An ex-deputy director of the government’s skills funding agency has called for a return to “supportive” contract management for providers.
Writing in FE Week, Tony Allen has criticised the way the Education and Skills Funding Agency manages funding contracts ahead of an imminent report by Dame Mary Ney (pictured) into oversight of college finances.
Ney’s review is expected to heavily criticise the ESFA for the calculations it uses to determine the financial health scoring and grading; as had it been more robust, it could have intervened in failing providers sooner.
Allen said when he worked at the then named Skills Funding Agency: “We had a much better sense of what was going on.
“We advised and supported, managed risks and dealt with issues as they were arising. Face-to-face support by individual and group methods headed off many early problems.”
Allen worked in government for 13 years in a variety of roles including director of the SFA’s Large Companies Unit, before starting his own apprenticeship consultancy in 2016.
The SFA replaced Learning Skills Councils in 2010 and handled funding for the FE and skills sector before being replaced by the ESFA in 2017.
As part of Department for Education staffing cuts in 2016, the ‘supportive’ approach was dropped in favour of what Allen summarised as “a service desk approach” that is unusual in the public sector for allowing organisations to be given millions of pounds and told to “get on with it”.
“It was made clear that giving advice and support to colleges, and especially independent training providers, was not part of a ‘funding body’s’ role,” he says.
“Nobody was interested in the positive side of contract management or the benefits that could accrue, such as promoting apprenticeship growth.”
The agency now calculates financial health with a scoring system which allows providers to self-grade themselves by inputting three measures: one based on cash, another on debt and then margin.
This set of metrics then formulates an overall financial health grade of ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’.
Allen believes there is a “clear correlation” between the government’s abandoning the supportive approach and the number of high-profile financial failures among providers, including First4Skills, 3aaa and Hadlow College.
He is the latest sector leader to go public with criticism of the ESFA’s approach to overseeing college finances: Association of Colleges deputy chief executive Julian Gravatt said last week that the ESFA’s current approach was in need of change.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The ESFA operates a risk-based approach to the oversight and monitoring of colleges, so that those at risk get regular contact with ESFA staff.
“Last year the department announced an independent review into how the government monitors colleges’ finances and financial management. Results of the review will be published in due course.”
Plans for PhD-level apprenticeships have moved a step closer, despite the government’s failing to agree a policy position on the controversial concept.
A proposal for the first ever level 8 apprenticeship – the clinical academic professional – has been approved for development.
It is not known how long the standard, for the health and science sector, will take to develop before its final programme can be put to the government and be signed off for approval and delivery.
The chair of the trailblazer group declined to comment.
FE Week revealed in April 2019 that plans for PhD-level apprenticeships had been thrown into doubt after the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) raised concerns they were not in the “spirit” of the programme.
And it appears the quango still has apprehensions about them.
Officials on the IfATE’s approval and funding committee discussed the level 8 clinical academic professional programme in September, the same month the standard was signed off for development.
Minutes from that meeting stated: “The committee expressed concerns about whether this occupation meets the criteria for an apprenticeship, in particular the inclusion of a PhD.
“In addition, the committee believed that it did not meet the criteria for an apprenticeship standard.
“The committee noted that further discussions were ongoing on this issue in conjunction with the Department for Education.”
A spokesperson for the IfATE would not comment on the progress of the standard’s development this week.
He would only say that: “The proposal for a level 8 clinical academic professional standard has been approved for development following consultation with the Department for Education.
This is the first stage towards full approval of the apprenticeship for use by employers and apprentices.
“Work will continue with trailblazer employers to ensure that it meets government policy and quality criteria.”
Minutes from an IfATE board meeting in January 2019 revealed a discussion concluding with an action for “the DfE to explore the concept of level 8 apprenticeships further and agree a policy position”.
FE Week asked the department this week if they had now agreed a way forward.
A spokesperson told us: “We are continuing to keep the programme under review, and we are looking carefully at what the priorities of the programme should be from 2020 onwards.”
The spokesperson would not say whether a policy position had now been agreed, despite it being more than a year since the issue was raised.
A proposal for a technical specialist in nuclear engineering, science or technology PhD-level apprenticeship has also been in development since 2018.
