MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 286

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Stuart Blackett, Board member, Stockton, Riverside College Group

Start date: June 2019

Concurrent job: Director of finance and strategy, RPMI and vice chair of the Railway Housing Association

Interesting fact: As a child, he was the lead vocalist in a choir and would be paid 50p per wedding

Kirk Siderman-Wolter, Board member, Stockton Riverside College Group

Start date: June 2019

Concurrent job: Interim chief operating officer, Agri-Epi Centre Ltd

Interesting fact: He recently won a gold and bronze medal at the Great Britain Diving Federation Spring Masters Championships 2019 for his age category

Phil Heathcock, NETA Training Group board member, Stockton Riverside College Group

Start date: June 2019

Concurrent job: Chief financial officer, Cleveland Bridge UK

Interesting fact: He carried out an audit of NETA more than 20 years ago

 

Introducing… Julie Mills

From school drop-out to college chief executive, Julie Mills has not done things in a conventional way

When Julie Mills was a 16-year-old in the early 1980s, she quit her sixth-form college and started working in a job centre where she dished out unemployment benefits. Now principal and chief executive of Milton Keynes College and with a PhD, she recalls the relief she felt quitting school. “I thought I already knew everything. You had to call everyone ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’, and I thought ‘I’m not longer a child, this isn’t for me’. So I left.”

Unemployment was “massive” in the early 1980s and Mills says she was kept busy at the job centre for four years. But she soon found herself drawn back to learning and ended up in further education. Her impressive 30-year career was recently recognised with an OBE for services to promoting business and education links.

As head of Milton Keynes she oversees 600 apprentices and about 14,000 learners, including adults, and recently secured funding for an Institute of Technology.

The official launch of the Institute of Technology bid at Bletchley Park

You might think her work in FE was first driven by a wish to help the disadvantaged, the have-nots and second chancers; yet Mills, who has also taught in prisons during her time at the college, isn’t a huge fan of this last-chance saloon portrayal of the sector.

“That prison work, and our other work, sounds like we’re all about second chances. But actually this is about excellence. We’re passionate about people who really want to do something.

“FE is very good at supporting people who need that little extra support, but actually it is about excellence and providing people with the best pathway.”

As soon as I walked into the classroom, I loved it

This belief in the power of doing something and doing it well, was inspired by her family. Her mother was a primary teacher and her father an engineer. “Probably what influenced me when I was a teenager was my dad when he took the brave decision to leave his job at an engineering company and set up a business,” Mills says. “It gave me a bit of an assumption that you can make changes and give it a go. What’s the worst that can happen?”

With that drive behind her, Mills took one-day release from the job centre to study today’s equivalent of a BTEC in business at Barnfield College in Luton and began to take on bookkeeping work.

She started an Open University course at 21 and graduated with a BASc Hons. Then one night, when she was in a bar with other students, a tutor asked her if she’d like to try teaching bookkeeping.

“As soon as I walked into that classroom I loved it. My technology was a boardmarker and it was a night class. I loved the teaching – everything about it.”

It turned out that the evening classes were held at her old school, which Mills drily notes was “quite ironic”. She trained part-time as an adult education teacher and the first job she landed was at the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders (Nacro), where she taught employability skills while still teaching bookkeeping in
the evenings.

She joined Milton Keynes in 1990 as a lecturer in finance. In 2011, she was appointed chief executive and took the college from “satisfactory” to grade 3, before achieving a grade 2 in 2017. Ofsted’s report is glowing: “Leaders…have made rapid progress in building a culture of continual improvement with determination,” it says. And later: “Students benefit from imaginative, well-structured and interesting lessons.”

That early work with Nacro proved useful when, three years after joining Milton Keynes, it advertised for a deputy head of education based at the nearby Woodhill prison. She was interested by the “challenges of the context”, she says. “You’ve lots of things you have to be more conscious of than in other education settings, like security. I really enjoyed it.” From there she became head of prison education for Milton Keynes and spearheaded a contract bid to the Ministry of Justice to deliver prison education across numerous providers.

