Funding bands for 10 of the 30 apprenticeship standards under review by the Institute for Apprenticeships since last December have been approved by the education secretary Damian Hinds.
Changes for those that have had their funding reduced will come into effect for apprenticeship starts from August 5, 2019, while those that have increased will have their new funding band implemented for starts from May 7, 2019.
Of the 10, two have had their funding cut: the level 3 engineering design and draughtsperson standard (from £27,000 to £24,000) and the level 2 financial services customer adviser standard (from £4,000 to £3,500).
Meanwhile, seven funding bands have remained the same and one, for the level 4 aviation operations manager standard, has increased from £5,000 to £7,000 (see full table below).
In May 2018, the apprenticeships minister Anne Milton asked the institute to conduct its first ever review of funding bands, which included 31 existing apprenticeship standards.
This led to several standards having their funding cut, including the popular chartered manager degree apprenticeship by £5,000. This was followed by another review of the funding bands for 30 standards in December 2018.
Today’s release of updated funding bands includes the final remaining one from the May review: the level 3 motor vehicle service and maintenance technician (light vehicle) standard, which has been cut from £18,000 to £15,000.
A spokesperson for the institute stated: “The aim of the reviews is to ensure these standards have the most appropriate funding band to support high quality delivery, and provide value for money for employers and taxpayers.
“They will also ensure consistency in the way older and newer standards are funded.”
Twenty funding band recommendations still have to be approved from the December 2018 reviews.
Nearly 40 staff are expected to lose their jobs as part of a restructure at a college that received a government bailout of over £20 million last year.
Stoke-on-Trent College is currently consulting on the plans that will not affect frontline teaching roles, but will see up to 103 staff in business support roles having to reapply for jobs at the college.
It made an operating deficit of more than £3 million on an income of £23 million, before adjusting for other gains and losses, and had staff costs of £15.3 million in 2017/18, according to its latest accounts.
Principal Denise Brown said the college “must” achieve savings of £1.2 million in staffing costs “in order to eradicate financial deficit in the coming years”.
“Current projections show that if we don’t take action now to reduce staff costs, we will continue to go further back into deficit – we cannot allow that to happen,” she explained.
“Since 2017, the college has been working on its financial recovery and developing a strong and sustainable business plan.
“With the support of the Education and Skills Funding Agency, we have been successful in securing a substantial amount of funding from the government’s restructuring facility to clear historical debt and provide the college with better financial security.”
FE Week reported in September 2018 that the college had received around £21.9 million from the Department for Education’s restructuring facility to clear debts of £16 million.
This newspaper then revealed in January that £1.93 million of the bailout money went on bank charges, fees levied by a bank for repaying a loan earlier than agreed, to compensate it for lost interest.
The latest job losses represent 8 per cent of the college’s total workforce, which currently stands at around 500 people working across two campuses.
Ofsted rated it grade three at its last full inspection, but found it was making ‘reasonable progress’ during a monitoring visit conducted afterwards.
The inspectors’ report from the monitoring visit said: “With the support of external partners, the college has developed well-considered action plans to secure the long-term financial viability of the college.”
It’ll transfer its 900 learners to nearby Dudley College of Technology and Halesowen College.
Speaking to FE Week, Stourbridge MP Margot James, who’s also the minister for digital and the creative industries, said it is a “very hard decision for the town to swallow”.
It is tragic that it is going to close so shortly after that investment
“Many residents and older people had their education there, it is a huge blow, there’s no getting away from that,” she said.
“I am very sorry that there will be considerable disruption because students are used to going to a campus and now they have got to travel. I’m sure students will be upset and anxious about this.”
She continued: “Having said that one has to look for upsides. Dudley has an Ofsted rating of ‘outstanding’, Halesowen has an Ofsted rating of ‘good’. Both of these ratings are better than the current rating of BMet [grade three].
“The teachers I have spoken to at the college over a long period of time have been very disenchanted with the management provided by BMet so I feel when things have settled down, apart from the travel, things I hope will be in a better place.”
Stourbridge College currently has around 200 employees. James said she has the “impressions based on conversations with a number of stakeholders” that the “vast majority of teaching staff will be offered positions at either Halesowen or Dudley”.
Redundancies are however likely for the administrative staff, “some of whom have been there for years and I am so sorry about this”.
The college’s building, which had £5 million spent on it in 2015 and was reopened by James at the time, will be sold by BMet.
