Plans for Ofsted to publish financial ratings as part of inspection reports have been announced – but full details are yet to be drawn up.

In November last year chief inspector Amanda Spielman told FE Week the watchdog could take a more proactive role in factoring in financial management when grading a provider, but said at the time it wasn’t within Ofsted’s remit.

In a surprising announcement yesterday, the Department for Education said it will, in future, work with Ofsted to “ensure all reports also include a rating for financial management and oversight within the school or college in order to ensure best practice is shared across the sector”.

The move will not be part of the watchdog’s new inspection framework, which launches this week. Ofsted told FE Week this is something for a “longer-term piece of work with the government”.

Currently, the Education and Skills Funding Agency uses a formula to annually apply financial health ratings to FE providers, which can either be ‘outstanding’, ‘good’, ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ like Ofsted judgements, but they’re not published.

It is not clear at this stage whether the ESFA will, in the future, play a part in Ofsted inspections, or whether the watchdog will do its own financial health research and investigations to arrive at a rating.

The DfE could not provide any further details and Ofsted appeared to know little about the plans.

Reviewing financial management of FE providers used to be part of inspections some years ago, in conjunction with the Learning and Skills Council, before it was dropped.

This latest announcement comes after several college leaders and boards have come under heavy criticism from the FE commissioner for their management of the finances in recent years.

The most severe case was at Hadlow College, which was given a grade one by Ofsted, but has been subject to government investigations after financial irregularities were found. This included submitting partial information to the ESFA in order to secure a ‘good’ financial health. However, according to the FE Commissioner, had the ESFA looked at their published accounts they would have rated them as ‘inadequate’.

The scandal has led to the college becoming the first to go through the new insolvency regime and as reported by FE Week, the DfE last week announced that Dame Mary Ney would be leading a review into their own monitoring of college finances.

When quizzed about why Ofsted doesn’t currently factor in financial management into inspection reports, Spielman told FE Week in November: “We don’t have the remit to look at that side of colleges, and that’s something that’s down to the Department for Education to decide if it wants to shift the split. But it is important. They affect each other clearly. Neither we nor anyone else should say they’re completely independent of each other.”

Asked if Ofsted inspectors may take a closer look at college finances in future inspection frameworks, the chief inspector said: “There are a lot of different ways that you could cut this particular cake.

“If a conversation begins at some point about ways of taking that forward I’d be happy to have it.”

All FE and skills providers rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted will no longer be exempt from routine inspections, the Department for Education has confirmed.

The government announced the move yesterday, but only that it would apply to schools.

A spokesperson for the DfE has today told FE Week the change will also impact colleges, independent providers, local authorities and other FE providers.

The exemption from inspection for ‘outstanding’ providers was introduced by former education secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Those with the rating would only be reinspected if safeguarding issues or concerns over achievement rates came to light.

As revealed in an FE Week investigation three years ago and subsequent National Audit Office report in 2018, the exemption has led to many colleges and hundreds of schools being ignored by inspectors for over a decade.

In October last year, chief inspector Amanda Spielman warned the public accounts committee that the exemption leaves the inspectorate with “real blind spots as to the quality of education and safeguarding” in these schools and colleges.

FE Week analysis shows there are currently 30 ‘outstanding’ FE providers that have gone a decade or more without being reinspected.

There will be a consultation published “shortly” about the move to remove the ‘outstanding’ exemption and, subject to parliamentary approval, it will be removed by September next year.

The DfE said this will “ensure that parents have up to date information about the quality of education their children are receiving, and that standards remain high”.

What will be of concern, however, is Ofsted’s budget and capacity to inspect all grade 1 providers on a routine basis. It is not clear at this stage whether the DfE will give the watchdog extra cash to do more inspections.

Ofsted has been approached for comment.

The government has launched an additional European Social Fund tender, after finding there were a number of contracts in this year’s procurement where no bidding providers met the “required criteria”.

A bidding process for £4.2 million of the funding has gone live today in four local enterprise partnership areas: York North Yorkshire & East Riding, Greater Lincolnshire, North East, and The Marches (full details below).

It comes after the Education and Skills Funding Agency ran a controversial European Social Fund procurement earlier this year, where 47 providers secured a total of £309 million.

These contracts started on 1 April 2019 and will run until 31 July 2021.

The ESFA said the four local enterprise partnership areas included in this additional procurement are for contracts where “none of the providers that bid for funding met the required criteria”.

This additional targeted procurement is being run “so that people living in these areas have the opportunity to benefit from the ESF by learning the skills they need to get on the path to a great career”, the agency said.

The European Social Fund is funding that the UK has received, as a member state of the EU, to increase job opportunities and to help people to improve their skill levels, particularly those individuals who find it difficult to get work.

This year’s procurement caused controversy among many bidders.

The ESFA delayed issuing contracts several times, after multiple providers claimed that the government broke tender rules, namely by excluding the “track record” section when marking bids, while the ESFA has admitted to “errors”, such as naming Serco Regional Services Limited as a winner instead of Serco Limited.