Last year the employers involved said they were expecting a speedy resolution, but the trailblazer group is still waiting for a decision on the proposal by the IfATE.
A spokesperson for the Nuclear Skills Strategy Group told FE Week: “The trailblazer group of nuclear sector employers is continuing to develop the level 8 nuclear technical specialist standard, and following the IfATE’s processes for applications.
“The group received confirmation from IfATE in August that they would receive submissions for level 8 standards. The occupational proposal for the standard was originally submitted in September, and the IfATE panel requested some amendments, following which the group resubmitted a revised version in December.
“We await the decision on the revised proposal, but in the meantime we have continued to work on the content of the standard itself and the assessment plan, in preparation for submission according to the IfATE deadlines.”
All colleges and schools in England will finally be able to access free sanitary products from Monday, as part of a “fully funded” government scheme to tackle period poverty.
They will be able to order a range of options, including eco-friendly items, from supplier Personnel Hygiene Services Group (PHS) by using an online portal, via email or by phone.
PHS has received £11.4 million from the government to deliver the scheme, which is much lower than what it will cost if take-up exceeds current estimates.
There are around 1.7 million eligible students but the Department for Education has projected that only 1.1 million will access it.
The anticipated maximum product cost could reach around £18 million per year, should 100 per cent of those students take-up the scheme 100 per cent of the time, the DfE said.
The DfE previously told FE Week’s sister paper FE Week that it will have to go back to the Treasury for extra funding if more than the “anticipated level” of students take up the offer.
Founder of #FreePeriods Amika George, who launched the campaign for the government-funded products, said: “We have been waiting for this day for a long time. As a grassroots, student-led movement, Free Periods has been fighting for every single child in this country to be able to go to school without worrying about their next pad or tampon.”
She asked for education establishments to “have open conversations with students about what they need and start signing up to the scheme” and said no student should “miss out”.
Findings from 2018 Omnibus Surveys conducted on behalf of the DfE found 14 per cent of female college students had been unable to access period products at some point in the previous year due to affordability.
Interim FE minister Michelle Donelan said periods are a “normal part of everyday life and we do not want young people missing out on lessons because of them”.
“We know that it is not easy for everyone to access period products where and when they need them,” she added.
“This scheme will deal with those problems so young people can go about their daily lives without getting caught out if they have come on their period unexpectedly, forgotten to bring products with them or if they can’t afford the products they need.”
Leeds City College started its own period poverty campaign in 2017. It supplied more than 7,500 sanitary products to students last year.
Andrea Cowans, director of student life at Leeds City College, said the impact was “immense, increasing attendance and the confidence and dignity of some of our students who couldn’t afford to buy these products themselves”.
She added that she was “thrilled to see this government initiative launch”.
A college is battling Ofsted to prevent the publication of a grade four report after inspectors claimed to have found serious safeguarding failures.
Shrewsbury Colleges Group, which teaches more than 9,000 students mostly aged 16 to 18, is set to receive an ‘inadequate’ rating following an inspection in November.
But the college has insisted the judgement is “wrong”, with the principal declaring that he has “never experienced anything like this inspection” in 27 years in education.
“I can’t stress enough how important it is that all institutions are safe places to study”
The college has denied safeguarding was “ineffective” and claimed the “judgement was changed on the final day of the inspection without adequate explanation” after Ofsted ran out of time to check evidence.
Shrewsbury is a national hotspot for county lines (see below) but the college told FE Week “there was no line of inquiry regarding county lines”.
It did admit, however, that West Mercia Police were called to an incident during the inspection, after a suspended student tried to regain entry to college.
A spokesperson claimed the force “have reassured us, in the light of enquiries by this Ofsted inspection team, that they consider our college campuses to be safe”.
Shrewsbury Colleges Group advertises itself as Shropshire’s largest provider of post-16 education – which teaches 70 per cent of all 16 to 18 students in the county.
Ofsted is currently set to report that students and staff do not feel safe and the college had not taken sufficient steps to help ensure their safety.
Inspectors also allegedly found that staff required to carry out site security roles have not received adequate training and necessary risk assessments to ensure effective safeguarding covering the college estate were not in place.
The college denies these accusations and has lodged an official complaint.