“The campus has just undergone a fantastic improvement and had substantial investment, so it is tragic that it is going to close so shortly after that investment,” the MP told FE Week.
“I undoubtedly wish it would have been possible for one of those two colleges to have taken it on.”
At the time of Stourbridge College’s merger in 2013, it opted to join BMet instead of Dudley, a decision which James supported.
“There can be no doubt it was the wrong decision,” she said today.
Asked if she was personally consulted on about the decision to close the Stourbridge campus, James said she was “aware” of the FE Commissioner’s review and had meetings to discuss options, but she said the verdict “did come as a shock to me because during the discussions I had most recently with BMet and Halesowen, the impression I was given was that Stourbridge would continue under the management of Halesown or Dudley and that they wouldn’t be closed”.
The MP said she doesn’t feel she was misled as “these decisions evolve over time”.
We call on the college to halt these plans and consult properly with everyone affected
As well as James’ “shock” at the selling off of Stourbridge College, the University and College Union today slammed the decision, saying learners were paying the “high price for years of poor management”.
UCU regional support official, Teresa Corr, described it as a “deeply damaging move”.
“There has been a total lack of meaningful consultation with the hundreds of staff and students that will be affected, many of whom will be forced to travel to other colleges,” she said.
“The plans make no financial sense as the millions of pounds recently spent on refurbishing the Hagley Road campus will now go to waste.
“We call on the college to halt these plans and consult properly with everyone affected, as well as committing to no compulsory redundancies for staff.”
Stourbridge College had a long-term debt of £7.6 million when it merged with BMet. The college group said it is “currently working on a recovery plan to repay the outstanding balance and will work closely with the ESFA on this”.
James said it was “too soon to say” what the best scenario would be for the campus when it is sold, but it is “really gutting it’s no longer likely to be used for an educational purpose, given the population issue”.
She explained there were 12,345 young people aged 16 to 18 in Stourbridge 10 years ago, but this dropped by 12 per cent to 10,918 in 2017.
BMet is currently subject to FE Commissioner intervention and owes the government millions in bailout cash. Its latest accounts, for 2017-18, suggest that site sales would be the main way of getting the college out of trouble.
The policy requiring students to continue studying English and maths if they fail the subjects at GCSEs at age 16 continues to bear fruit, as revealed in FE Week’s analysis of the government’s latest attainment figures.
The controversial “condition of funding” policy, introduced in 2014, means that colleges must help students who narrowly failed to achieve a pass (grade C/4 or above) to retake their GCSEs, or else risk losing funding.
Despite criticism of the rule, with providers reporting demoralised students being forced to take multiple resits and wanting to deliver the alternative functional skills qualification, the proportion and number of students achieving both GCSEs after age 16 has more than doubled, from 9 per cent (21,721) in 2014 to 21 per cent (46,886) in 2018.
Stephen Evans, chief executive at the Learning and Work Institute, said the figures prove “the policy focus has clearly helped reinforce and accelerate the trend of improvement”.
Writing in FE Week, he said: “The fact more young people are getting the English and maths qualifications they need shows the policy is making a positive difference.
But that doesn’t mean the current policy is perfect. “There are still too many young people on a Groundhog Day of multiple GCSE retakes, risking putting them off learning altogether.”
Reacting to our analysis, skills minister Anne Milton said: “We are delighted to see the sharp increases in 19-year-olds who have achieved passes in these subjects at GCSE or equivalent, which is in part down to our reforms.”
In 2016, Ofsted’s then boss Sir Michael Wilshaw said the condition of funding rule was “failing”.
“While the policy’s intention to improve literacy and numeracy levels is well intentioned, the implementation of the policy is not having the desired impact in practice,” he wrote at the time.
And the current chief inspector,Amanda Spielman, said last December in her 2018 annual report: “We continue to be worried about the effectiveness of the government’s policy…resit pass rates are low, at 24 per cent for English and
19 per cent for mathematics, and the impact of repeated ‘failure’ on students should not be underestimated.”
But Milton told FE Week it was a “very disappointing and a backwards step from the Labour Party to say they would stop these resits”.
“We know that students who leave education with a strong grasp of English and maths increase their chances of securing a job, a career or going on to higher levels of education,” she added.
Gordon Marsden, shadow skills minister, hit back at the claim that a Labour government would scrap resits saying this is “simply not true”, but rather that they would stop resits being a funding requirement.