Providers were also aggrieved to find out that Learndirect’s new owner had secured contracts worth more than £20 million, in conjunction with his other company Dimensions Training Solutions.

Further questions were asked about the tender in March, after FE Week discovered an “unprecedented” amount of tie-breaks in the procurement.

One aggrieved provider even threatened legal action against the ESFA, but decided to drop this because of the likely cost and a fear of repercussions from the agency.

The deadline for bids to this additional tender is 2 October 2019 at 5pm. Once the procurement has closed, the ESFA will send award notifications to successful providers before entering a 10-day standstill period.

Any providers that want to bid can do so from here.

The LEP areas are:

Skills Support for the Unemployed

    York North Yorkshire & East Riding LEP

Community Grants programmes

    Greater Lincolnshire LEP (Transition Area)

    North East LEP (More Developed Area)

    The Marches LEP (More Developed Area)

    The Marches LEP (Transition Developed Area)

Colleges will see a 4.7 per cent increase in the unweighted base rate for full time students aged 16 and 17 as part of the chancellor’s £400 million boost to FE, it has been revealed.

After having been introduced at £4,000 per year, per student since 2013, and £3,300 for 18-year-olds since 2014,, the Treasury has today told FE Week the rate will rise to £4,188 from August next year.

The £400 million funding boost will will come into effect in 2020/21 and cover the 257 colleges in England, as well as other FE providers delivering classroom courses like school sixth forms and independent training providers.

Despite the increase, this new base rate is likely to disappoint sector bodies which have campaigned for much larger rises.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association’s Raise the Rate campaign has fought for the rate to go up to £4,760; while the Association of Colleges has campaigned for as much as £5,000.

“Meaningful” but not enough to stabilise FE for the future: that is the Association of Colleges’ response to chancellor Sajid Javid’s announcement of £400 million extra investment for colleges this morning.

The association’s chief executive David Hughes said he was “delighted” the government had started to listen to college leaders, MPs, businesses, students and stakeholders.

But, he added: “It’s not enough to reverse the decade of cuts, nor to properly stabilise the sector for the future, but it is a good start.

“Colleges have been overlooked and underfunded for far too long. Today’s announcement of an additional £400 million marks the first meaningful investment in further education for 16-to-19-year-olds for more than ten years. 

“The announcement today will start to invest more in our young people with a long overdue increase in the base funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds. 

“This will help support the world-class education and training which colleges provide to help our young people to succeed.

“We believe that an announcement about funding to cover higher Teacher’s Pension Scheme costs will come separately and look forward to seeing the detail of that. 

“Recent changes to pensions means colleges are locked into schemes which take a rising share of their budgets with no additional support in funding currently.”

It was announced last year that the amount colleges and other public-funded FE training providers must contribute to staff pensions was set to rise from the current rate of 16.48 per cent to 23.6 per cent – an extra £142 million a year – from September 2019.

However, the DfE announced in April it would cover the cost of the increase – but not how long it would cover it for.

Hughes continued: “Both the chancellor and the prime minister have spoken regularly about the importance of our colleges, and the need to properly invest in them and today they have started to honour that commitment. 

“However adult education was notably absent, with the number of adults in further education almost halving in the last decade, funding is urgently needed to boost opportunities to retrain and tackle skills shortages.

“I am optimistic more investment will follow next year when the spending review will be able to set out a longer term settlement to support thriving and vibrant colleges for the long term. 

“We will continue to work with government, and campaign with partners to make sure that colleges continue to be a serious political, economic and social priority. 

“That means long-term, sustainable funding, and a robust lifelong learning system.

“Schools received a three-year commitment that allows them the chance to plan and deliver – we’ll be pushing government to do the same for colleges in next year’s spending review.”

The chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, Bill Watkin, called the announcement “good news”, as “sixth form education has been starved of resources over the past decade and today’s announcement provides a much needed boost to the 1.1 million 16 to 18 year-olds in colleges and schools across England.

“Around half of this investment will be used to Raise the Rate – the government has obviously listened to the coalition of organisations and MPs behind the campaign to increase the base rate for sixth formers – and we regard this as a step in the right direction.

“We need to see more detail on all of today’s announcements, but it is clear that this is the first meaningful investment in mainstream sixth form education for a decade”.

The UCU has also welcomed the increase, after what general secretary Jo Grady called “tireless campaigning by trade unions and the further education sector”; the union said colleges’ first priority for the money should be to close the £7,000 pay gap between school and college teachers.

Not everyone is on board with the chancellor’s announcement though: Lawrence Barton, managing director of independent training provider GB Training said: “FE funding in England and Wales is so skewed in colleges favour — to the detriment of independent providers — that they’ve been overcome by complacency. 

“Only by encouraging effective competition and weaning colleges off guaranteed funding grants will the government get a handle on the financial mismanagement plaguing our country’s colleges and driving up teaching standards.”

Colleges are to receive a £400m boost from the chancellor, it has been announced.

Sajid Javid today revealed the increase for 16-19-year-old students, which he calls “the biggest increase for a decade”.