Principal James Staniforth claimed the inspection team did not provide any evidence related to students not feeling safe. He said the college provided the inspection team with policies and actions taken to ensure the safety of students as well as detailed records of staff training.
Staniforth added: “It appears that the inspection team confused the college estates team with the site duty team and safeguarding team, and mistakenly concluded that the estates team were solely responsible for activities that are actually managed by the site duty and safeguarding teams.”
He also said the college has a statutory Prevent Risk Assessment, one of the items inspectors allegedly failed to inspect “as a consequence of running out of time”.
It was claimed the safeguarding system, annual safeguarding reports, site security policies, fire logs and assessments and other health and safety records were also not reviewed and the inspectorate did not discuss their concerns with the college safeguarding teams.
Staniforth continued: “Nor did the team have the time to consider the views of outside agencies. West Mercia Police have confirmed that they have ‘no concerns’ regarding any of the college’s three campuses.
“As a college principal, teaching professional and parent I can’t stress enough how important it is that all institutions are safe places to study. We would not be contesting the judgement if any part of the colleges were unsafe.”
The college said that some fire call points were disabled during the inspection “in order to stop further false alarms” after a fault and a student caused two separate false alarms.
A spokesperson said: “Staff were asked to stand by those call points and monitor them – which meant there was in fact a greater level of safety than our normal high threshold.”
Shrewsbury Colleges Group is based on three campuses with a turnover of £23 million.
“We respect Ofsted’s work and mission but this particular judgement is wrong”
Staniforth insisted the college’s campuses are “safe places to study” and that Shrewsbury Colleges Group is “confident that our excellent staff have the right safeguarding processes and procedures in place”.
He added: “We respect Ofsted’s work and mission but this particular judgement is wrong.
“In 27 years in working in education and having been through seven Ofsted inspections, I have never experienced anything like this inspection.”
College chair Gordon Channon added: “We have a rich body of evidence to demonstrate that the safety and care of students in our colleges is of the upmost importance.
“We look forward to Ofsted having another chance to review that evidence. We very much hope that common sense prevails.”
Shrewsbury Sixth Form College and Shrewsbury College of Arts and Technology merged to become Shrewsbury Colleges Group in August 2016.
Both FE providers were rated ‘good’ in their final inspections before the merger.
The group’s first inspection took place between November 26 and November 29 2019.
If the draft report is published, it would be the first general FE college to receive a grade four in nearly two years.
Shrewsbury: a national hotspot for county lines
Shrewsbury appears to be a hot-bed for drug trafficking. County lines have been documented between the Shropshire town and cities including Birmingham, Liverpool and London. Jailed drug dealers and organised gangs have been caught with heroin and crack cocaine.
According to the National Crime Agency, ‘county lines’ is a term used “when drug gangs from big cities expand their operations to smaller towns, often using violence to drive out local dealers and exploiting children and vulnerable people to sell drugs”.
Young people can be used as drug runners or to move cash in order for dealers to try and avoid detection.
On Monday, the Shropshire Star reported that Shropshire’s Head of Local Policing Chief Superintendent Tom Harding said: “The criminal exploitation of vulnerable people, which includes county lines, has been a priority for West Mercia Police for a long time.
“Work is constantly on-going 24/7 365 days a year with our partner agencies to protect and safeguard those who may be vulnerable to being targeted by county line drug dealers.”
The next day it was reported by The Times that the prime minister will oversee a new Cabinet committee with a focus on county lines gangs. Boris Johnson also told the BBC he wants “to see the county lines drugs gangs wound up”, signalling the importance being placed on their eradication.
Last week academics warned that academic institutions are increasingly being targeted by county lines drug networks as a possible market for class A drugs, according to the Guardian.
In October 2019, the home secretary Priti Patel announced the government would spend £20 million on a new package of measures to tackle county lines drug trafficking.
County lines are now being picked up by Ofsted as a safeguarding issue.
They were mentioned in an Ofsted report of a primary school (St Oswald’s CofE Aided Primary School), which took place in the same month as Shrewsbury Colleges Group’s inspection, with the education watchdog asking leaders to “devise ways to check that all adults are confident to explain their duties with regards to county lines”.
