A university technical college in Cumbria is celebrating after becoming only the second of its kind to be rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted.

Energy Coast UTC opened in 2014 and got off to a shaky start when the education watchdog first came knocking and graded it ‘requires improvement’. It also currently holds a financial notice to improvement.

But in a glowing report released today, the 14 to 19 college received a grade one in every category judged.

I’m thrilled by the report, but not surprised

Inspectors praised the principal, Cherry Tingle, who has “systematically and very skilfully developed high-quality leadership skills in all school leaders and managers”.

They added that the senior leadership team “has ensured that all aspects of the school have improved considerably and rapidly”.

Tingle took over the helm in September 2016. “When I started, there was a range of problems, from results to the need for improvement in every area,” she said.

“My mantra was, and still is, everything has to be ‘good enough for my child’.

“There’s enormous satisfaction going from there to becoming one of the highest performing UTCs in the country.”

The only other UTC to be rated ‘outstanding’ is UTC Reading. The pair have bucked the national trend of poor performance for the troubled programme. The majority have been hit with poor Ofsted ratings and low recruitment numbers leading to deteriorating finances since launching in 2010, and ten have had to close so far.

The grade one for Energy Coast UTC comes despite it running at 54 per cent capacity, with only 300 on roll out of a possible 560.

The UTC’s financial notice to improve was first issued in March 2017. FE Week’s sister paper FE Week reported in 2017 that the UTC had outsourced its teaching.

Lord Baker, who created the UTC model and set up the Baker Dearing Trust to promote them, said Energy Coast UTC “leads a revolution in technical education”.

“This UTC provides what its chain of local suppliers needs most – skilled technicians and engineers at 16 and 18,” he added.

Inspectors noted how many students “start at this school disillusioned with what they have achieved in their key stage 3 education at other schools”. Some are “resentful about schooling” but through “excellent support and guidance, staff transform the negative attitudes of these pupils in a remarkably short period of time”.

Ofsted said all staff at Energy Cost have “nurtured very effective relationships with a range of high-profile employers in the region” – including construction giants Morgan Sindall Infrastructure, Iggesund, Sellafield, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Jacobs and Nuvia.

“The employers and the UTC have developed excellent work-placement programmes that enthuse and engage students in STEM careers,” inspectors wrote.

“Consequently, almost all students who leave the school at the end of Year 13 progress to STEM-related apprenticeships in the local community.”

The Ofsted report continue: “Working with the principal, governors have created a highly positive school ethos which raises pupils’ aspirations to be the best they can be.

“The encouraging, professional and supportive culture of the school now enables the vast majority of pupils to achieve very well. They catch up with any learning they may have missed at their previous school.”

Tingle concluded: “I’m thrilled by the report, but not surprised. What goes on here is extraordinary, but it’s happening every single day. It is absolutely the norm that we expect – and get – a high degree of commitment and excellent levels of achievement.”

Picture: Principal Cherry Tingle with jubilant Energy Coast UTC students

A college in the Humber has announced plans to merge with one of the largest FE provider’s in the country, in a bid to “safeguard their long term sustainability”.

East Riding College will join the TEC Partnership, formerly known as the Grimsby Institute Group, in the summer of 2020, subject to a public consultation.

The decision has been made following a review of East Riding’s “strategic plan”, which was conducted with the Department for Education and FE Commissioner “at the college’s request”.

A spokesperson said: “Not only will joining the TEC partnership provide East Riding College with added sustainability, it will also provide scope for the college to continue to thrive and maintain its high performance.”

East Riding is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted and teaches around 4,000 learners every year.

Its latest accounts, for 2017/18, show a deficit of £982,000. Its cash outflow for the year was £141,000, which was “largely” due to the large deficit as well as cash clawbacks by the Education and Skills Funding Agency of £305,000 “relating to the previous year’s performance”.

As part of the TEC Partnership, East Riding said it will retain its “independence and identity”.

The Grimsby Institute is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted and teaches over 10,000 learners every year.

Mike Welsh, principal of East Riding College said he believes the merger is “the right thing to do”.

“Joining such a strong and influential partnership as an equal partner gives us the means and resources to increase opportunities for our communities and realise our ambitions for the region,” he added.

“East Riding College continues to perform extremely well, with overall achievement rates putting us in the top 15 per cent of general further education colleges nationally.”

