annual £100 million top-up to the apprenticeship levy so all businesses can continue to spend on learners of all ages and skill levels, the Confederation of British Industry has said.

Its new report, ‘Learning on the job: Improving the Apprenticeship Levy’, published today, states that the cash injection is needed because of growing financial pressure that is raising questions about the sustainability of the policy.

The CBI said the government must now launch its promised public consultation on levy plans after 2020 – which is only three months away – and be open to broadening the policy into a ‘Flexible Skills Levy’, which would cover a wider range of training, not just apprenticeships.

Chief UK policy director for the confederation Matthew Fell warned that without “urgent action”, the levy risks becoming a “roadblock to the government’s wider and welcome efforts to modernise the skills system”.

He added: “Businesses are confused and crying out for clarity on how their levy funds are being used. They read speculation in the papers that the levy is overspent but are themselves struggling to utilise their levy funds for training.”

One part of the policy that the CBI wants government to commit to maintaining, however, is the rate at which firms pay the apprenticeship levy. It wants the rate to sit at no more than 0.5 per cent for the duration of the next Parliament.

Increasing the rate and pulling more businesses into the levy was hinted at by Department for Education permanent secretary Jonathan Slater when he said “difficult decisions” needed to be made to avoid over-spending the levy.

He told the public accounts committee this in March, following FE Week reporting the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education had estimated that the apprenticeship budget could be overspent by £0.5 billion this year, rising to £1.5 billion during 2021/22.

The dwindling levy pot has meant three quarters of training providers cannot meet the demand for apprenticeship training from small-to-medium enterprises, according to an Association of Employment and Learning Providers survey from last month.

The association’s chief executive Mark Dawe said there was much to commend in the CBI’s report, but a £100 million annual government top-up to the levy would “only represent a drop in the ocean in terms of addressing the problems we are now facing with funding non-levy paying SMEs”.

He instead said to make apprenticeships available at all ages and levels, at least ten times that amount is urgently needed.

The AELP has previously called for all level six and seven apprenticeships, including those with integrated degrees, to be removed from the scope of levy funding.

The National Audit Office has also warned of a “clear risk” to the financial sustainability of the apprenticeship programme, due to the cost of training hitting double what the government had originally predicted.

The cause of this is another issue with the levy system the CBI report picks up on: “There has been significant growth in older apprentices on higher-level courses.

“Higher-level provision represented 13 per cent of all apprenticeships in 2017/18, up from just over five per cent in 2015/16.”

Between May 2017 and July this year, 82 per cent more people aged 25 and over are doing higher-level apprenticeships at levels 4 and above; while starts at level 2 have plummeted by 51 per cent and starts by 16- to 18-year-olds have dropped by 23 per cent.

FE Week analysis revealed earlier this year a higher-level apprenticeship, the level 7 accountancy/taxation professional standard, would have sapped up £70 million of levy funds in 2017/18 owing to the 3,250 starts on the programme from when it was approved in November 2017 to July 2018.

In June, then-skills minister Anne Milton told an AELP conference a pre-salary cap on apprenticeships was the “most palatable option” as a means of addressing this age and level disparity.

In response to the CBI, a Department for Education spokesperson said: “The apprenticeship levy means more money is available than ever before for training, giving employers of all sizes the freedom to invest in the skills they need.

“We have introduced additional flexibilities to help employers spend their levy funds and continue to work with them to ensure they take advantage of the benefits apprentices can bring to their businesses.

“Our next steps are to look carefully at the future priorities for the apprenticeship programme and what more we can do in this important sector.”