Latest news from FE Week | FE Week

Massive subcontracting top-slices finally revealed

Subcontracting top-slices exceeded £100 million last year, and 28 per cent of prime providers were charging more than 20 percent, FE Week can reveal.

The long-overdue subcontracting figures for 2016/17 have finally been published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

FE Week’s analysis of the data has shown that just under a third of primes were charging above the 20-per-cent best-practice threshold announced in March.

This threshold was agreed between the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Holex and the Collab provider group. This represented 42 per cent of funding.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers immediately criticised such “unacceptable fees”.

“There are some disgraceful & totally unacceptable fees here,” it tweeted. “@ESFAgov rules should now adopt @AELPUK @collabgrp @HOLEXPolicy 20% cap and hopefully this will feature in final report of current @CommonsEd inquiry”

A total of 407 prime providers charged an average top-slice of 19 per cent, of which 12 charged an average top-slice in excess of 30 per cent.

At 39 per cent, John Ruskin College had the highest average top-slice percentage (see tables below).

The biggest single deal was a £4.7 million (40 per cent) Learndirect top-slice taken from £11.9 million of adult education budget funding delivered by Go Train Limited.

“In reviewing its funding rules, the ESFA shouldn’t try to find a form of words to wheedle out of putting a 20-per-cent cap on management fees,” said AELP boss Mark Dawe. “

“There are some totally unacceptable and disgraceful figures among this data with millions of pounds being denied to frontline training as a result. The signals from the MPs on the select committee suggest that it is ready to take a tough stance when it reports on the apprenticeship reforms and the government must respond immediately.”

Top-slicing describes the level of funding that prime providers charge subcontractors in so-called “management fees”, in order to run training on their behalf.

Concern has mounted in recent years that certain lead providers were charging excessive rates, as an easy way of supplementing their incomes.

The ESFA revealed in April that subcontracting fees and charges are to be reviewed to ensure government funding is being used for “recognised costs”.

“In the coming months, we will be reviewing aspects of the subcontracting funding rules,” it said.

This will include “subcontracting fees and charges, so that we can be assured that our funding is being used for recognised costs”.

Any subsequent changes to subcontracting rules will come into force from August.

Ofsted has also taken a closer interest in subcontracting; it announced in February that it would be conducting two new types of monitoring visit.

The first are monitoring visits to a sample of new apprenticeship providers. The second are monitoring visits to directly funded providers to look specifically at subcontracted provision.

Individual lead providers used to have to publish their annual figures on their websites by the end of November every year.

This changed from 2016/17, when new rules dictated that providers had to inform the ESFA of their figures, which should then be published centrally.

But the agency came in for heavy criticism as November passed without any indication of when the full figures would be revealed for last academic year.

The sector finally got its answer in April, after Gordon Marsden, the shadow skills minister asked, through a written parliamentary question lodged, when the government planned to publish the fees.

The education minister Nadhim Zahawi replied this would be by the end of June – and they were finally published at 4.55pm on June 29.

The ESFA has been approached for comment.

Leaders missed significant teaching weaknesses at ‘inadequate’ UTC

A university technical college has been rated inadequate across the board, in an Ofsted report that warned leaders and governors were unaware of “significant” teaching weaknesses for years.

Health Futures UTC, in West Bromwich, became the ninth UTC to be rated grade four when the report was published yesterday. It was quickly followed this morning by a tenth – for UTC@Harbourside, which has announced plans to close.

Leaders and governors at the west midlands UTC were said to have been “ineffective since it opened in September 2015”, having “failed to secure an acceptable standard of education for students over that time”.

“Teaching has been weak and consequently, students have made very poor progress,” it added.

Yet the top team who were supposed to be overseeing provision were said to have been unaware of these “significant weaknesses” until exam results were released in August 2017.

The report added that over the last two years, improvement plans had “not been well focused on those aspects of the school that needed to improve”.