At one point, the college ran education services in 30 prisons. Now it’s closer to 20, working with about 15,000 offenders, including high-security institutions such as Belmarsh Prison in southeast London. The college is one of just a handful of education providers working in prisons; the others include Manchester College, Weston College near Bristol and training provider PeoplePlus. Each prison has a “mini-college” with English, maths and vocational lessons. Lower security prisons partner with national employers such as Timpsons, Boots, Greggs and Premier Inn to work on employment when prisoners are released. Milton Keynes has helped 700 offenders into employment since 2015.

Who am I to talk? I dropped out of sixth form

Gathering a team of people to win a government contract of that scale appears to be a special skill that Mills has. About four years ago she began eyeing up an abandoned building at Bletchley Park, the site of the famous Enigma codebreakers, including Alan Turing, during the Second World War. “I was waiting for funding to come up,” she admits. And she won it – £28 million to open a prestigious Institute of Technology (IoT). Milton Keynes was one of only nine colleges to win bids for the institutes, which will specialise in levels 4 and 5 STEM subjects. It will open with capacity for 1,500 students in September 2021. Sir John Dermot Turing, Alan Turing’s nephew, supported her bid.

Reaching for the top has always been Mills’ bag, it seems. “I’ve got about 400 ideas a day,” she says. Another goal was to complete her PhD on prison staff “before I was 40”. Since 2015 she writes regularly for The Huffington Post, calling for everything from better FE funding to more women in STEM. “FE is not about second chances. It’s about excellence”

So where now? The OBE recognises  Mills’ efforts in many areas. But the

Julie Mills receiving her ‘Principal of the Year’ award by the National Centre for Diversity

IoT means that she now has a challenge on her hands. There needs to be enough local young people with level 3 qualifications to ensure a steady stream of talent to take level 4 and 5 qualifications at the IoT. The trouble is that the city has more jobs than young people.

“Here you can get a job with a good salary with few skills, so one of our big challenges is to keep them in education, and get them to a higher level.”

The irony doesn’t escape her. “Who am I to talk? I dropped out of sixth form!” To help this talent pipeline, Mills has done a huge amount of work on inclusion. “We looked at who was coming into the college and what they were doing, and asked, ‘does that reflect how the community looks? How are we doing on postcode area, ethnicity, age and gender?’” In January the college launched a mentoring pilot with 15 disadvantaged young men. The results are due later this month and, if successful, the scheme will be rolled out more widely next year.

This year the National Centre for Diversity named Mills as national principal of the year. It seems to be this capacity for reaching out that can give the IoT its best chance of success. “It’s about giving people the opportunity to do something excellent,” she says.

Fraudsters pose as college principal in bid to con recipients out of money

Lakes College has become the latest victim of a sophisticated email scam in which fraudsters posed as its principal.

Providers were warned about this kind of targeted “phishing” scam – where an imposter pretends to be a trustworthy source in an electronic communication to trick people into transferring money – by the Education and Skills Funding Agency this week.

On Tuesday, fraudsters hacked into the email account of Lakes College boss Chris Nattress and sent a link to his contacts to “review and sign”.

Furthermore, FE Week understands that when Nattress’s contacts replied to check if the email was genuine, the fraudster replied saying that it was.

They also changed the college’s phone number in the email signature by one digit, and made up a mobile number, so contacts could not check in that way.

Nattress told FE Week: “What we have experienced this week acts as a reminder to all, in the FE sector and further afield, how easy it is to fall victim, and that we must all remain vigilant.”

The college’s digital team identified the issue before staff received any reports of a problem.

“We have robust systems, controls and procedures in place at the college,” Nattress added. “And occasions like this highlight their importance and allow us to enhance our training and security awareness.”