Gill Alton, chief executive of the TEC Partnership, said: “I’m delighted with today’s news.

“We will now work together over the coming months to help East Riding College integrate with the Partnership whilst maintaining our absolute focus on our learners and our colleagues in both organisations.”

The colleges expect to finalise the merger towards the end of 2019/20 “after public consultation and consultation with their stakeholders”.

The TEC Partnership currently comprises of the Grimsby Institute, University Centre Grimsby, Scarborough TEC, Skegness TEC, The Academy Grimsby, Career 6, Modal Training and National Employer Training.

Assessment organisations have hit out at the Institute for Apprenticeships’ “unfair” decision to start charging £40 per learner for apprenticeship quality assurance from September.

Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, has penned a letter to the institute’s boss Sir Gerry Berragan about the issue after his members “raised several concerns”.

They’re particularly aggrieved at the way the charge was announced and the subsequent lack of formal communication about its planned implementation.

What is being proposed has all the hallmarks of a bureaucratic nightmare

FAB has now called for external quality assurance (EQA) of apprenticeships to be treated as a “national infrastructure cost”.

“The inconsistency and lack of clarity for employers of EQA charges threatens the integrity of the entire apprenticeship reforms,” Bewick told FE Week.

“It should be paid for out of a central budget, for example, in the same way that Ofsted inspections are currently funded.”

There are currently 18 approved EQA bodies that monitor end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs), to ensure the process is “fair, consistent and robust”.

The EQAs are allowed to apply a charge as long as it is on a “cost-recovery basis”. FE Week revealed the “ridiculous variability” in these charges in February, which were criticised by sector leaders for ranging from a free service to £179 per apprentice.

Robert Nitsch, the IfA’s chief operating officer, announced at the Association of Employment and Learning Provider’s conference last week that the institute will start applying a £40 charge for the EQA it delivers, which is currently offered for free, from September.

On the same day, Ofqual’s director for vocational and technical qualifications, Phil Beach, confirmed his organisation would continue to offer the service for free – which has left the sector bemused as to why the IfA needs to charge.

FE Week analysis shows that of the 212 apprenticeship standards the IfA is the EQA provider for, 137 had starts totalling 52,840 in the first six months of 2018/19. It means that when the £40 charge is applied, the IfA will claim over £2.1 million for that period.

The government expects there to be around 500,000 starts every year when the apprenticeship reforms hit steady state. If the IfA continues to deliver EQA for 40 per cent of the market, as it has done for the last two years, they’ll be claiming around £8 million in assurance charges annually.

FAB’s letter to the institute, seen by FE Week, says that levying a £40 charge at the point of EPA sale, has the “potential to load significant transactional charges on the system and confuse employers”.

“For example, should EPAO’s itemise these charges on their sales invoices as a government tax, similar to VAT?”

The letter continues: “There does not appear to be any formal published confirmation or notification of this intention.

“The announcement was delivered at a conference a week ago and we would have hoped for formal notification to all affected EPAOs before or shortly after that time.

“It is essential that key developments, such as this, are communicated promptly and formally to all those affected.”

It is understood that the IfA’s intention is to begin applying the £40 charge to all end-point assessments that are EQA’d from September 2019, irrespective of when the apprentice started their apprenticeship or was registered for their EPA.

“We do not believe it is fair to retrospectively apply this charge to those apprentices who are already on programme,” FAB’s letter said. “Furthermore, this is an extremely short notice period for EPAOs to work with.”

“What is being proposed has all the hallmarks of a bureaucratic nightmare, where massive amounts of public resource will be put into issuing and chasing potentially thousands of individual invoices,” Bewick told FE Week.

“Meanwhile, for those standards — where Ofqual is the EQA — will see no charges introduced from September. The whole thing is a mess and needs sorting out urgently.”

A spokesperson for the institute said: “It has always been government’s intention that the EQA service is funded on a cost-recovery basis by charging and we have been clear about this.

“The Institute’s power to charge has been set out in legislation for almost a year and a half, but we haven’t charged to date to allow the market time to develop and mature. The legislation states that the maximum possible charge is £56, but we are mindful of potential impact and have kept the cost down as much as possible.

“We will be writing to EPAOs formally in the coming days.”

A man who left school without being able to read or write and a woman who went from staying in a care home to studying for the operating theatre are among the 12 winners of the 2019 Festival of Learning awards.