Another particularly damning finding for a UTC – part of the 14-to-19 movement of institutions that are supposed to maintain a vocational focus – was that while Health Futures “claims to have a curriculum focus on healthcare and health science”, in practice “it does not”.

“Leaders have failed to provide students with the health-focused curriculum they were promised. Links with employers are weak.”

“The school’s curriculum is not distinctive. Its health focus is not embedded across the curriculum and is only evident in occasional activities for a limited number of students”.

The report also warned that leaders have been “incorrectly recording the attendance of students on study leave, coding it as ‘off-site educational activity’, rather than as ‘study leave’.”

This was said to have had “the effect of inflating the school’s attendance figures”. Leaders ceased this practice “during the inspection”.

“Attendance has declined each year since the school opened. It is now well below the national average for secondary schools,” the report added, and “many students do not attend school regularly”.

“During this academic year, approximately 30 per cent of students have not attended regularly and this is the case for almost half of disadvantaged students.”

The UTC has 440 pupils on register in 2018 – which means it is currently at 73 per cent capacity (which makes it the fifth highest of any UTC).

Health Futures was unable to comment on its plans for the future ahead of publication.

The Ofsted report did recognise that “in the short time she has been at the school”, the interim principal Ruth Umerah had “secured the confidence of staff and improvements in behaviour”, and that she has a “clear understanding” of what needs to improve.

Professor Linda Lang, chair of governors, wrote to parents about the grade four.

She conceded that the report “indicated areas that require improvement, such as the standard of teaching, learning and assessment, which means that not all students have made progress, or achieved, as well as they could”.

“Our first priority has been to ensure the very best possible standard of education for every student,” she added.

“We have made a number of new appointments to ensure that the leadership of teaching and learning, literacy, special educational needs and the sixth form are effective.

“The governors recognise that the upward journey will be difficult, but we are committed to support and challenge the plans and work done, to ensure that it is of the necessary standard.”

Ninth UTC closure announced

Another university technical college will close next year, taking the total to nine.

UTC@Harbourside, based in Newhaven in East Sussex, has announced it will close in August 2019 after failing to recruit enough pupils to become “financially stable”.

The announcement comes ahead of the UTC’s first Ofsted report, which is due out on Wednesday.

The college, a 14-to-19 institution with a vocational focus, opened in 2015 and planned to recruit up to 650 pupils. The school had just 141 pupils on roll in 2016-17.

According to the UTC, the request from governors for permission to close the institution next year was approved by ministers last week.

“The UTC has not been able to recruit enough students to become financially stable and to deliver fully on its educational vision. The governors decided that the best way forward is to propose termination of its agreement with the Department for Education. The UTC was inspected by Ofsted last month and the report is due to be published on Wednesday July 4,” it said in a statement.

“This has been a very difficult and hugely disappointing decision for the governors to make. They recognise that this announcement will cause concern to students, staff and parents. Their primary concern is the welfare and education of students currently attending the UTC and those who have applied to join from September, and the decision was taken at the earliest opportunity in the light of the upcoming summer break.”

The UTC is “already in discussions with the relevant local authorities to secure alternative places for the students who had accepted an offer to join us in September”.

“They are working closely with parents, students, schools and the local authorities to do all we can to assist this. There will be opportunities for students to meet with local authority advisers and UTC staff before the summer break,” a spokesperson said.

The college will remain open and “fully committed” to ensuring current year 10 and 12 pupils successfully complete their courses by next July, they added.

The UTC model has faced substantial problems since its inception in 2010. Many have struggled financially after failing to attract the right number of pupils.

In January, it was revealed that UTC@Harbourside was one of three UTCs to have agreed to pay back over £500,000 to the government after over-estimating pupil numbers.

Secrecy surrounds Ofsted’s decision to declare its 3aaa inspection ‘incomplete’

Ofsted’s latest inspection of Aspire Achieve Advance – which holds the largest ESFA apprenticeship allocation – is “incomplete” following intervention from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

The inspectorate had at first confirmed on June 20 that it had inspected the provider, which is commonly known as 3aaa, in May and that nothing was amiss.