The ESFA said clicking a link in a harmful email will take the user to a website that requests user credentials that can be used by the perpetrator to send “harmful” emails from the user’s account.

On a mobile device, the harmful emails sometimes appear with a coloured button saying “Display Message”, and oftentimes multiple official-looking email addresses are included to make the messages look legitimate.

The fraudster can request the user changes the bank account it uses for the Department for Education, the ESFA, or another payment provider.

If the imposter is not discovered, a payment may be made to the fraudulent account, the account could be emptied, and a new victim could be targeted.

The agency claims people have suffered “financial losses” because of this scam, but it is unclear how many.

FE Week spoke to an IT security expert who advised anyone who receives a suspected phishing email to not interact with the message but to use alternative means of finding contact information for the sender and to contact them through that to find out if the email is genuine.

The ESFA has additionally advised users to ensure they have firewalls, strong passwords and anti-virus software in place and to be alert to emails containing seemingly legitimate links.

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

This is not the first-time principals have been specifically targeted by fraudsters: in 2014, emails purportedly from the ESFA’s predecessor body the Skills Funding Agency were sent to providers, asking them to send details that would allow the fraudster to take money from the provider’s bank account.

ESFA to stop funding apprentices without an assessment organisation

The government will soon only fund starts on apprenticeship standards that do not have an approved end-point assessment organisation if the provider has an “in principle” commitment from one applying for approval.

The news will be seen as a partial win by campaigners, who have long said it is “morally wrong to start an apprentice on a programme when you don’t know how they are going to be tested at the end”.

It also follows the ‘Quality Strategy’ published by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education in March, which said employers should have access to at least one EPAO before apprentices start their programme.

We are prepared to temporarily stop funding new starts onto apprenticeships

In an Education and Skills Funding Agency update today, the agency said: “From 1 October 2019 the ESFA will not fund apprentices to start on a new standard until an EPAO has given an ‘in principle’ commitment to deliver the EPA.

“To support this change, the IfATE will require trailblazers to engage with potential EPAOs earlier in the standard development process.

“These EPAOs will be asked to complete a new form to share information about their intent to apply to the register of end-point assessment organisations to deliver the assessment against the specific apprenticeship standard.

“Until this form is received by the ESFA, or an EPAO has made a successful application to the register (whichever is earliest), no learners will be funded to begin learning on the standard.”

FE Week analysis shows that, as of today, there are 135 standards ready for delivery without an EPAO in place.

The ESFA said the “in principle” organisation will still need to make a successful application to the register of end-point assessment organisations before they will be able to assess apprentices who are on the programme.

It means that the agency can have “greater confidence” that there will be an EPAO on the register for every apprenticeship standard “as quickly as possible and as soon as they will be needed”.

For existing standards, the ESFA said it will “work to get in principle agreements for standards where no EPAO is already in the market for a standard and are working towards full coverage of standards on the RoEPAO”.

If this is not possible, “we are prepared to temporarily stop funding new starts onto apprenticeships on that standard if necessary and appropriate, but will give notice if that is the case”.

Keith Smith, director of apprentices at the ESFA, told the AELP conference this week that, according to a survey, only 52.6 per cent of providers plan to engage with the EPAO of their apprentices at the start of the programme.

“At the moment too much, in terms of the conversations of who is the right EPAO, has been happening too far into the programme,” he said.

“We really need you guys to get that 52 per cent as high as possible.”

The new guidance said the IfATE and ESFA will offer support and guidance to both trailblazers and EPAOs to complete the required forms, and help them get in touch with the right EPAO.

FE Week was first to report the issue of a lack of EPAs back in 2016, and has since exposed cases where apprentices had to wait more than a year for someone to test them and others who missed out on a pay rise because there was no EPA ready for them.

Dr Sue Pember, a former top skills civil servant and now director of adult and community learning group Holex, has repeatedly called for action to address this, and previously stated: “It is diabolical to let an apprentice start a programme, without explaining not only what the end test will contain, but where it will be, what shape it will take and who will be the organisation to oversee and manage the process.”