JL Dutaut meets Neil Bentley-Gockmann, the WorldSkills UK CEO whose journey meant leaving behind his community, only better to give back to it
Neil Bentley-Gockmann has found his professional “sweet spot”, so the Harvard course in authentic leadership he attended a few years ago would call it. As CEO of WorldSkills UK – the charity commissioned by the ESFA to manage the nation’s involvement in a rapidly growing global competition to develop young people’s employability skills – his work is aligned with his passions.
But it wasn’t an obvious destination for the “West Belfast born-and-bred” executive who hails from a working-class family of skilled workers. “My dad was a process operator. My uncle was a successful plumber. My granddad was a painter decorator by trade. My brother’s a train driver and my sister was working in hospitality before she started her family. My nieces are on apprenticeships, doing aircraft engineering. Which is fantastic because they’re young women and going into male-dominated professions. I was the odd one out.”
Bentley-Gockmann is proficient in French and German, and remains modest about his Italian. “I had an aptitude for languages and that was encouraged at school.” His teachers wanted him “in a sense, to have aspirations beyond Belfast”, but his starting point has kept him grounded in the value of skills, and vocational and technical education. “I just happened to be good at other things.” He tells me about the English teacher who encouraged him to do drama to build his confidence “because I was quite an introvert”. It’s hard to imagine him ever having been the retiring type, and his CV sitting in front of me certainly suggests otherwise.
“It’s a bit of a cliché,” he says in a self-deprecatory way. “First person in my family to go to university… Social mobility… There was an element of pride. But also there was a sort of a lack of understanding of what it would mean and where it could take me. My mum wasn’t pleased that I was leaving Belfast, to be honest.”
But three factors were driving him to go. “One was my languages, wanting to see a world beyond Belfast. The second was growing up gay in Belfast. In the 1980s that was not a pleasant experience. And thirdly, Belfast at that time wasn’t a great place in general, because of the violence and the Troubles.
“People in general were being discriminated against and denied opportunities”, he says. He left “very uncertain of myself and who I was and what I was going to be.”
Something you won’t find on his CV is that he attended Swansea University first and dropped out. “I was struggling to come out,” he says. “I went back to Belfast and got a part-time job. I ended up going off to work in France as a campsite rep, and that gave me the confidence then to go to Cardiff University and come out in my first week of being there.”
“What we’ve got to do is to tackle vocational snobbery”
He stayed at Cardiff long enough to earn a PhD. His thesis was on race discrimination and trade unionism.
It’s an interesting philosophical background for a man who spent nearly 12 years at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), eventually becoming its second-in-command. “I absolutely loved it,” he says. Bentley-Gockmann’s CV is a roll-call of organisations at the forefront of some of the most pressing social justice issues of our age. At Stonewall and OUTstanding, he advocated for gay rights. At the Carbon Trust, for a sustainable future. In both, he used the considerable skillset he’d developed at the CBI to influence and develop policy.
A pivotal moment was taking the Harvard authentic leadership course. “I was in a leadership role, I was out, and the question I went with was: am I a gay leader, or a leader who happens to be gay? What I came back with was a whole different set of criteria for success in work and life.”
With a new clarity about his passions – education, diversity and climate change – within a year, he left CBI – “a huge, emotional decision”.
Enacting his new perspective in his personal life first, Bentley-Gockmann and his architect husband, Stephen, took time out to build a house. “We decided to move out of London, to build an eco home, and to live those values as best we could.”
Professionally, social justice took the lead. “I took a role at OUTstanding while on the board at Stonewall to pursue working with businesses, helping them create environments where if you happen to be LGBT you can succeed.”
He was approached by Find Your Future, as it was then called. “When I looked into it, it was WorldSkills. In my first job at the CBI, as head of skills and employment, I had supported bringing WorldSkills to London in 2011.”
With no background in the education sector per se, his obvious excitement at that opportunity is an intriguing response from someone who had a unique platform to fight the discrimination he had experienced. “I think it was my own personal experience of teachers who really invest in you. I had a French teacher who left school because her husband moved to Scotland. When I dropped out of university, she was in touch. And when I needed to go for an interview in Edinburgh for the job in France, she put me up. Now I work with so many talented people who go above and beyond to invest in the next generation.”