“We are committed to removing the condition of funding that is currently linked to the GCSE resit, to allow providers and teachers to work with students to find the most appropriate route to gaining the qualifications they need,” he said.
“This includes functional skills, which are more useful and relevant for a significant number of them, which this government has consistently failed to support.”
He added that a rise in young people “getting these vital qualifications is welcome but the current system is still failing them, with four out of every five unable to achieve their qualifications by the age of 19”.
Government has “no cause to be complacent, as the department’s own data shows that the vast majority of young people resitting under the current regime are not getting these qualifications,” Marsden said.
David Corke, director of education and skills policy at the AoC, said: “We recognise the hard work of college staff and celebrate the success of those students who achieve their GCSEs in English and maths by 19. English and maths are key life skills and essential to student progression and employment.
“However, overall achievement for GCSE resits is poor because GCSEs are not appropriate for all students. As proposed with T-levels, compulsory English and maths resits should be funded over and above the current study programme hours and the grade 3 condition relaxed to allow for either GCSE or functional skills.”
The University and College Union has written to the justice secretary urging him to intervene over a training provider’s plans to cut more than 100 jobs.
The union said in a letter addressed to David Gauke that Novus, a prison education provider part of the LTE Group, which also runs The Manchester College, has placed 176 staff at risk of redundancy across 27 prisons where it operates.
According to the UCU, Novus’ contract value to deliver this service has declined by 26 per cent in the north east of England following the introduction of the ‘Prison Education Framework’ at the beginning of April.
The union said the provider proposes to retain “only 62 full time equivalent roles, meaning over 100 posts are set to be lost overall”.
“These job losses would be hugely damaging at a time when the sector is already struggling to recruit and retain staff,” said Paul Cottrell, UCU acting general secretary.
“You cannot make cuts of this scale and not impact on the education and opportunities available to offenders.
“This is a particularly worrying move given that reports of assault and self-harm in prisons are at record levels.”
Cottrel urged Gauke to “personally intervene”, by encouraging Novus to reconsider these cuts and rule out compulsory job losses.
It is also asking the justice secretary to “properly examine” the impact of contract changes on prison education overall, as the loss of over 100 experienced prison educators could have a “serious impact on learning opportunities for offenders at a time when prisons are reporting record levels of assaults and self-harm”.
The union said research by the Commons education select committee shows prisoners who don’t take part in prison education are three times more likely to be reconvicted – although this report was produced in 2005.
The 27 prisons expected to be affected are located across Cumbria and Lancashire, Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire.
Novus provides training to 60,000 offenders across 50 sites. It currently has over 2,000 employees, according to its website.
Peter Cox, managing director for Novus, said: “Novus have been delivering education in prisons for over 25 years. We acknowledge that this change will impact the number of staff needed, all of whom have been offered voluntary redundancy and support.
“Novus will continue to employ a highly skilled and dedicated workforce of over 2,000 colleagues, delivering innovative high quality education, training and employment opportunities to adults and young people in UK prisons.”
Earlier this year, Gauke outlined plans to overhaul the prison education system by giving prison governors full responsibility for managing provision.
The Ministry of Justice carried out a procurement process for the new education providers, known as the ‘Prison Education Framework’, and four were chosen: Milton Keynes College, Novus, People Plus and Weston College.
The Prisoners’ Education Trust said since the launch of the framework, there has “been some movement, with all providers having lost or gained eight or nine prisons in the new arrangements”.
Universities have stood out from the pack this week, while other types of providers have not done as well, including two big colleges which dropped to grade three.
But it wasn’t all bad news for the college sector, as London South East Colleges, which has 10,000 learners, received a glowing grade two report.
The University of Kent, which trains over 170 level 5 technician scientist and laboratory scientist apprentices, was one of several higher education institutions to receive an Ofsted rating of ‘good’.
Inspectors said apprentices “rapidly develop an extensive range of skills and knowledge that meet the high standards of employers”, while lecturers for assess them “frequently and comprehensively”.
The University of Greenwich also received a grade two from its first inspection. It has 35 apprentices on level 4 and 5 nursing associate and science laboratory technician standards.
“Leaders and managers have a clear and ambitious vision to provide high-quality apprenticeships to meet the needs of employers,” inspectors wrote.
The University of Cumbria improved from a grade three to a grade two. It provides level 5 standards to 37 apprentices.