“The report is currently going through our normal processes and will be published in due course,” a spokesperson said at the time.

But there was a sudden change in the wind a day later, after Ofsted released a second statement to FE Week mentioning “new information”.

“Given new information that has come to light, we have decided to declare our inspection of Aspire Achieve Advance Limited incomplete,” a spokesperson said.

“In due course, pending further information from the EFSA, we will decide whether we need to return to the provider to gather further evidence.”

3aaa did not provide a comment on Ofsted’s decision.

Its allocation for non-levy apprenticeships now stands at nearly £22 million, up from £5.5 million at the start of the academic year.

The provider, which specialises in “professional services apprenticeships” has seen significant growth under the leadership of Peter Marples and Di McEvoy-Robinson, its chief executive and director respectively.

Direct ESFA funding increased from just £390,000 in 2012/13 to £3.6 million the following year. It rose again to £12.5 million in 2014/15 and to £21.7 million a year later.

Its apprenticeships include IT, software, digital marketing, accountancy, financial services, business administration, customer service and management.

“We are a national company offering a personalised, local service in 38 locations as we look to partner local talent and businesses together to enhance careers and the economy through workplace training,” its website states.

It is also claims to place a “huge emphasis” on employing high-quality, industry-experienced staff which means “we are able to deliver outstanding apprenticeship programmes that are developed with a focus on providing industry led skills and experience”.

It has been inspected only once before, in October 2014, receiving ‘outstanding’ ratings across the board in a report which recognised that “the vast majority of apprentices make excellent progress”.

Performance management was “very strong and, linked with excellent communications and robust quality-assurance, enables managers to pursue improvement relentlessly”.

Neither the Department for Education nor the ESFA would explain their part in Ofsted’s shock decision to delay the latest inspection.

“We don’t comment on individual cases nor on any investigations ongoing or otherwise,” said a DfE spokesperson when asked about the case.

“If and when we have concerns raised to us we would take the relevant action.”

Learndirect accuse PeoplePlus of ‘dirty tricks’ after entire senior executive team jumps ship

The entire senior executive team at Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd (LDA) along with 18 other senior employees have today quit to work for PeoplePlus Group, the firm that had only recently had a purchase offer rejected.

The unexpected mass exodus of 22 key staff has been met with a furious response from the Learndirect Group, calling it “dirty tricks”, something PeoplePlus “absolutely deny.”

As reported exclusively by FE Week, Learndirect had been working for weeks on a sale to PeoplePlus Group, a division of Staffline Group, a listed company and one of the biggest recruitment firms in the UK.

PeoplePlus undertook several weeks of due diligence on a purchase of the entire Learndirect Group, but FE Week understands the talks ended after their offer to only take ownership of Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd was rejected.

Early last week Learndirect, owned by the private equity firm Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), then turned to entrepreneur Wayne Janse van Rensburg and a deal was done to take ownership of the whole Learndirect Group.

Mr Janse van Rensburg is the Managing Director of the Stonebridge College Group, which supplies Learndirect with a Virtual Learning Environment known as PEARL.

Stonebridge College Group includes Dimensions Training Solution (DTS), a training provider that Mr Janse van Rensburg purchased in 2015, and the ESFA approved the change of ownership for LDA on the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers.

Mr Janse van Rensburg, who has only been owner of the Learndirect Group for a week, this evening told FE Week: “Colleagues that don’t share our vision and values, placing learners and employers at the heart of our provision have no place in my business.”

But a senior employee at the Learndirect Group, that did not wish to be named, went further, saying: “this is pretty dirty tricks from PeoplePlus, having spent several weeks in our data room [during the due diligence phase of the sale process].

“The 22 staff that resigned today can expect a letter from our lawyer stating that they would be in breach of contract to leave without seeing out their notice period, which would allow for an orderly handover.”

“The letter will also remind them of the non-compete clause in their contract of employment at Learndirect Apprenticeship Ltd, they added.”