This includes £190 million to increase the base rate of funding for 16-19-year-olds; however the government has not revealed what the new base rate will be.

There is also £120 million to help deliver “expensive but crucial” subjects such as engineering; £35 million extra for students resitting GCSE maths and English who are on level 3 courses; an additional £25 million to deliver T-levels; and £10 million for the advanced maths premium, which adds £600 to college budgets for every additional student who takes on A-level and AS- level maths.

There will also be £20 million to help the sector recruit and retain teachers and leaders, and provide more support for the teaching of T Levels.

Javid said: “Further education, like all our public services, is a lifeline of opportunity for our young people.

“We’ll make a strong statement in backing it at this week’s Spending Round and I’ll continue to look at what more we can do to help, just as my FE college opened my horizons and set me on my way.

This funding will come into effect in 2020/21 and cover the 257 colleges in England, as well as other FE providers like school sixth forms.

Learners at South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, which Javid himself attended when it was known as Filton Technical College, met with the Bromsgrove MP yesterday (pictured top).

Javid wrote in The Guardian this morning: “College helped make me who I am today, the first FE chancellor of the exchequer.”

FE colleges are more important than ever, he added, as young people enter working life while technology revolutionises industry, and emerging economies change the global economy.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson, who attended Scarborough Sixth Form College, said: “As former FE students, the chancellor and I both know first-hand how important the further education sector is so I’m really pleased that today that government is giving our sixth forms and colleges a major funding boost – the single biggest annual uplift since 2010.

“This investment will make sure we can continue to develop world-class technical and vocational education to rival countries on the continent so we have a highly skilled and productive workforce for the future.”

The base rate of funding for all 16-18 students has been frozen at £4,000 per student, per year since 2013; while the rate for 18-year-olds was reduced to £3,300 in 2014.

FE organisations have long campaigned for the government to increase base rate funding for colleges, with the most famous campaigns being the Sixth Form Colleges Association’s Raise the Rate campaign and the Association of Colleges’ #LoveOurColleges campaign.

Ofsted has reported a number of new apprenticeship providers have made ‘reasonable progress’ in early monitoring visits, according to reports published this week.

The one independent provider that stands out, though, is British Printing Industries Federation, which has climbed from a grade three to a grade two in its latest inspection.

Inspectors found there that leaders, managers and staff have made “significant improvements” to the apprenticeship programme, and “strong progress” has been made to addressing all the weaknesses identified at the last inspection.

A new training advisory board, with direct oversight of apprenticeship training, has been established; and the chief executive and board have increased management capacity and expertise, to bring about rapid improvement, by hiring an experienced managing director.

The report singled this change out for bringing about “significant improvements to the quality of provision”.

A number of providers which had report published this week have also improved their safeguarding score from an early monitoring visit.

For example, Contracting Services (Education and Skills) Limited has made ‘reasonable progress’ in ensuring effective safeguarding arrangements are in place.

This was after Ofsted found on a visit in March it had made ‘insufficient progress’ in the area, and apprentices were unclear about who to go to within the provider if they have a concern.

Now though, apprentices are clear on how to keep themselves safe and what to do if they have a concern about a peer.

Another provider which has been found to have made ‘reasonable progress’ in safeguarding is EQV (UK) Limited.

They were inspected for a second time in this area, after the watchdog found previously that leaders had not checked staff had the right to work in the United Kingdom – this has now been rectified.

A third inspection focused purely on safeguarding was made of Piper Training, saying: “Leaders and managers have worked methodically to address adequately most of the significant weaknesses identified at the previous monitoring visit.”

Leaders have reviewed and amended safeguarding arrangements after the first inspection and made arrangements for safeguarding by subcontractors more stringent.

However, letting down the side this week was South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust, which was found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas and ‘reasonable progress’ in one.

“Leaders have not made sure that the programme meets the requirements of an apprenticeship, including the development of English and mathematics skills,” the inspectorate wrote.

The provider also does not use data effectively, so senior leaders and managers do not know the current progress of learners and whether they will complete within the planned timescale.

Apprentices, meanwhile, are “not aware of the requirements of the end-point assessment or what the criteria for success are”.

This is the latest in a series of negative reports of NHS apprenticeship providers: in March, Poole Hospital was reported as being “unable to provide accurate information on the number of apprentices who remain on the programme”.

And in January, Walsall NHS Trust was rated ‘inadequate’ for its apprenticeship provision, once Ofsted found the trust was “not aware that the vast majority of apprentices are not making the expected progress on their programme”.

While University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust had fallen foul of “ineffective strategic leadership, weak systems to secure trust-wide delivery and an absence of a clear understanding of what constitutes an effective apprenticeship training programme”.

A number of providers had reports published this week which found they had made ‘reasonable progress’ in all areas of an early monitoring visit. They are: Derwent Training Association; PET-Xi Training Limited; Port of Tilbury London Limited; Reed Business School; Xtol Development Services Limited; Keolis Amey Docklands Limited; KMF Precision Sheet Metal Limited; and Secom Plc.