“Board members are instrumental in ensuring that apprenticeship programmes are intrinsic to the university’s strategic plan for growth,” inspectors wrote.
Apprentices acquire “substantial” new knowledge and skills highly effectively, making them valued members of the workforce.
The University of Wolverhampton had its first monitoring visit since it became a registered apprenticeship training provider.
It was found to have made reasonable progress in all areas of the inspection, and was commended for how its 182 apprentices picked up good practical skills.
Senior leaders and governors at London South East Colleges were praised for having managed the merger of the former Bromley, Bexley and Greenwich colleges “successfully”, and “raised standards across the college”.
Its teachers have “good industrial knowledge and experience” in the subjects they teach, and the vast majority of adult learners at the college achieve their qualifications, with achievement rates for ESOL described as “very high”.
“Senior leaders and governors have presided over a period of significant decline”
RNN Group, which had 14,925 learners over the previous full contract year, dropped from a grade two to a grade three this week.
It was formed from two mergers of several colleges, and inspectors reported: “Senior leaders and governors have presided over a period of significant decline in the quality of education and training following the two mergers.”
RNN’s interim principal Jason Austin said: “We acknowledge that further improvements need to be made in key areas, and the leadership team is both determined and focused on achieving excellent provision across the group.”
The Bournemouth and Poole College, the largest provider of academic and vocational education in Dorset with over 7,000 learners, also dropped to a grade three from a two.
Leaders have “not tackled weaknesses” from the last inspection; including achievement rates for GCSE and functional skills qualifications, and learners’ attendance, according to Ofsted.
Other colleges fared slightly better, with Stockton Riverside College making significant progress in four areas and reasonable progress in one other, according to its first Ofsted monitoring visit since Redcar and Cleveland College dissolved and merged into it in August.
Meanwhile, Solihull College and University Centre made significant progress in two areas and reasonable progress in three others in its first monitoring visit since Stratford-upon-Avon College merged with it in February 2018.
Specialist college Brogdale Community Interest Company received a grade three for the first inspection of its provision for 26 students.
Fellow specialist college bemix, which supports people with learning difficulties and, or alternatively, autism received a grade three for its provision to 22 learners from its first inspection.
Calman Colaiste (Kisimul Group) bucked the trend, with a grade two from the first inspection of its provision to 31 learners.
Employer provider Greenwich Leisure Ltd, which has 131 apprentices, scored a grade three in its first inspection, with inspectors saying senior leaders “did not monitor effectively the training delivered by their subcontractor”.
Leaders “fail to identify when work in learners’ files is not their own, original work”.
Chosen Care Group, which teaches less than 50 learners scored a grade four, meaning it is likely to lose its funding contract with the ESFA. Leaders “fail to identify when work in learners’ files is not their own, original work,” inspectors reported.
As for independent learning providers: Advanced Personnel Management Group (UK) Limited, which has 68 apprentices, was stuck with its second grade three.
BPP Professional Education Limited, which has 1,750 apprentices, made reasonable progress in one area, but significant progress in two other areas, in an early monitoring visit of its apprenticeship provision.
Inspectors gave Unique Training Solutions Limited a grade two for its provision to 131 apprentices.
ITEC Learning Technologies was found to have made reasonable progress in all three areas of its monitoring visit.
Lastly, Calex UK Ltd made reasonable progress in two areas, but significant progress in ensuring apprentices benefit from high quality training that leads to positive outcomes.
The Department for Education has today launched a consultation on how to improve funding arrangements for learners with high needs.
The department is seeking views on what “may be adversely influencing local authorities, mainstream schools, colleges and other education providers” in their support for young people with special education needs and disabilities (SEND).
“We welcome views on changes to the funding system that could help in getting the best value from the resources available,” the DfE said.
The evidence document said the government “understands the cost pressures facing both local authorities and post-16 providers as they seek to meet the needs and ambitions of young people, and the need for appropriate levels of funding”.
However, it hopes to gather views on whether there are other aspects of the financial arrangements that are acting as a barrier to young people accessing the support they need, “regardless of the amount of funding available”.
For every SEND pupil, schools have to foot £6,000 of the bill for their provision, which is then topped up by councils. However, this works differently for 16 to 19 year olds, as there is no notional SEND budget.
Support for students with lower level SEND is funded through the “disadvantage factors in the national 16 to 19 funding formula,” today’s consultation explains.