Simon Rouse, managing director at PeoplePlus group told FE Week that the 22 that resigned from LDA today would be joining PeoplePlus next week and any claim of “dirty tricks” was “conspiratorial nonsense.”

He went on to say: “We went into this to do a deal [to buy Learndirect] in good faith. We were not able to make that deal work after we made an offer and they decided not to proceed with that offer and went with an alternative buyer. The managers at LDA have decided that they don’t have confidence that the new business has a future for them and we are delighted that they have come to join us.

“This idea that there was some conspiracy or dirty tricks, we absolutely deny that.”

The 22 LDA staff that jumped ship to PeoplePlus include the managing director, sales and marketing director, quality director and performance director.

It is understood that Andy Palmer, the former chief executive of LDA, is not among those to have left and is currently interim chair at the Learndirect Group.

Ofsted watch: A week of contrasting fortunes for UTCs

It’s been a week of contrasting fortunes for university technical colleges, as one is rated ‘good’ and another ‘inadequate’ in their first ever inspections.

Elsewhere a genuinely new apprenticeship provider has been making ‘significant progress’ in one of the areas under review, in one of four monitoring visit reports published this week.

UTC Oxfordshire received grade two ratings across the board in a report published June 29, and based on an inspection carried out in late May.

“Strong leadership” at the 14-to-19 technical institution, which opened in September 2015, has “forged excellent business partnerships and a clear vision across the UTC”, according to the report.

Leaders ensure the “small sixth-form provides very well for its students”, and its “highly motivated leader” routinely “monitors attendance and tracks individual students’ progress”.

Sixth-formers “typically achieve well in their chosen A-level and vocational courses”, and are able to “progress to their chosen university course or high-level apprenticeships” thanks to “bespoke advice and guidance support”, the report said.

In contrast, Derby Manufacturing UTC, which also opened in September 2015, received Ofsted’s lowest possible rating across the board in a report published June 28 and based on an inspection in early May.

As previously reported by FE Week, the school has been placed in special measures as a result of the report’s findings.

Apprenticeship provider Norse Commercial Services Limited was found to be making ‘significant progress’ in one of the themes under review, and ‘reasonable progress’ in the other two areas, in a monitoring visit report published June 27 and based on a visit in early May.

According to the report, Norse “had not been involved in providing government-funded training” before it gaining approval as a main provider on the register of apprenticeship training providers in March last year – making it one of the few genuinely new providers to have had an Ofsted monitoring visit.

Inspectors found leaders were making ‘significant progress’ in ensuring it is meeting all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision.

They follow a “well-thought-out strategy for developing the apprenticeship offer”, and have taken a “cautious approach” as they are “well aware of the risks associated with not having provided government-funded training before”.

“Managers work well to ensure the apprentices get the required 20 per cent of work time to do off-the-job training,” the report noted.

Three other apprenticeship providers had monitoring visit reports published this week, but all three were previously subcontractors.

GLP Training, which was a subcontractor for three years before becoming a main provider, was found to be making ‘significant progress’ in ensuring that it is meeting all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision, and that apprentices benefit from high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes. However, it was only found to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in ensuring that effective safeguarding arrangements are in place.

London-based Let Me Play Limited, which offers a range of mainly education and sports-focused apprenticeships, was founded to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in all three themes under review, in a report published June 27 and based on a visit in late May.

And Youth Force, based in Brighton, was also found to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in all three areas, in a report published June 25 and based on an inspection in early June.

East Coast College received a ‘requires improvement’ rating this week, in its first inspection since it was formed through the merger of Lowestoft College and Great Yarmouth College last August.

According to the report, published June 27 and based on an inspection in mid-May, “too many” adult learners and those on study programmes “do not make rapid progress” and are “behind with their work”.

“Too much teaching is undemanding and assessment is not challenging enough to enable learners to achieve their potential,” the report said.

Leaders’ judgements on the quality of provision were found to “lack rigour” and “are consequently overgenerous”, inspectors found.