In February, this newspaper reported that there was “serious concern” among universities that the government had still not found an organisation to assess over 1,000 nursing apprentices who had just six months left on their course.

Despite the findings, the IfATE has repeatedly rejected these concerns, and accused those who raised them as being “inflammatory”.

‘I’m just too much sauce’: An exit interview with NUS president

Outgoing NUS president Shakira Martin talks Fraser Whieldon through her tumultuous two-year incumbency.

The president of the National Union of Students has promised to continue to champion further education as she prepares to leave office.

In a wide-ranging interview with FE Week, Shakira Martin said she didn’t regret telling opponents to “f**k off”, and has also left the door open to running for parliament and returning to her old college as its principal.

Martin is preparing to leave the role on Sunday after serving the maximum two, one-year terms in the role – something that has given her great jubilation.

“I made it throuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh,” she said.

She added that she was happy to leave the role, but that leaving was bittersweet, and she stressed the importance of having “fresh blood” in the role.

“Two years is enough. I’m really happy to be moving on. I’m a totally different person to the Shakira that started many years ago.

“When I say different, I’m still the exact same funny, raw, challenging person, but different in terms of understanding the world a bit more; being able to navigate through these complex policies and procedures, and being a better mother to my two daughters.”

She is looking forward to spending more time with the two, completing school runs and attending sports days, and said her next job was likely to be somewhere in the education sector.

She is also considering running for parliament.

However, she says she has too much “sauce” – meaning style, confidence and swagger – for the House of Commons at the moment.

“Politics is a mess at the moment and it doesn’t even deserve me right now. I’ll give it a couple of years. Let’s see what happens.”

Another of her career aspirations is to be the principal of an FE college, preferably her old college, Lewisham Southwark.

A former president of the college’s union, Martin was elected president of NUS in 2017 and became only the second NUS president not to have gone to university, having instead completed a diploma at Lewisham Southwark College.

I don’t regret telling people to ‘F**k off’

The former NUS vice-president of FE defeated the controversial president of the time, Malia Bouattia, by 402 votes to 272.

What followed was arguably a controversial tenure – though she preferred to call it “character-building” – during which Martin faced allegations of bullying from the then-NUS women’s officer, Hareem Ghani.

“That has been awful,” Martin said.

“That is something I will never personally get over because the people who put in those allegations were the very same people who talk about social mobility, getting black women and working-class people into leadership.

“And it’s just really awful our political environment has become so hostile and unhealthy on social media and [to] not think it’s going to have detrimental implications for people’s lives. That article is on the internet for the rest of my life.

“I am a strong, articulate, challenging woman and unapologetically so, but now I feel like I have to almost mitigate those accusations to prove I’m not that.”

She denied that her tenure has been controversial, instead saying: “Look, I wasn’t built for NUS, and NUS politics wasn’t built for people like me.”

Asked if she had any regrets, she said: “I don’t regret telling people to f**k off. I regret doing it on social media. I did mean it, but I didn’t mean for it to end up in a newspaper.”

The expletive was posted by Martin on Facebook after the NUS Trans Conference and socialist groups attempted to launch a motion of no confidence in her.

Her comments were picked up by The Independent, Daily Mail and The Sun.

Martin said she had learned that the political environment is “hostile” and people are very “loose-tongued”, but rebuffed accusations of bullying, saying that she is instead a “bullyhater” who fights against bullies.

Martin also regretted allowing people to get to her, which made her less productive for a couple of days.

As her job involves reacting to events, those couple of days could have been crucial – such as when the NUS faced bankruptcy in connection with a £3 million deficit in 2018.

The union had to suspend elections and make staff redundant but avoided collapsing altogether.

Though Martin warns that the NUS is not out of the woods yet, she said “the NUS doors could have closed in March” and the organisation has a good foundation upon which to build in the future.