The winners were selected from more than 250 nominations to receive their prize at a ceremony held in London on Tuesday.

They include Marie Smith, the winner of the Learning for Health award: she is a survivor of sexual abuse which caused her to leave school with no qualifications and develop severe depression.

Yet after she was referred to Adult Education Wolverhampton’s Like Minds pottery course by her psychologist, her self-esteem grew and she built up some close friendships.

She is now studying for a degree in glass and ceramics at Wolverhampton University, and aims to become a self-employed artist who works in the community to help others in a similar situation to hers.

Skills minister Anne Milton congratulated the winners, such as Marie, and said she was “thrilled” to see the awards recognise the “achievements of people who are taking the opportunity to change their lives through learning new skills and knowledge”.

“It’s so important we recognise the achievements of those that follow this path and make sure they get the recognition they wholeheartedly deserve,” she added.

Another winner, of the Return to Learning award, is Stuart Ferriss: he struggled with severe dyslexia at school, was sent to the back of the class, and never learned to read or write.

He went on to work as a joiner for many years, but after starting as a caretaker at a local primary school he saw how his lack of literacy was holding him back.

With support from his employer, he enrolled on a dyslexia study skills class run by Oldham Lifelong Learning Service and on a functional skills English course.

Our award winners show just how powerful learning can be

After being made redundant from the school, he was able to secure a job as a caretaker at a local community centre, thanks to his improved literacy skills.

Also gracing the stage will be Diana Omokore, the winner of the Outstanding Individual Award, who was taken into care as a teenager but excelled at school and achieved 10 A*- B grades at GCSE.

Omokore is now studying for a BSc (Hons) in medical science at De Montfort University, alongside working as an NSPCC ambassador, a member of their youth advisory board, and a Childline volunteer.

Stephen Evans, the chief executive of festival organisers Learning and Work Institute, said adult learning “has never been more important”.

The Learning and Work Institute, an organisation dedicated to lifelong learning, has been running the Festival of Learning since 1992.

Evans continued: “Our award winners show just how powerful learning can be and the difference that great tutors and learning providers can make.”

Those great tutors include the winner of the Tutor Award, Fiona Pickett, who did not let losing her hearing get in the way of teaching.

She instead learned to lip-read and has since trained more than 70 tutors in the subject. She is also learning British Sign Language so she can enrol students who were born deaf.

One of the winning providers, President’s Award recipient City Lit, started off in 1919 also teaching lip-reading, but to soldiers whose hearing had been ruined by shelling in the trenches of World War One.

It now has more than 1,000 tutors teaching 5,000 courses every year over a range of different subjects; including languages, visual arts, humanities and music.

The winner of the Project Award is Nurturing Recovery, operated by Bridgwater and Taunton College and North Somerset Council, which has run level 1 practical horticulture courses for people with addictions and mental ill health.

The award summary says the courses “provides a relaxed approach, with micro learning sessions and small team-based tasks complemented with yoga and other relaxation techniques”.

The full list of winners is below:

• Michael Shakil, Patron’s Award
• City Lit, President’s Award
• Seong Chua, English Language Learning Award
• Marie Smith, Learning for Health Award
• Vicky Seagars, New Directions Award
• Emma Searle, Learning for Work Award
• Stuart Ferriss, Return to Learning Award
• Diana Omokore, Outstanding Individual Learner Award
• Peter Shukie, Social Impact Award
• Fiona Pickett, Tutor Award
• Nurturing Recovery, Project Award
• Keoghs, Employer Award

A three-day strike over staff cuts and pay will take place at cash-strapped Bradford College this week – but leaders have said it won’t cause any disruption.

Members of the University and College Union are planning to be on the picket line from Wednesday 3 to Friday 5 July in their campaign against the proposed axing of over 130 jobs.

According to the UCU, staff at the college have also only had a single 1 per cent pay rise in the last 11 years and have seen their pay decline by 25 per cent in real terms over that period.

The union members have already walked out for seven days this year.

But this latest action isn’t expected to be an issue for the college’s operations, as the academic year has ended for the vast majority of students.

“The college will remain open throughout the three-day period and students will not be impacted,” a Bradford College spokesperson said.

“The academic year has already finished for the vast majority of students but they will still be able to access facilities as normal.” 

She added that any industrial action is “regrettable”, but reducing staffing costs is “essential to help secure the college’s long-term future.