That might be another cliché: the first child to go to university wanting to “give something back”. Nevertheless, there is a political rhetoric that goes to the heart of our soon-to-be post-Brexit nation’s soul-searching, about left-behind communities and university policy draining their talent.
As we prepare to leave the EU, we’re going to be internationally exposed.”
For Bentley-Gockmann, the WorldSkills gig is all about the community he left behind. “It goes to the heart of who I am as a person. With my family background and my personal experience of the HE route, I think it’s too easy to say that it’s one or the other. There has to be a more blended solution where you’re creating opportunities for young people wherever they’re from to pursue their ambitions.”
“What we’ve got to do is to tackle vocational snobbery and prejudice. As we’re preparing to leave the European Union, we’re going to be internationally exposed. We need to demonstrate that the UK is working to develop world-class skills to attract inward investment, to create jobs across the UK for those left-behind communities.”
WorldSkills, Bentley-Gockmann believes, has an important role to play in demonstrating not just what excellence looks like here, but in bringing back insights to drive standards up. “We have to take a leaf out of China, Japan, Korea, Brazil and Russia’s book and look at upskilling the economy.”
“They train young people to WorldSkills standards, which is the only global skills benchmark going. The UK has been in the top 10 for the past decade and has just dropped out of it. We have to make sure we get back in.”
“An Olympic effort?”, I ask.
“It is Herculean to actually join all of this up. And that’s why I think the UK should be considering hosting WorldSkills again. It can be a real catalyst – the focal point for creating a legacy, like the Olympics.”
“Surely London can’t host again?” I press. “Is your plan to bring WorldSkills to Belfast in 2025?”
He laughs. “Wouldn’t that be brilliant? But wherever it would be hosted, we’ve got to connect Belfast and Glasgow and Cardiff, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol with WorldSkills. I look at what Russia has done in hosting WorldSkills this last year. They used that as a massive game changer for their skills system. They’re embedding WorldSkills standards into the technical education system all across the country.”
So much for what WorldSkills can do for the UK, but Bentley-Gockmann is also focused on the organization itself, and anti-discrimination still underpins his work. “I’m bringing young people in who might not necessarily have an opportunity to join our programme – from BAME communities, LGBT, young people with learning or physical disabilities…”
“The next leader could be somebody who’s come up through the vocational technical education route and who can talk about their lived experience with even more authenticity.”
Like imagining an introvert Bentley-Gockmann, it’s hard to picture a more authentic leader than the WorldSkills UK CEO.
And if you see him at the opening ceremony of WorldSkills 2025 in Belfast or Birmingham, don’t think for a second he’s finished the job. It’ll be just the start of transforming the sector.
The top ten highest college salaries have dropped by an average of more than £50,000 after six of the principals left, an FE Week investigation has found.
The single biggest cut totalled £136,000 – from £294,000 to £158,000 – after a change in leadership at North Hertfordshire College.
Of the four colleges where the principal or chief executive remained unchanged, two bosses increased their salary, one reduced but has since retired and the fourth declined to comment.
After being shown the findings, Association of Colleges (AoC) chief executive David Hughes said the Department for Education has “sent a clear message to college governing bodies that decisions on senior staff pay needs to be evidence-based, proportionate and [offer] value for money”.
“I know that governing bodies have heard the message, and I’m confident that the top job in a college remains an attractive and rewarding one,” he added.
FE Week carried out the analysis by looking at the ten highest paid college leaders in the latest available Department for Education accounts spreadsheet (2017/18), and then asking each college for their 2018/19 or current pay.
If there were multiple principals in one year, we have used the most relevant salary in a single year for either the former or new highest paid leader (see table).
The average for the top ten in 2017/18 has fallen from £255,000 to £202,000 – a 21 per cent drop (though this calculation assumes that the salary for the college that refused to comment remained the same).
When looking at the national picture of principal salaries, the average in 2017/18 sat at just £136,000 for 257 colleges in England, according to the latest available data published by the DfE.
The figures are in stark contrast to university vice-chancellor pay. They averaged take-home pay of more than £250,000 each in the same year.
Of the ten highest basic salaries paid to university bosses in 2017/18, the average was £395,000.