Elsewhere, she has focused on improving student voice on campuses, and has said that every college campus needs its own sabbatical officer and that students ought to be on college boards with the proper support and training to serve effectively.

“FE needs to be recognised for the true value of what it does for our community and individuals. When we talk about improving social justice and mobility, FE does that in one.”

She has also argued in the past for the re-implementation of student maintenance grants, a goal that was also included in the Augar Review.

On whether she expected the government to U-turn on its 2015 decision to scrap the grants, Martin said: “If the government wants some legacy other than Brexit, they need to do something around education.

“I think personally that student maintenance needs to be brought back immediately, it needs to be in line with current inflation and needs to be fit for purpose.

“And it needs to be supporting students to be able actually focus on their studies and not have to work two or three jobs and do their coursework at 3am in the morning because they don’t have the finances.”

Student maintenance needs to be brought back immediately

Her advice to the incoming NUS president, Zamzam Ibrahim, is “Be true to yourself” and remember: “It’s bigger than NUS national conference. This is about the students that don’t even make it into the college doorstep.

“But enjoy it because it goes by very quickly. And I’ll be here for you, because we’re part of a family.”

She pledged to continue to champion further education wherever she goes, and thanked FE Week for having her back during her time as president.

 

 

Ofsted’s new framework is not a good fit with FE providers

With just over two months to go until the new education inspection framework comes into action, Ofsted has found its model for assessing the quality of lessons “does not fit” FE providers.

In what one adviser to a former skills minister called an “extremely worrying” admission, the education watchdog said it needs to come up with a “more suitable” approach in time for the rollout of the framework in September.

Calls have now been made for the inspectorate to delay the launch for a year.

Ofsted published research into the validity and reliability of its inspection methods this week.

The first set of reports focused on lesson visits and scrutiny of students’ work – two of the three main pillars of the new “quality of education” judgment.

Ofsted said its lesson visits “did not show the same level of reliability in further education and skills (FES) settings as it did in schools” because the model it proposed “does not fit with all delivery methods and contexts in FES” since it is “essentially classroombased”.

“Reliability was considerably weaker in the college sample,” it added. “Overall, the findings from the college observations suggest that our prototype model is not a good fit for lessons in a FES context, as it is likely to be looking at the wrong things. This requires more research.

“The FES context is likely to be incompatible with the current model design. We therefore need to develop an alternative observation model that is not associated with the school context.”

The report added that workbook scrutiny may also not be applicable to FES settings. “Students in this sector may not typically be required to bring in their work to classes (for example, sixth-form pupils), and the main written activity during lessons may be note-taking.”

As a result, Ofsted said it is working on developing a model that is more suited to FE provision.

Tom Richmond, adviser to former skills minister Matt Hancock and founder and director of think-tank EDSK, said:

“With just two months to go until the new inspection framework commences, it is extremely worrying that Ofsted has admitted at this late stage that its proposed inspection model is ‘not a good fit’ for FES providers because ‘it is likely to be looking at the wrong things’.

“Concerns about the consistency of inspectors’ judgments have been around for many years, and this new research from Ofsted shows why these concerns are entirely justified.

“The new framework should be delayed by a year to allow for a proper evaluation of Ofsted’s new methods before they are used to inspect colleges and apprenticeships because it is clear that Ofsted’s planned approach is highly unlikely to produce consistent judgments between inspectors.”

He added: “It is not acceptable to expect educators and leaders in the FE sector to have their institutions assessed when such significant problems remain unresolved.”

Ofsted did not provide a response at the time of going to press.

The education watchdog, led by chief inspector Amanda Spielman, published the final education inspection framework last month after a three-month public consultation.

There is no point ignoring the looming overspend – employer apprenticeship levy usage needs to be restricted

At the AELP annual conference this week the skills minister, Anne Milton, outlined options being considered to restrict employer usage of their apprenticeship levy.