“We are still in the process of consulting on the restructure plans and are committed to keeping the number of compulsory redundancies to a minimum.”

UCU regional official Julie Kelley said the union’s members have made it clear that they “are not prepared to pay the price for previous failings by the college”.

“Strike action is a last resort, but staff at Bradford face attacks on their jobs and real-terms pay cuts and they say enough is enough,” she added.

“Other colleges have shown what can be achieved when they engage seriously with us on pay and jobs and if Bradford wants to avoid serious disruption then it needs to urgently work with us to address the concerns of its staff.”

As revealed by FE Week last month, officials from the Department for Education forced a major bank – Lloyds – to halve a £40 million unsecured loan after threatening to put Bradford College into insolvency earlier this year.

The details of the last-minute deal, struck at the end of March just before the DfE’s “restructuring facility” closed, are secretive and complex but the college said it was “grateful” to both the department and bank for being kept afloat as it tries to find a further £3.5 million in savings.

A financial adviser to the college sector told this newspaper they understand the gift by the bank to be the first such significant debt write-off for a college.

Ten more new providers have received temporary bans on recruiting apprentices following early Ofsted inspections that found them making poor progress.

Since October 2018, the watchdog has been carrying out monitoring visits at every directly-funded provider which won its own contract to deliver training after April 2017.

Any that are found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in at least one area will be suspended from recruiting unless there are “extenuating circumstances”.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has released an updated version of the register of apprenticeship training providers for July, which shows 41 providers are currently banned from taking on apprentices.

The ten new providers on the list are: Arriva London North; Ashley Community & Housing; EQV (UK); Gloucestershire Enterprise Limited; Manatec; Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust; Prospects Training International; The Teaching and Learning Group; Took Us A Long Time; and WDR.

Arriva London North was criticised because its leaders “lack the expertise to provide successful apprenticeship provision”, according to Ofsted, and its managers have not provided any teaching or learning in maths and English for a large majority of apprentices, of whom there are 68 in total, who need functional skills qualifications, since September 2017.

Leaders and managers at Ashley Community & Housing were criticised for implementing improvements that have been identified in formal quality reviews too slowly.

Their board members were aware of the improvements the provider, which has 14 apprentices, needed to make, but did not challenge leaders and managers about the pace of implementation.

Apprenticeship programmes at EQV, which are being delivered to 106 learners, are “poorly planned”, inspectors wrote in their report. Leaders have focused more on getting apprentices management qualifications than their apprenticeship.

Too many learners at Gloucestershire Enterprise Limited, which has 176 apprentices, are not expected to complete their qualification in the planned time frame, because systems to monitor their progress have been implemented too slowly, according to Ofsted.

Most of the approximately 550 apprentices at Manatec are not aware they have an entitlement to off-the-job training, and almost all of them complete their training in their own time.

The watchdog found at Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, which has 70 apprentices, that too many learners have passed their planned end date; and a few were not clear what apprenticeship they were on, or when they were meant to finish, as previously reported by FE Week.

Ofsted found that trainers at Prospects Training International do not collect detailed, and in many cases, accurate, information about the existing knowledge, skills and experience of the provider’s 1,017 apprentices at the start of their programme.

A minority of business administration apprentices at The Teaching and Learning Group, which has 19 apprentices overall, have submitted very little, or no work, inspectors found.

A provider to 58 apprentices, Took Us A Long Time, a subsidiary of restaurant operator Tasty Plc, recruited apprentices from the company’s staff who already have experience of serving or preparing food within a commercial environment and to commercial standards.

This meant too many learners were placed on programmes from which they did not develop substantial new skills and knowledge, Ofsted said.

Lastly, WDR has not made sure potential apprentices and their line managers fully understand the requirements and components of an apprenticeship.

One group of team-leading apprentices were given no choice by their employer about participating in the programme; which meant high numbers of WDR’s 91 apprentices have left the programme early.

Ofsted has started conducting full inspections of new apprenticeship providers that were previously banned from taking on new starts following ‘insufficient’ monitoring reports, and awarded them grades that allow them to start recruiting again.

Mitre Group has been released from its ban after receiving a grade two report from Ofsted.

GTG Training, after been rated as ‘requires improvement’, has also been permitted to recruit new starts.

Develop-U was given a grade three rating by Ofsted in April, but is still on the ESFA’s list of suspended providers.

Click on the image below to enlarge the list of 41 providers which have been suspended: