The government has today announced a further funding increase for 16 to 18 year-old students as part of the £400 million extra revealed in August, but only for specific subjects, such as engineering.

In addition to the per student unweighted base rate rising 4.7 per cent from £4,000 to £4,188, the funding for some courses will rise by up to a further 10 per cent through changes to the ‘programme cost weightings’ (PCW) .

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) has today also introduced a £400 ‘High Value Courses Premium’ (HVCP), in an attempt to “support the sector to grow the number of students studying selected substantial level 3 study programmes”.

Only substantial provision in the sectors of engineering, manufacturing technologies, transport operations and maintenance, building and construction, ICT for practitioners would be eligible for the HVCP.

The PCW are funding uplifts introduced in 2013 and assigned to student study programmes and based on the main course (known as the ‘core aim).

These uplifts, along with the HVCP, are then used as part of the formula to calculate annual allocations based on historical delivery.

The PCW for students studying courses in the sectors of transportation operations and maintenance, building and construction and hospitality and catering will increase 8.3 per cent (PWC medium 1.2 to high 1.3).

The PcW for students studying courses in the sectors engineering and manufacturing technologies will increase 7.7 per cent (PCW high 1.3 to very high 1.4).

And the PWC when there are at least two science A-levels or for science study programmes will increase 10 per cent from (PCW base 1 to low 1.1).

This latest announcement provides the detail following a Treasury statement in August. At the time the government said:  “Colleges and school sixth forms will also get £120 million to help deliver expensive but crucial subjects such as engineering which lead to higher wages and, ultimately, a more productive economy.”

The ESFA also said “the government is now reviewing PCWs” for T-levels and “we are providing the details now to give providers time to plan”.

“We will update the funding rates and formula guidance for 2020 to 2021 before March 2020,” it added.

James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “When the £120 million increase for ‘expensive but crucial subjects’ was announced ahead of September’s spending round, we were concerned that only the minority of students that pursue a technical course would be likely to benefit.

“Since then, we have been making the case for A-levels and Applied General Qualifications that meet the high cost/high value criteria to be eligible for this funding, so we are delighted by today’s announcement.

“Although we remain convinced that the optimum way to increase investment in sixth form education is by raising the national funding rate to the required level – at least £4,760 per student – ensuring that targeted interventions like this benefit students pursuing a mainstream sixth form education is the next best policy.”

The government already has an “advanced maths premium”, which was announced in the 2017 autumn budget and is worth £600 for every additional student studying an ‘advanced maths’ qualification, for each year of their course.

Colleges have hit back at the “unfair” English and maths condition of funding rule after FE Week found more than one in 10 had funding recouped for failing to meet its requirements.

This newspaper’s analysis of the latest allocation data for 16 to 19 providers, released last week, revealed that 23 of the 171 (13 per cent) colleges in England have been stripped of £1,468,934 this year.

Four of them had more than £100,000 each withdrawn due to the controversial rule.

A spokesperson for London South East Colleges, which had £142,880 taken away, said the rule was “wrong and unfairly penalises colleges which take on high numbers of learners who arrive without good grades”.

“We carefully operate within the funding rules, and use a variety of methods to encourage English and maths participation,” they added.

“Only when these are exhausted, and there is no evidence of participation, are any learners removed from GCSE programmes.

“When this happens we support the learners to continue in vocational programmes which enable their progression into work or an apprenticeship.”

The Capital City College Group lost £212,386, the second highest amount out of all colleges.

A spokesperson told FE Week that GCSEs were “not appropriate for all young learners, which can be very challenging”.

The college acknowledged that it had “much work to do in this area” but said: “We absolutely stand firm that all of our learners are carefully assessed and placed onto what we believe are appropriate levels and programmes that best suit their individual needs.”

The spokesperson added: “We have recently developed a new maths and English strategy, which is already being  implemented and monitored robustly.”

Under original Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) rules, any student aged 16 to 18 who does not have at least a C (now 4) in their English and maths GCSEs, and who fails to enrol in the subjects, will be removed in full from funding allocations for the next-but-one academic year.

But the condition was relaxed from 2016/17, with the penalty halved, and only applied to providers at which more than five per cent of students did not meet the standard.

So only those providers with more than 5 per cent of students failing to enrol on eligible English and math qualifications saw their funding “adjusted” in the 2019/20 allocation.