Given the fall in starts since the apprenticeship reforms began in May 2017, you would be forgiven for wondering why the government would be looking at restricting employer demand.

Any new restriction would also be something of a U-turn given in April the transfer funding percentage was increased 10 to 25 per cent and employer non-levy coinvestment halved to 5 per cent.

But as FE Week first reported, despite the fall in starts the overall levy budget is on course to be overspent next year.

The Institute for Apprenticeship’s forecasted levy budget overspend was first exposed by FE Week, and subsequently confirmed in a National Audit Office report in March.

The unforeseen problem was that the “average cost of training an apprentice on a standard is around double what was expected”.

This, the NAO reported, could be accounted for because “employers are developing and choosing more expensive standards at higher levels than was expected”.

So assuming the budget is not doubled or more in the forthcoming spending review, how should we bring the expenditure down for “expensive standards at higher levels”?

One way is to reduce the funding rates for higher-level standards, something the IfA has controversially begun to do.

For example, the management degree maximum cap has fallen from £27,000 to £25,000.

Providers are also typically setting prices at the maximum cap, something the ESFA could tackle by enforcing their rule requiring reductions to account for prior learning.

And the NAO said options could include “limiting the number of new apprenticeships or reducing the level of public funding for certain types of apprenticeship” as well as “capping the spending of levypaying employers” and “limiting the number of apprenticeships available for non-levy-paying employers”.

But all of these “measures are likely to be unpopular and could damage confidence in the programme”, the NAO pointed out.

To the surprise of AELP conference delegates, Milton said she was considering age and level caps but the most “palatable” option was to set a “pre-apprenticeship salary limit” – which would presumably kill off hundreds of £18,000 MBA apprenticeships.

Killing off the MBA apprenticeships would be welcome if, like me, you worry it is wasted public money that could have been spent on a young person. But is a preapprenticeship salary cap the way do it?

In principle, given the choice between funding a new employer or an existing one, limiting apprenticeship funding to people on low wages is attractive.

But with so many wage differentials by profession, sector and region, the setting of a simple cap could prove highly controversial.

My preference has always been to return to pre-2007 when apprenticeships were restricted to young people – aged under 25 – and there was a separate training and retraining programme for those aged 25 and over (something the National Retraining Scheme could be used for).

And as the Augar report rightly recommended, returning to the policy before May 2017 when graduates were ineligible for apprenticeship funding.

However, the first and least controversial saving would be to remove the 10 per cent levy top-up and shorten the 24 month deadline employers haveto use their levy funds.

Whatever is decided it has to be the case that with public money, “employer ownership” cannot be taken literally and before the money runs out the young job entrants need to be prioritised.

College run by famous private hospital in the dock over ‘serious’ safety issues

A specialist college, run by a famous private hospital which has treated the likes of Kate Moss and Robbie Williams, has been hit with not one, but two “inadequate” grades after Ofsted found damning safeguarding issues.

This week, the education watchdog has published reports into the residential and educational provision at Priory College Swindon, which caters for people with social and communication difficulties.

Inspections were conducted at short notice, after concerns were raised about student safety.

Its multi-million-pound parent company, the Priory Group, has helped famous faces including Kate Moss, Pete Doherty, Ronnie Wood, Eric Clapton, footballer Paul Gascoigne and comedian Caroline Aherne.

However, its college learners have not experienced star-studded provision, after the college was downgraded from grade two to four for both its educational provision to 37 learners, and its residential provision to 13 learners, including some under the age of 18. 

Inspectors reported that “serious and widespread failures at the college mean young people are not protected and their welfare is not promoted or safeguarded”.

They found “significant shortfalls” in leadership and management in the residential provision, and that governance of the educational provision was “ineffective” because governors did not obtain findings from monitoring activities.

The college has insufficient staffing and resources, after inspectors discovered there was a lack of available tutors, art students were having to make do without sinks, and students faced difficulty setting up email accounts and using the web to look for jobs, due to restricted internet access.