Leader and managers at Central Bedfordshire College were criticised for failing to take “sufficient action to prevent a decline in learners’ achievement”, as its rating fell from two to three this week.

According to the report, published June 28 and based on an inspection in mid-May, “the proportion of learners and apprentices who achieve their qualifications is low”.

Teachers often “do not have high expectations of what learners can achieve” and fail to provide “activities that challenges learners to make good progress”.

Furthermore, “governance arrangements are insufficiently robust to hold senior leaders to account and assure the quality of the provision”.

No sixth-form colleges, employer providers or adult and community learning providers had inspection reports published this week.

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Central Bedfordshire College	15/05/2018	28/06/2018	3	2
East Coast College	15/05/2018	27/06/2018	3	3

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Youth Force	05/06/2018	25/06/2018	M	M
GLP Training	02/05/2018	26/06/2018	M	M
Let Me Play Limited	22/05/2018	27/06/2018	M	M
Norse Commercial Services Limited	02/05/2018	27/06/2018	M	M

Other (including UTCs)	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Derby Manufacturing UTC	01/05/2018	28/06/2018	4	–
UTC Oxfordshire	22/05/2018	29/06/2018	2	–

AoC announces Julie Nerney as next chair

The Association of Colleges has announced Julie Nerney as its next chair of the board.

She will take over when Carole Stott MBE steps down at the end of the year.

Ms Nerney is currently chair of the board of governors at Greater Brighton Metropolitan College, having previously led the City College Brighton and Hove board.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the AoC as their new chair,” she said. “I am passionate about the contribution that colleges make to support students in achieving their goals.”

“It will be great to be part of an organisation that does such fantastic work providing support and leadership to the sector at both national and local level, including its influencing of government on policies impacting the sector, students and staff.

“I’m really looking forward to meeting members once I take up post in January.”

Ms Nerney has spent much of her career as a successful entrepreneur and now supports businesses with organisational transformation and change management.

In 2012, she was part of the leadership team delivering the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

A chartered director for the Institute of Directors, she also undertakes voluntary work with the Prince’s Trust, and ambassadorial roles for government aimed at improving diversity in public life.

“Being chair of AoC and working alongside such passionate and committed staff across our membership is a privilege and pleasure, as well as a big responsibility,” said Ms Stott.

“Our colleges play such an important role in their communities and in our success and wellbeing as a nation. They are forces for good that develop talent, transform lives and support individual and collective prosperity and success. They should be supported and cherished and that is why the role of AoC is such an important one.”

21 new members appointed to IfA apprentice panel

The Institute for Apprenticeships’ apprentice panel will have 21 new members when it next meets on July 4.

A week ago, the former skills minister Robert Halfon said the IfA should “get its act together”, following revelations that the panel hadn’t met in nearly 10 months.

“The voice of the apprentice is central to the work of the Institute. We’ve therefore more than doubled the numbers on the apprentice panel, so we can have a truly representative group to inform best practice and quality standards,” IfA chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan (pictured above) said.

“I’m pleased to welcome the new members and look forward to working closely with the panel.”

The panel is made up of current or recent apprentices from a wide range of occupations and experiences from up and down the country.

Its role is to decide which issues need to be focused on from the learner’s perspective, and ensure apprentices are heard during the decision-making structure of the institute.

Eleven members were appointed in 2017, and the panel first met in April that year.

It now has 26 members, which means six of those originally on the panel have left.

As reported by FE Week, a Freedom of Information request revealed the panel had only met four times since it was launched in March last year – most recently in October.

This prompted Mr Halfon, who set up the panel during his time as skills minister, to urge the IfA to “get its act together and make far greater effort”.

“It beggars belief that during this crucial time for boosting apprenticeships, the IfA panel could be so conspicuously abdicating its responsibility to hear the voices of apprentices,” he said.

It was revealed last month that current skills minister Anne Milton had still not met the panel more than 12 months after it was established.