New College in Swindon topped the list of general FE colleges with the highest withdrawal in 2019/20 – £213,481 – after exceeding the 5 per cent threshold with 281 eligible students not enrolled in the subjects. The college declined to comment on the figures.

West Herts College, which merged with Barnfield College in February 2019 and lost £93,664 in the 2019/20 adjustment, was the fifth-hardest hit by the condition of funding rule.

A spokesperson said the figures reflected the amalgamation of premerger performance data from both institutions: 193 students at Barnfield College and 141 learners at West Herts College did not meet the condition of funding.

“Since the merger, actions to improve the organisation and delivery of English and maths have been fully implemented,” they said. “This academic year, students enrolled on the subjects are engaging with their learning and attending lessons in line with condition of funding requirements.”

The latest figures for colleges show an increase from last year when 13 were deducted £1,137,091 to 23 colleges and £1,468,934 of funding withdrawn this year.

Elsewhere, 15 university technical colleges (UTCs) lost £180,966 under the rule and 46 independent learning providers had £495,133 deducted.

However, two UTCs that spoke to FE Week claimed that the figures used to calculate their adjustment level were wrong.

Silverstone UTC’s allocation data stated that 18 students did not meet the condition of funding threshold, which resulted in a deduction of £10,406 in this year’s adjustment.

But the principal Neil Patterson said there was an error in the management information system of the UTC which led to those students being incorrectly identified as not meeting the condition of funding.

“All 18 students did in fact meet the condition of funding, so we submitted a business case to the ESFA to seek to recover the amount,” he said.

“However, as the amount is smaller than the ‘5 per cent of revenue’ threshold that the ESFA apply, our business case was, unfairly in our view, rejected by the ESFA.

“We have since introduced a thirdstage check on this to make sure it doesn’t happen again, but feel that with post-16 funding being fairly complex, the threshold rule is an unfair barrier to receiving full funding.”

Another UTC also blamed initial inaccurate internal data and is attempting to restore the funding level. The Leigh UTC lost £19,300 after 12 students were registered on the system as not being enrolled in GCSE English and maths.

Principal Steve Leahey told FE Week: “We believe the information used to calculate the condition of funding adjustment was incorrect and we are in the process of discussing a correction with the ESFA.”

The ESFA said it is aware of the business case and will assess it once it’s been submitted.

In total, 24,943 students (2.2 per cent compared to total allocated) were not enrolled on eligible qualifications to meet the condition of funding rule.

But the biggest losers from the total £5.7 million reduction were academies, where 139 out of 1,479 (9 per cent) lost £1,672,735 from their 2019/20 allocation.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The government knows that students who leave school with a good grasp of English and maths increase their chances of securing a job or going on to further education. This is why students who do not achieve a standard GCSE pass at age 16 are given the opportunity to obtain it post-16.

“However, we recognise that for some students with a grade 2 or below, a Functional Skills Level 2 qualification may be more appropriate. These students can decide with their provider which qualification is best for them.”

A learner who works at a major UK bank after spending most of her life in Pakistan and a training provider from the Midlands are among the winners from the fourth annual Asian Apprenticeship Awards.

The awards were presented at a glittering ceremony last night in Birmingham, in front of an audience of nearly 500 people.

Judges including Federation of Awarding Bodies chair Paul Eeles and Angela Middleton, chair of award-winning provider MiddletonMurray, picked the winners from 300 nominations to seven sector categories, two employer categories and the overall learning provider of the year category.

Apprentice of the year was awarded to a British national who spent most of her life in Pakistan, Amani Khaliqa.

After she applied for the HSBC apprenticeship, she completed it in just eight months and has since had two promotions.

The Apprenticeship Ambassador now works at the HSBC UK head office in Birmingham and her progress has enabled her to not only support her siblings and mother, but also buy her first home at the age of 21.

Another winner on the night was PTP Training, which was named the training provider of the year.

One of the largest independent training providers in the Midlands, the company offers short courses, qualifications and apprenticeships in care, engineering, retail, hospitality accountancy and management.

Awards director Isa Mutlib said: “The awards are in the fourth year and the quality of entries gets higher each year.

“The awards celebrate the brightest and best British Asian Apprentices and the commitment of their employers and learning providers.

“We hope we have encouraged more young British Asians to consider apprenticeships, and more employers to provide opportunities to benefit from the skills that apprentices bring.”