The lack of tutors and internet access issues had led to a learner going missing from the residential accommodation. 

Ofsted said that when a learner goes missing, the incident is not tracked or monitored well, they are not spoken to about it when they come back, and information is not shared with placing authorities – which organise accommodation for vulnerable people.

“Too many students are put at risk,” the report into educational provision found, while the residential report quoted learners saying they “do not feel safe living at this college, and feel unable to talk to staff about their concerns”.

The potential risks presented by adult learners living with under18s were not routinely assessed by managers, and both they and leaders do not consider effectively the physically aggressive behaviour of some learners.

Consequently, there was an altercation in which a learner sustained a minor injury, but staff recorded neither the incident, nor the injury.

There was also no record of when a learner was restrained by staff, which is contrary to requirements; nor was there any records on self-harm, online safety or bullying.

“Leadership and management are inadequate because of the failure to prioritise the safety and welfare of students,” inspectors wrote.

Leaders do not even meet with complainants face-to-face, and those complaints are not responded to within timescales, so one from 2017 had yet to be resolved at the time of inspection.

Ofsted has recommended the college ensure that it has an effective written policy to promote good behaviour among residential learners; and that a written risk assessment is drawn up to ensure the welfare of learners is safeguarded.

A Priory College Swindon spokesperson said they are undertaking a comprehensive review of the services, and new leaders had been appointed to improve student safety while a longer-term plan is finalised.

“We are also consulting with stakeholders about how best to provide the services in the future,” the spokesperson added.

IfATE backtracks on proposal to keep assessment grades secret – but they still won’t be published

The government’s apprenticeships quango has U-turned on plans to grade end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs) without sharing the results with them.

However, the information will still be kept a secret from the public, and EPAOs will not be allowed to advertise their ratings unless they’re granted special permission.

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s (IfATE) published a new framework on Wednesday that “sets the standard” for external quality assurance (EQA) and explains how end-point assessment organisations should be monitored to ensure the process is fair and consistent.

A few hours before its publication, the framework was shared with FE Week, including a “manual” that explained how “risk ratings” were to be given for each EPAO.

There are no plans to share this information publicly

It stated that the ratings “will not be published or made available to EPAOs, but will be stored on the institute’s digital system”.

The risk ratings will be 1 (low), 2 (medium) and 3 (high).

The proposed secrecy sparked controversy when reported by FE Week. One managing director of an end-point assessment organisation claimed to have successfully overturned previous EQA risk assessments and was therefore very concerned that in future these grades wouldn’t be shared.

Hours after our story went live, the institute got in touch with this newspaper to say the framework was still in draft, and the final version will in fact state that the ratings will be shared with EPAOs.

“The risk-rating grades will only be shared with EPAOs and this is reflected in more recent drafts of the manual,” a spokesperson said.

But, he added, there are “no plans to share this information publicly at this stage”.

The first “working edition” of the framework’s manual, which will “make this clear”, will be published on July 1.

“EPAO understanding of their grades is an important aspect of ensuring quality and lifting it where needed,” the spokesperson added.

He also confirmed that EPAOs will not be allowed to publicise their ratings without the institute’s permission.

The risk ratings will be determined by various factors, including data on their performance by apprentices and feedback (including complaints) from apprentices, employers and training providers.

Established EPAOs will also be graded on a four-point scale – 1 (outstanding), 2 (good), 3 (requires improvement) and 4 (inadequate) – similar to Ofsted.

Grades 1 to 3 will feed into the calculation of overall risk but any EPAO graded as “inadequate” will “automatically be assumed to be high risk”.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said: “Given the costs involved in the whole EPA/EQA process, employers and providers have a right to know whether they are placing their custom with the right EPAO.”

The framework, which is mandatory and must be adhered to by all EQA providers, sets out five principles that underpin “EQA functions”: relevant, reliable, efficient, positive and learning.