The majority of the colleges in FE Week’s analysis which reduced their leaders’ salary did so after changing their top boss.
Five of them have either been handed a financial notice of concern or been placed in FE Commissioner intervention in recent years.
The largest fall was seen at North Hertfordshire College. Over the course of 2017/18 it had two principals after Matt Hamnett resigned mid-way through the academic year.
His salary reached £294,000 in 2016/17, and their new permanent boss, Kit Davies, earned £158,000 in 2018/19. Davies was on a basic salary of £140,000 plus a payment of £17,958 towards the removal of a long-term incentive plan associated with a previous role.
Cash-strapped Birmingham Metropolitan College (BMet) had the second biggest difference. Its principal in 2017/18, Andrew Cleaves, was paid £266,000, but new boss Cliff Hall takes home £160,000.
“The job of running a college has become incredibly difficult”
A spokesperson for BMet said the college “undertook a benchmarking exercise prior to the current principal’s appointment”, because both the board and the incoming principal were “keen to ensure that the new chief executive’s salary was in line with sector norms”.
They added that “it was an important signal to the staff of the college.”
A similar situation occurred at West Nottinghamshire College (WNC). Its previous principal, Dame Asha Khemka, earned £257,000 in 2017/18 before resigning at the start of 2018/19.
The new permanent principal is Andrew Cropley, who has a salary of £140,000.
A spokesperson for WNC said: “In recognition of the fact that the college’s turnover has reduced from £51 million to £31 million, the new board of governors, formed in late 2018, made the decision to align the principal’s remuneration in-line with sector benchmarks for a college of this size.”
Meanwhile, Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College paid its new boss, Karen Redhead, £200,000 in 2018/19. Former principal Garry Phillips earned £279,000 the year previous.
NCG, one of the largest college groups in the country, has also seen its chief executive leave in recent years to be replaced by someone on a lower wage.
Joe Docherty was paid £227,000 in 2017/18 before quitting in October 2018. An interim boss was in place for the remainder of that academic year, and Liz Bromley has since become the permanent chief executive on £210,000 a year.
And Capital City College Group has reduced its top leader’s salary from £210,000 to £195,000.
The highest paid principal in England in 2017/18 was Judith Doyle at Gateshead College, who retired with immediate effect on December 31 following the launch of an independent investigation into an unexplained £6 million deficit.
She was paid £344,000 in that year, a sum which took into account an “accrual for a remuneration scheme payable in respect of a three-year period”. In 2018/19, Doyle took home £255,000.
The two colleges to see their highest paid officer’s salary increase were Leeds City College (now known as the Luminate Education Group) and Burton and South Derbyshire College. Both of their leaders, Colin Booth and Dawn Ward, respectively, have been in post for a number of years.
While the DfE has clamped down on chief executive pay in multi-academy trusts and vice-chancellor wages in universities, including writing to demand a justification of salaries of over £150,000, no such action has been taken against colleges.
David Hughes
The AoC’s David Hughes said: “The job of running a college has become incredibly difficult – partly because of the complex and unpredictable systems that DfE itself oversees.”
The AoC developed its own pay code in 2018. It includes guidance such as not allowing seniors to get a pay rise unless all staff do, and ensuring that the top boss cannot be involved in deciding their own pay.
Whilst principals’ pay hasn’t hit the heights of vice-chancellors’, college bosses still come in for criticism for their top salaries, especially when teaching staff are refused pay rises.
In 2016/17 the University and College Union (UCU) lambasted principals as “greedy and hopelessly out of touch”, and in recent years have held numerous substantial strikes across the country.
After being shown FE Week’s analysis, UCU head of further education Andrew Harden said: “Staff have been told time and again that there is no money for pay, but the same restraint has not always been applied to those at the top.
“It is time for colleges to make good their commitment to spend extra funds on dealing with the pay crisis in our colleges and working to close the gap between college and school teachers.”
Skills advisory panels (SAPs) could be given a role in influencing which courses will be prioritised and funded in their area.
Little is known about the 36 SAPs, but FE Week understands that the government is working on secondary legislation, an FE Bill, which would change that.
They have so far been given £2.7 million, £75,000 each, to undertake labour market analysis.
Typically SAPs have been established within mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) or local enterprise partnerships (LEPs).
The FE Bill could mean colleges and providers lose ultimate power over deciding which courses are run, with SAPs providing critical advice to national and local government over the sectors prioritised in their region.
SAPs could, for example, advise that the government prioritise funding for classroom and apprenticeship engineering courses at the expense of courses in media and the arts.
And should such a move take place, it would be welcomed by the representative body the LEP Network, which said that, based on the data that has been produced by SAPS, connecting them to apprenticeships is “smart thinking and a natural development of exploiting LMI to help focus on areas of employer need – and that can only be a benefit to local communities”.
The Department for Education has insisted that while SAPs have a “vital role in helping raise the profile of apprenticeships with local employers and providers” and an unofficial role in informing provision locally, “there are no plans to involve SAPs in the apprenticeship standards process in the future”.
Industrial strategy: “SAPs will have real, meaningful influence over the provision of education and training for those over the age of 16”
SAPs were the brainchild of Theresa May’s government and featured in its 2017 industrial strategy, which told of how SAPs would produce “rigorous” analysis of the current and future supply and demand for skills, and help areas “form a clearer understanding of their skills requirements”.
This could then be used by colleges, universities and other providers to help fill employers’ skills needs.
The analysis is also intended to help direct investment in preparation for local providers to roll out T-levels, and by careers advisory facilities such as the National Careers Service and the Careers Enterprise Company to inform their local activities.
The strategy envisaged SAPs would have “real, meaningful” influence over the provision of education and training for those over the age of 16, and they would work with MCAs and LEPs to establish the best way of ensuring that influence is effective.
Intended to be made up of between 15 and 20 members from providers, employers and local authorities, the SAPs were structured around 15 technical routes identified in the government’s 2016 Skills Plan, which includes such areas as construction, digital and social care.
Mayoral combined authorities have broadly tacked to the government’s recommended approach to SAPs: a group featuring leading local politicians and representatives from business and education running LMI and analysis to inform careers education and skills strategies.
The Department for Education announced in 2018 that each of the 36 SAPs would receive £75,000 to help them analyse their current and future skill needs – £2.7 million was given out overall.
The money, which was handed out in April 2019, had to be spent by March this year and was to be used to hire additional analysts, train up existing analysts and undertake more analysis to establish employers’ needs.
The government’s 2017 Industrial Strategy which fleshed out the role of skills advisory panels
Most MCAs that FE Week spoke to had used the money for these purposes.
Yet there has been criticism of SAPs’ role and their output: the data supposed to power their deliberations would be “weak” or even nonexistent, Professor Ewart Keep from the Centre for Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance wrote for FE Week that same year.
This is evidenced by colleges’ “sporadic” use of LMI, as reported by labour market analysts Emsi. Their director of further education John Gray said some providers regard the data as merely a “tick-box exercise” to please Ofsted.
SAPs were also given no financial levers to affect change in provision locally, Keep said, leaving their ability to make fundamental changes in provision “probably close to nil”.
And although SAPs were given pride of place during May’s leadership of the Conservative government, little to no mention was made of SAPs in the party’s 2019 manifesto and little else has been said about them while Boris Johnson has been prime minister, until now.
How have skills advisory panels worked across the country?
Tees Valley Combined Authority
This SAP, the Education, Employment and Skills Partnership Board, has a bumper membership of 23 people; featuring representatives from FE colleges, schools, independent providers, local politicians, departments like BEIS, DfE and DWP, the voluntary sector and employer representative organisations, who meet quarterly.
This SAP has been developing analysis which has helped shape the investment in programmes such as Routes to Work, careers education, and apprenticeships.
In the future, the authority says it will be carrying out further analysis to define current and future skills requirements.
West Midlands Combined Authority
The WMCA’s SAP, the Skills Board, is a 16-strong body which meets twice a year and is chaired by the authority’s portfolio holder for skills.
It also includes representatives from LEPs, an Association of Employment and Learning Providers representative, and a trade union representative.
It is looking at using the £75,000 to examine a range of learner journeys to identify critical success factors and the courses that lead to good outcomes.
The SAP believes this would help improve learner journeys within and between providers.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority
Thirteen members make up this SAP, known locally as the Employment and Skills Board, including business representatives, an independent training provider, a higher education representative and two from the FE sector.
It is intended they will meet bi-monthly after they held their first meeting in December.
They have used the funding to draw on expertise from Cambridgeshire County Council’s data analysis team and have already done some analysis of skills supply and demand.
They have kept £20,000 of the £75,000 back to access an LMI tool and run a business engagement survey.
Greater London Authority
The GLA’s SAP is the Skills for Londoners Board, which has 16 members led by the deputy mayor for skills and featuring representatives from the city’s boroughs, sector organisations such as the Association of Colleges, and the world of business.
The board, which meets quarterly, spent their £75,000 on hiring economists and a data analyst, who has been developing the skills and development sections of the GLA’s local industrial strategy, which is due out early this year.
A college in financial trouble and the education secretary’s old sixth form are among a host of positive Ofsted results for FE providers.
The week was somewhat overshadowed, however, after independent provider EQV (UK) was handed a grade four because apprentices and their bosses did not know they were on an apprenticeship programme.
Brooklands College will find solace in maintaining its grade two after plunging into financial difficulties as the government demanded it return £20 million following a subcontracting scandal.
Inspectors have reported that the current leaders and governors “now have a realistic grasp of the college’s financial position”.
Staff encourage and guide the nearly 2,500 learners towards high aspirations; such as engineering students pursuing a career in motor racing.
Also keeping hold of its grade two is Scarborough Sixth Form College, where education secretary Gavin Williamson completed his A-levels.
A high proportion of the college’s 950 learners achieve high grades, thanks to effective and helpful teaching, through which learners develop knowledge and skills well.
Independent provider Group Horizon had a promising week, scoring a grade two from its first full inspection of its provision to 45 apprentices and 111 adults.
By working effectively with organisations like the combined authority and employers, Group Horizon design programmes that support apprentices and learners to develop skills to meet regional needs.
Salford City College, Locomotivation Ltd, Long Road Sixth Form College and Fairfield Farm College also maintained a grade two this week.
After receiving a grade three in November 2018, FE college Colchester Institute has regained some standing by making ‘significant progress’ in two areas of a follow-up monitoring visit.
Its governors come in for particular praise, with inspectors writing they and leaders, “responded swiftly and effectively to the findings from the previous inspection” and effective structures have improved the quality of education for its over 5,000 learners.
Phoenix Training Services (Midlands), meanwhile, has made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of a monitoring visit after receiving a grade three last February.
Following that full inspection, Phoenix was bought by recruitment firm Challenge-trg and was successful in bidding for a slice of the West Midlands Combined Authority’s £125.6 million adult education budget.
But inspectors have found its 39 adult learners are on programmes not designed to meet their needs and “the curriculum remains too narrow and focused exclusively on achieving the vocational or employability short qualification,” which make up most of the provision.
Employer provider Veolia Environment Development Centre, a branch of waste management company Veolia UK, slipped to ‘requires improvement’ after a grade two inspection two years ago.
It was found that the curriculum is not “consistently challenging” for all 187 apprentices and they are not well prepared enough for their end-point assessment.
University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust has been hit with a grade three in every area of its full inspection, but inspectors wrote “leaders and managers have made effective improvements to governance and strategic management” since making ‘insufficient progress’ in a monitoring visit.
The independent provider’s 129 apprentices have the opportunity to learn new skills from “highly experienced and professional” ward staff and managers.
Aspect Training, for not making “sufficient progress in improving the quality of education” since a grade three inspection, was declared to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas.
But the independent provider has introduced a “useful” learner monitoring system being used effectively to spot any learners falling behind.
Complete Training and Assessment, with its 73 apprentices, was marked as making ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of an early monitoring visit because its leaders and managers of the independent provider did not ensure the principles of an apprenticeship are met.
They have not prepared adequately, in the inspectors’ eyes, for the transition to standards from frameworks, which are due to be switched off this year.
Bishop Auckland College, Bespoke Consultancy and Education Limited, New London Educational Trust, Paragon Training Academy, Highfields Community Association and Newfriars College all made reasonable progress in every area of monitoring visits.