The event was hosted by Suzi Mann and comedian Eshaan Akbar and entertainment was provided by Aston Performing Arts Academy.

There were also guest speeches from the likes of Jasmine Kundra, from last year’s series of The Apprentice, and Iasha Masood from this year’s series; alongside the overall Asian Apprentice of the Year 2018 Marjana Uddin and Shakil Butt from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The awards were launched in 2016 following a report by the then-business secretary Sajid Javid, which set a target to increase BAME diversity of apprenticeships by 20 per cent by next year.

The full winners list is as follows:

 

Judges’ Choice Award and overall Apprentice of the Year

Khaliqa Amani, HSBC

 

Finance, Legal & Professional Services category

Winning Apprentice    Shamaila Khalid, Ernst & Young LLP

Winning Employer      Arvato CRM Solutions UK

 

Health, Medical & Social Care category

Winning Apprentice    Ahmar Iqbal, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

Winning Employer      PBL Care 

 

Retail, Hospitality & Tourism category

Winning Apprentice    Ahmed Alkhkfaji, Blade Barber Shop

Winning Employer      Travis Perkins 

 

Charity, Voluntary Organisations & Public Services category

Winning Apprentice    Nardesh – Samra Burhm, Babington

Winning Employer      Salesforce.org 

 

Construction Services category

Winning Apprentice    Alyssia Samra, HS2

Winning Employer      NG Bailey

 

Engineering & Manufacturing category

Winning Apprentice    Aamir Adam, Siemens

Winning Employer      Bombardier Transportation

 

Creative & Digital category

Winning Apprentice    Ismail Abdul Ghafoor, HM Revenue & Customs

Winning Employer      Facebook 

 

Learning Provider of The Year – PTP Training

Small, Medium Employer of the Year – BootCamp Media

Large Employer of the Year – Lloyds Banking Group

A college which was controversially closed in the summer is set to be sold to a £12,000 a year state boarding school – raising hopes the site will continue to be used for education purposes.

Old Swinford Hospital, founded in 1667, has agreed terms to purchase the land and buildings of Stourbridge College from Birmingham Metropolitan College, following heightened concern that it could become housing.

BMet sold off Stourbridge College, which dates back over 100 years, in order to pay back debts which had totalled £8.9 million to the banks and £7.5 million to the Education and Skills Funding Agency by May this year.

Stourbridge merged with BMET in 2013 and was given a £5 million makeover two years later.

BMET said it would not disclose the price of the sale until the deal was finalised.

Old Swinford Hospital teaches students from years 7 to 13, where parents pay for boarding at an annual cost of £11,940. The Department for Education pays for the tuition.

BMET principal Cliff Hall said: “We are very pleased to have worked with Old Swinford Hospital to enable the Foundation to purchase the Stourbridge College land and buildings.

“It is important for us that this acquisition has the backing of Dudley Council and many other stakeholders in the local community.

“Continued use for education has been secured and we wish every success to Old Swinford Hospital and their partners in this new chapter of the development of the site.”

Speaking to regional newspaper the Express & Star, the chair of the boarding school said the purchase should ensure the site will continue to be used for education.

“Together with BMet College, we are delighted to announce this agreement after several months of discussions and negotiations,” said Malcolm Wilcox.

“The acquisition by the Feoffees (trustees) will allow the School of the Foundation, Old Swinford Hospital, the opportunity to expand, a development welcomed by the school’s governors and the headmaster Paul Kilbride.

“We shall also be working in partnership with Dudley Council who are supportive of our acquisition and school expansion as well as with other local stakeholders and providers to ensure the continuance of education on the Hagley Road site.”

Councillor Ian Kettle, Dudley’s cabinet member for regeneration and enterprise, added: “We are not able to comment on current negotiations as they are commercially sensitive.

“However, I can assure people that we are working proactively with all organisations involved and we are hopeful that the site will remain an education establishment in the future.”

When Stourbridge College was closed following a review by the FE Commissioner its learners were transferred to Dudley or Halesowen colleges, and some staff were also absorbed by the two colleges.

Local Conservative MP Margot James led a Westminster Hall debate on adult learning and vocational skills in the area last month following the announcement of the sell-off.

She called for the college to continue to be used for educational purposes: “The site has been associated with education for many years, and it is the deep wish of our community that the site be protected in future for educational use, at least for the most part, for the generations to come.”