“For those with more complex SEN, whose support costs more than £6,000, colleges and local authorities are expected to agree a package of support for their students with SEN, consisting of a number of high needs places funded at £6,000 per place, supplemented by top-up funding for those students with the most complex needs.”
The consultation added: “We would welcome any evidence that the funding or financial arrangements that currently apply to post-16 and post-19 provision are causing decisions to be made that are both unhelpful in securing the best outcomes for the young people concerned and adding to the costs of provision.”
During an education select committee roundtable in January, Pat Brennan-Barrett, principal of Northampton College, said she was “deeply concerned” about the “postcode lottery of funding, the devolvement of the budget, the interpretation of the language of the [SEND] code, and how that is used”.
Beatrice Barleon, policy development manager at Mencap, told MPs that one of the challenges of the reforms was the “implementation across all the different local authorities”.
At the end of the discussion, the committee chair Robert Halfon said the picture of post-16 funding for learners with SEND “seems to be a big tangled mess”.
Meanwhile, Graham Razey, principal and chief executive at the East Kent College Group, wrote in FE Week in December that, “while a strong argument can certainly be made that the amount of funding in the high-needs system is simply insufficient”, the first place to start would be to remove “unnecessary bureaucracy”.
He said some of the funding that used to be spent on support for learning disabilities now goes on administration, and argued students would benefit if the money went direct to providers.
The government had to promise a last-minute gift of £4.55 million to avoid a National College being unable to sign off last year’s accounts.
The unplanned bailout to the National College for High Speed Rail came on top of an additional in-year £3.6 million working capital loan from the DfE.
Accountants forecast a £7.5 million shortfall over the next seven years, and stated that the extra funding needed to be confirmed “before the end of January 2019 in order to support the going concern statement”, according to minutes from a December meeting.
Just this week, the college announced plans to ditch “high speed” from their name as part of a plan to offer a broader range of transport and infrastructure-related courses.
“It plans to ditch ‘high speed’ from its name”
The college’s 2017-18 accounts state that the extra cash would be received in three instalments, £2 million in 2018-19, £1.75 million in 2019-20 and £800,000 in 2020-21.
The college has confirmed it will not need to pay this back to the government.
FE Week understands that the shortfall had in part been caused by the funding band for the level 4 high-speed rail and infrastructure standard being set at £21,000, rather than £27,000, as had been forecast by the college.
Former education secretary Justine Greening opening the National College for High Speed Rail in 2017
At the time, the DfE, the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd (a quango with ties to NCHSR) met to discuss financial aid for the college and it was made clear that “the departments will not let the college fail”, according to minutes from a December 2017 meeting of the college’s board.
Total income for the NCHSR from apprenticeships last year was just £154,000.
The NCHSR’s 2017-18 accounts also show it received a working capital loan of £8.3 million – which it received in two tranches: £4.7m in April 2017 and £3.6m in January 2018 – “to help with start-up costs that have been incurred in establishing the college,” according to a spokesperson.
This needs to be paid back by 2030.
The college, which was opened in October 2017 by then education secretary Justine Greening and has campuses in Birmingham and Doncaster, opened in 2017 and had already received £40 million in capital funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency to construct buildings and purchase equipment.
A further £12 million was provided by the Sheffield City Region combined authority, and the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership.
HS2 Ltd also loaned NCHSR £2,906,000 in 2018 and £2,804,000 in 2017.
The college signed up just 96 students when it first opened, even though it aims to be taking on 1,200 a year by 2022. Its recruitment problems have improved this year (see panel
below).
Dame Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, has submitted several written questions to the DfE about the college, and on seeing FE Week’s findings said it
“clearly calls into question whether this is value for taxpayers’ money”.
NCHSR’s commercial financial director Martin Owen said: “Our first full-year of operation produced a strong set of accounts, and while we have been reliant on grant funding
for the college’s first phase of delivery, we’re managing our finances carefully to ensure the college is moving into a strong, financially sustainable position.”
“Just 96 students signed up when NCHSR first opened”
NCHSR is one of four national colleges to have opened since they were announced in 2015, while another one, the National College for Onshore Oil and Gas, has been delayed.
A DfE spokesperson said the national colleges had faced challenges initially, but the department had “confidence in the contribution they will make to Britain’s workforce”.