The 21 new members of the panel are:

Harry Holden, Joe Griffin
Joe Hirst, Transport for London
Kawsar Ahmad, Transport for London
Georgia Cresswell, MedImmune (host employer)
Jordan Layne, Portakabin
Kat Paricos, Unilever
Aimen Fatima, University of Manchester
Ryan Carey, BAE Systems
Hajra Bibi, GlaxoSmithKline
Ekansh Sharma, Accenture
Alyssa Wood Derwent, Training Association
Jessica Le Jeune, Nielson
Sebastian Lawrence, Aon UK
Sky Caves, Basingstoke College of Technology
Rosie Smith City & Guilds
Leon Jacob, Allergan Biologics
Zuzanna Wnekowska, Airbus
Kathryn Jack, CILEx Law School
Flavia Seabra, St Ermin’s Hotel
Alex Farnworth, Hanson Cement
Louis Curtis, Aggregate Industries

They join the five existing panel members:

Poppy Wolfarth, Asset Training
Kam Penglin, CT Skills
Sanna Shabir, Atkins Global
Adam Gymer, Pfizer UK
Holly Broadhurst, JCB

Ofsted: Bigger colleges aren’t always better

“Big is not always beautiful,” Ofsted’s main man for FE has warned, admitting he is considering the effect of mega-colleges formed through mergers on quality.

Paul Joyce’s admission comes just a week after the nation’s largest college group NCG saw its rating slip to ‘requires improvement’.

“We are looking at our survey programme as to whether something relating to the merger theme is timely to do,” he told FE Week.

“We are concerned at the size of some providers, in relation to poor performance data, so big is not always beautiful.”

NCG was downgraded from ‘good’ in part due to concerns around poor achievement rates.

These were well below average for both apprenticeships and 16-to-18 study programmes.

The report, published on June 21, noted that “executive” leaders had spent a “substantial amount of their time on due diligence” for the group’s two most recent members, Carlisle College and Lewisham Southwark College, and reviewing other merger requests.

In an interview with FE Week ahead of the report’s appearance, NCG’s chair Peter Lauener insisted that he had staff looking at quality, but admitted that the main focus had been on tackling financial issues at the member colleges.

“Standards are not where we want them to be,” he conceded.

NCG’s fall from grace came just eight months after another sector giant, Learndirect, received a damning grade four.

It received considerable governmental special treatment in the wake of the result, leading to questions about whether it, as the nation’s largest independent training provider, was too big to fail.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week last week, skills minister Anne Milton conceded that “too big to fail is not an invalid point”.

With the growing number of mega-colleges such as NCG being formed through mergers, she said she was “very mindful of colleges being too big to fail. I think we need to watch it.”

Large college groups to have been created after the area reviews of post-16 education and training include Capital City College Group, which has three members and a turnover of £80 million, according to 2016/17 accounts.

And if New City College’s plans to merge with Epping Forest College, Havering College and Havering Sixth-Form College go ahead, it will have six members and a combined turnover of £108 million.

The trend for colleges to join forces is showing no signs of slowing down, with FE commissioner Richard Atkins predicting around 15 new partnerships this year – the same amount as last year.

Ofsted’s policy is to give merged colleges up to three years before they’re inspected.

However, Mr Joyce said that while it is “right to give them time to embed their systems and processes” it is also “right that we do monitor them”.

“If we do have concerns, if for example performance data does cause us a concern before the three-year period, if we get a lot of complaints from students or if there’s other reasonable intelligence that the merger is not working, we will go and inspect sooner,” he said.

FE Week reported in February on the prospect of Ofsted carrying out campus-level inspections from as early as next year.

A new “campus identifier” data field in the individualised learner record, to be introduced next academic year, is designed to allow “allow identification of provision delivered across the various sites of merged institutions”.

This could pave the way for individual reports on colleges that were previously independent, but which now sit within merged groups.

Ofsted carries out a programme of surveys and thematic reviews alongside its main inspection programme.

This is meant to be an annual programme, but it has now been almost two years since its last FE-specific research, into the Prevent duty, was published in August 2016.