After learning that Old Swinford Hospital will take over the site, James said: “I am pleased that the facilities at our former college will remain for the purposes of education and I am continuing to work with local colleges to ensure that part of the site is used for adult education and skills training and I am grateful to OSH for their support of this proposal.”

At the time Michelle Donelan, who is one of three ministers helping with the FE brief in the Department for Education, said selling Stourbridge was the “best option” to support BMet’s financial sustainability and, “crucially, to ensure that good-quality provision was available for current and future students”.

Donelan also confirmed that the FE Commissioner’s team, who intervened at BMet earlier this year, was planning to undertake a capacity and capability review to assess the group’s progress since a new leadership team arrived.

In August, the Head of the National Audit Office Gareth Davies told James the UK’s public spending watchdog was preparing to launch a value for money review on the management of colleges’ financial sustainability, after she had asked him to investigate BMet following its decision to sell off and close Stourbridge College.

An unidentified construction firm is propping up the troubled Chartered Institution for Further Education (CIFE), as it pivots from being a membership body to conducting research for the sector.

The revelation came in a blog published this week on the institution’s website, which also disclosed for the first time that it had paid its advocate, former skills minister Sir John Hayes, in an advisory capacity. He has told FE Week that this was worth £5,000 for five months’ work in late 2018.

The institution, which is very much the minister’s brainchild, received around £1.5 million in subsidies from the Department for Education (DfE), before public money was cut off this year.

The blog reads: “We have gained sponsorship from industry, from a major construction company, who like many employers recognises and understands the value of gaining chartered status.”

The institution, which grants chartered status to FE providers, claimed this funding means it is now free-standing and sustainable for the long term. It is, however, yet to file its accounts for 2017/18.

The institution did not respond to FE Week’s request to reveal the identity of this mysterious benefactor; nor did it reply to a request to put a figure on the sponsorship.

While it was being funded by the government, the CIFE had been focusing on attracting members – its chief executive Dan Wright said that it needed 80 to be self-sustaining.

But the blog post said the last 12 months had shown “this isn’t what the CIFE is or should be about,” so the number of members is no longer its “major priority” – instead it is shifting to being more about “quality than quantity”.

The CIFE says it is now a “truly independent voice for our sector”, and can provide “critical challenge and support to key sector stakeholders” and fight for the needs of its members.

Additionally, the blog post shows that the CIFE is trying to recreate itself as a research body for the FE sector: “We have a renewed focus and have partnered with industry to undertake research for the benefit of the FE sector.”

Its construction industry sponsorship means the CIFE will be conducting research into the skills needs and gaps of the future construction sector workforce, which it predicts will be launched at the House of Lords early next year.

But the CIFE says it will remain accountable to its 16 members, who pay an annual subscription fee of £5,000; but for interested parties there is also a £3,000 nonrefundable fee to have an application reviewed in the first place.

Hayes, the MP for South Holland and The Deepings, declined to say whether his advice was funded by membership fees, but told FE Week it was not unusual for an organisation to seek advice and guidance on what it was doing and what it could be doing.

Because of a potential conflict of interest, the former skills minister had to have the financial arrangement cleared by the watchdog for former ministers’ new jobs, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments.

He had estimated that he would gain £15,000 a year for between 100 and 120 hours’ work with the institution, which would include attending council meetings and advising on future strategy, according to the parliamentary analysis service TheyWorkForYou.

The work took place on a pro-rata basis between July and November last year.

Although the institution was set up by then-skills minister Matt Hancock, the plans for it were drawn up by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills while Hayes was skills minister.

He said his appointment “went through all the independent scrutiny and vetting process and was approved and registered in the proper way at time”.

FE Week has been reporting on the troubles with the institution since it was founded in 2012.

It did not answer whether this new sponsorship meant it would begin taking on employees again. It had to get rid of them all when its subsidies were cut off.

It has so far failed to publish its 2017/18 accounts, saying that a technical error had held this up, even though not publishing accounts is a breach of the institution’s own bye-laws.

(Pictured: Chartered Institution for FE members at their inaugural admissions ceremony in the House of Lords in 2016; John Hayes pictured front row third from right)

A sector leader has called for an investigation into whether sex discrimination lies behind some of the controversial apprenticeship funding rates.