The financial assistance, the spokesperson added, was provided “where appropriate, as the colleges establish themselves and work towards financial stability”.
There are uncertainties around the future of High-Speed Rail 2 (HS2), with which the college has close ties: the chair of its board, Alison Munro, was chief executive of HS2 Ltd, the company responsible for developing the rail line, and NCHSR chief executive Clair Mowbray started work at HS2 Ltd in 2014 to lead on the development of the college.
Last month, the government postponed HS2 Ltd’s “authority to proceed” with signing construction contracts for HS2 by six months, which would time it close to the likely date of
the Budget.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Elizabeth Truss has confirmed HS2 will feature in the Treasury’s upcoming Spending Review, which could lead to the £56 billion project being axed, according to reports.
After seeing FE Week’s analysis of NCHSR, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, and longstanding HS2 critic, Andrew Bridgen stated his belief that the rail link is a “white elephant” and said the college could be described in the same manner.
National College looks to rename in a move that would railroad the rocketeers
The National College for High Speed Rail has opened a consultation on changing its name to the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure and is looking at expanding into other areas of transport, such as light rail, metro and freight, highways and airports.
But, if the college is allowed to change its name to the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure by the education secretary, it intends to go by the acronym ATI.
This, however, could land it in trouble with the Aerospace Technology Institute.
Asked whether it would be objecting to this, a spokesperson for the Aerospace Technology Institute said it would be “reviewing” the proposal and responding to the consultation
“where appropriate”.
NCHSR’s consultation on changing its name is running until 29 May.
Event space income exceeded funding for training last year
The National College for High Speed Rail made more money from catering and events in 2017-18 than it received from the Education and Skills Funding Agency for training apprentices.
According to its accounts for that year, it made £216,000 from catering and events and received £154,000 from the agency for apprenticeships.
The college’s website has a page set aside for catering and events, boasting of “state-of-theart facilities,” which it claims could “help take your event to the next level”.
There are also two separate events coordinators for the two campuses, who help coordinate external events for NCHSR, which has previously included the Skills Show.
In addition to the rent money, the college’s 2017-18 accounts also show it made £253,000 from “miscellaneous income”.
So, the college’s real income was just £623,000.
The rest was made up of £4,610,000 from the fair value of donated assets, and £6,492,000 from the release of government capital grants.
While making a not inconsiderable sum from catering and events, the college failed to reach its target of 639 learners for this September, which was mentioned in minutes from a board meeting in May.
Instead, 336 learners were enrolled in 2018-19.
The college said it revised its learner target to 396 for this year, which the college is “on track to meet”.
The 639 target caused a team from the ESFA to remark “they had never seen such growth,” after the college had just 93 students enrolled in its first year.
Those 93 were less than half the 226 learners the college had forecast to have on roll, as it acknowledged in its 2016-17 accounts.
Nazir Afzal is “desperately concerned” about how the government treats FE. One answer, he says, it to raise its profile (and it will require more than a ‘Love our Colleges’ campaign).
The chair of north Manchester’s Hopwood Hall College has encouraged a Channel 4 news presenter to apply to his board and wants to persuade his TV contacts to make a drama about FE on the premise that media engagement is the way to raise the profile of the sector nationally.
“No disrespect to FE Week, but we should be in The Times, The Guardian. We need to be mainstreaming this conversation,” Nazir Afzal tells me from a golden throne next to mine.
We’ve found the only quiet space in a corner of the lobby at the Aagrah Midpoint, a dining venue on a retail estate on the outskirts of Bradford, which, we surmise from the regal furniture, also caters for weddings.
“Why not get a national media person to be on your corporation board?” Afzal says. “Claire [Fallon] wants to be, she lives in Greater Manchester – good friend of mine – and she has applied. We should be identifying where there are gaps on our boards and fill them.”
The public might struggle to put a face to Anne Milton
Pronouncements like this are easier to make, perhaps, when you count national journalists among your “good friends”, are a go-to interviewee for news programmes and have even had a BBC TV drama starring Maxine Peake made about your work.
Three Girls tells the story of how Afzal, then a chief crown prosecutor, took the decision to prosecute the Rochdale grooming gangs in 2012 at a time when no one else would take the victims seriously.
As well as attracting the ire of some British Pakistanis who believed he was betraying the community, the far right decided ran a letter-writing campaign calling for him to be deported. (One of his fail-safe speech jokes is that he was born in Birmingham and he wasn’t going to let them send him back there.) He had protestors outside his house and his children had to be taken to school by taxi for three months.