Mark Dawe, boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, told his organisation’s autumn conference this week that training firms are dropping the adult care worker standard “left, right and centre” as they “can’t afford to run it”.

He said it was “ridiculous” that the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (ifATE) has declined appeals to increase its funding band, which sits at £3,000, but “you can change a tyre on a big vehicle” on the specialist tyre operative standard and receive £12,000.

“I’m starting to think there is an element of sexual discrimination here”

Both standards are at level 2, and the funding duration for the tyre operative is just a third longer than for the adult care worker (18 months compared with 12 months).

FE Week analysis shows that of the 10,480 adult care worker starts recorded in the first three quarters of 2018/19, 85 per cent were female.

There were not enough starts for the tyre operative standard to compare, but the level 2 autocare technician standard, also funded at £12,000, had 270 starts in the same period and 96 per cent were male.

Dawe also pointed out that the powered pedestrian door installer and service engineer standard, which is essentially an “electric door opener”, is also given thousands more (£9,000).

“The more I look especially at level 2 and level 3 the funding bands for the different sectors, the more, on average, male-dominated sectors are getting vastly more money compared with the female sectors,” Dawe told FE Week.

“There is a bit of service sector versus engineering, but actually that is a historic bias and I’m starting to think there is an element of sexual discrimination here.”

He added this was an area where “we ought to start looking and seeing if there is some truth behind it” and called on the IfATE and Department for Education to do their own research as “they have the data”.

The IfATE makes the decisions on funding bands for apprenticeship standards before getting sign-off from the education secretary.

A spokesperson for the institute said: “All funding decisions for standards are taken on an individual basis, utilising quotes and costings data from providers delivering to the sector in question and following the same established procedures that balance the need for quality delivery with value for money for taxpayers.

“There is no variation in our approach by standard or sector.”

He added: “The institute is wholly supportive of diversity across technical education and promoting equality of opportunity, which we have demonstrated through our continuing gender-neutral language work.”

The spokesperson would not say whether the IfATE would launch research into potential sexual bias in apprenticeship funding decisions.

According to IfATE figures, starts on the adult care worker standard have soared from 513 in 2016/17, to 14,744 in 2018/19.

In May, however, a review by the institute kept the funding band for the standard at £3,000, despite calls for it to be doubled.

This caused a significant provider of the two, Professional Training Solutions, to stop recruiting apprentices to the programme, as revealed by FE Week.

A follow-up survey by the AELP found more than half of providers who offered the standards were reducing their starts, or pulling the programme altogether.

Many other providers said they were being forced to introduce “cost efficiencies”, such as fewer in-person monitoring visits, reducing the number of tutors to learners or charging employers more.

In June, the All-Party Parliamentary Group on social care reported that as many as 500,000 unqualified people could be passing themselves off as trained care workers, putting millions of senior citizens at risk.

“There is a care crisis in this country, we need hundreds of thousands more care workers. We haven’t got the training workforce we need and apprenticeships were a key part of that,” Dawe told FE Week.

“Now we are putting those apprenticeships in a position where they are not viable to deliver, so it is going to get worse rather than better.”

A college is struggling to get up to snuff ahead of a demerger, as independent providers see ups and downs in this week’s run of Ofsted reports.

After the watchdog found them to be ‘inadequate’ last year, a recent monitoring visit judged Easton and Otley to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in ensuring learners make good or better progress in developing their English and maths skills and securing high grades in both.

It achieved ‘reasonable progress’ scores in four other areas.

The college is scheduled to be split up between City College Norwich and Suffolk New College by the end of the year, on the orders of FE Commissioner Richard Atkins.

Inspectors found that at the college, which was formed by a merger of Easton and Otley colleges, leaders and managers had been unable to recruit and retain qualified and experienced staff to teach English and maths for much of 2018/19.

“This overshadowed much of learners’ experiences, which were not good enough,” the report reads.

Managers have now recruited suitable staff, and Easton and Otley’s senior leaders and governors were noted for their “strong commitment” to ensure each learner has a good experience.

Independent learning provider JRV Associates made ‘reasonable progress’ in all three areas of a monitoring visit of its provision to 36 apprentices.

Ofsted found its leaders and managers “have a broad understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the quality of education”.

The “challenging and ambitious” curriculum means apprentices develop substantial new knowledge, skills and behaviours.

The provider has planned the contents of programmes with employers to stimulate apprentices to learn more and to meet the needs of employers and apprentices; so, a programme was redesigned to include additional maths and English classes for apprentices who spoke English as an additional language.

Aldridge Adult Learning, an independent provider to around 1,200 learners annually, made ‘insufficient progress’ in ensuring apprentices benefit from high-quality training and positive outcomes.

Managers, teachers and assessors were “unclear about how to launch and run apprenticeships,” according to the report.

Spectator safety apprentices have been in their roles for several years and had already acquired most of the knowledge and skills to carry out their roles by the time they started the programme.

The apprentices, who are employed on zero-hours contracts, do not spend enough time each week working in stewarding roles – just one day a week – and are not paid for the time they spend studying for the off-the-job part of their training.

Aldridge did make ‘reasonable progress’ in the other three areas of the monitoring visit.

The worst result of the week, however, belonged to APA Procurement Training which made ‘insufficient progress’ in every area of an early monitoring visit.

Before September, trainers did not assess apprentices’ starting points and their roles and experience “too often” match the apprenticeship – so they are not developing new skills, knowledge or behaviours.

APA’s leaders have not established effective safeguarding measures, inspectors found.

Only a small minority of apprentices can remember anything about safeguarding or the ‘Prevent’ duty from their initial induction.

But apprentices do benefit from well-planned and sequenced off-the-job training, learning around which is related well to their workplace contexts.

A number of full inspection reports, the inspections of which were conducted under Ofsted’s new framework, were published this week for Bedford College, Lakeside Early Adult Provision, Northwest Education and Training, People Solutions Training and Tyne Coast College. FE Week’s analysis of those results is here.

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Bedford College	23/09/2019	28/10/2019	2	2
Easton and Otley College	03/10/2019	30/10/2019	M	4
Tyne Coast College	08/10/2019	29/10/2019	2	2

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Aldridge Adult Learning	10/10/2019	31/10/2019	M	N/A
APA Procurement Training Limited	08/10/2019	28/10/2019	M	N/A
JRV Associates Limited	09/10/2019	30/10/2019	M	N/A
Northwest Education and Training Limited (NWEAT)	24/09/2019	29/10/2019	2	M
People Solutions Training Limited	24/09/2019	28/09/2019	3	M

 

Sixth Form Colleges (inc 16-19 academies)	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Thomas Rotherham College	10/10/2019	28/10/2019	2	3

 

Specialist colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Lakeside Early Adult Provision – Leap College (Wargrave House Ltd)	25/09/2019	28/10/2019	2	3

The deadline for the 2020 FE Week and AELP AAC Apprenticeship Awards has been extended due to demand.

The application window is open for another seven days for entries to the route awards category and the national awards category; which includes apprenticeship diversity, outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships, and apprentice provider and employer of the year.

Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week publisher Lsect, said: “These awards are an excellent opportunity to celebrate the incredible work in the apprenticeship sector that is being carried out by both employers and providers.

“It is not too late to put them forward for the chance to receive some well-deserved, and well-overdue, recognition for providing world-class apprenticeship learning opportunities for people across the UK.”

This is the third year the awards have been running and after the success of last year’s awards in Birmingham, which were attended by more than 500 people, the event will be returning to the city’s ICC alongside the Annual Apprenticeship Conference and Exhibition.

Winners included the Royal Air Force, which took home apprentice employer of the year, AELP chair Martin Dunford won the lifetime achievement prize, while apprentice provider of the year went to In-Comm Training.

The AAC conference will take place between 2 and 3 March next year.

To enter the 2020 awards, visit http://aacapprenticeshipawards.com/

The full list of awards is below:

Route awards:

• Agriculture, Environmental & Animal Care Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Business & Administration Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Care Services Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Catering & Hospitality Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Construction Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Creative & Design Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Digital Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Education & Childcare Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Engineering & Manufacturing Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Hair & Beauty Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Health & Science Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Legal, Finance & Accounting Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Protective Services Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Sales, Marketing, Procurement Apprenticeship provider of the year
• Transport & Logistics Apprenticeship provider of the year

National awards:

• Promoting Apprenticeships campaign of the year
• Apprenticeship Diversity Award
• SEND Apprenticeship Champion Award
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (individual)
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (employer)
• Outstanding contribution to the development of apprenticeships (provider)
• Apprenticeship Provider of the year
• Apprentice Employer of the Year
• Lifetime achievement award