In 2015 he retired from the Crown Prosecution Service, where he’d worked for 24 years, to become chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners – only to resign a year later when he was forbidden from media appearances after the Manchester bombing at the Ariana Grande concert.
“My board were approached by every media group in the bloody world.” (He pauses to apologise for swearing.) “The public wanted to hear from me. I wanted to say things about the violence against women and girls element to it. I wanted to talk about how we as communities are addressing this issue. What we need to do. And my board were simply saying I couldn’t say anything. So I walked out.”
Now he’s a freelance consultant he’s free to say whatever he wants and is writing his memoirs. He will talk about his origins – the son of Pakistani immigrants, he grew up with seven siblings in a two-up, two-down, in Small Heath, Birmingham, and has previously spoken about being the victim of race-based bullying at school – his career and then “become a bit of a polemic near the end”.
So what change does he want to see? “Everything, not just the legal system … the country.
“Things like the fact that we rely on NGOs to deliver the services that the government should deliver. Or with refuge provision, we expect the victim to go into refuge but we leave the perpetrator in his home. Get the perpetrator out and leave her in the home.”
Afzal spends one week each month in Pakistan, working for the Department for International Development, and advises the Welsh government on strategies to eliminate gender-based violence.
To steal a half-hour in his busy schedule, I’ve tracked him down to a conference organised by a charity called Together Against Grooming, where he is, understandably, something of a big deal.
Jo Cox’s sister has just approached him to say thank you for a tweet refuting a claim by Peter Hitchens that the MP’s killer was mentally ill. He’s happy, he tells me, to use his platform to speak out on issues he has expert knowledge on, whatever the backlash.
FE Week’s Cath Murray meeting Nazir Afzal
FE is his most recent cause. He’s been involved in education for years: he was a governor at West London University, then Brunel University, where he became pro-chancellor.
He describes the five years of graduation ceremonies as “the best days of my life. Three days a year where I’m shaking thousands of hands … so rewarding.”
But the more he learned about FE, the more he started to see it as “the poor cousin of the education system. For the past 20-odd years, the investment has been going into schools and, of course, universities.
“But the FE sector, that’s just been ignored. You know the data more than me: 45 per cent reduction in [adult education] funding and so on. It makes zero sense to me. So I thought ‘Hang on a minute. What’s my next challenge in the education sector?’ That’s the one that attracted me. And then, by pure chance, Hopwood Hall became available and I decided to apply for it.”
He’s not afraid to use colourful language to describe the inequity in the system. In January he used his regular diary piece in the New Statesman to argue the case for more funding for FE, or “how it has been shafted by Her Majesty’s governments, going back years”. he paraphrases.
“I’m desperately concerned about how the government treats FE,” he says. “Whether we Brexit or not, the skills that we require as a country, where do they come from, if they’re not from the FE sector? It just seems so shortsighted to me that the government is not supporting FE in the way that it should.”
Afzal’s two eldest children have so far taken the university route: one is studying law in Bristol, the other politics in Glasgow. The other two are still at school.
He’s critical of the Association of Colleges’ Love our Colleges campaign, for having launched “far too late.” (It was launched in September, the month before the chancellor’s autumn statement.)
“Budgets are organised months in advance. With the spending review coming up we should be engaging really early on to get our messages across to the treasury and others.”
Skills ministers need a higher profile, he adds. “Given that I probably can’t put a face to Anne Milton myself, the public might struggle.”
He attributes the doubling of the budget for the Crown Prosecution Service, from £300 to £600 million between 2000 and 2005, to prosecutors such as himself working hard to raise its profile through “engagement with the communities, using the media more effectively, talking about our casework”. He wants FE to take a similar approach.
“We [the CPS] went from being perceived as an organisation that just did a fairly good job, without any fanfare, to one where we blew our own trumpet for years. So when it came to the spending reviews under Blair’s government, our budget increased and increased and doubled by the time 2005-06 came around. We could do that for FE.”
Public figures such as Steph McGovern, the business presenter for BBC Breakfast, have been blowing the FE horn for years. What would Afzal do differently?
“A lot of people have been through the FE sector and now achieved great success in life. Sizeable people with sizeable personalities, with great profiles. We need to engage with them to become our ambassadors. We need to explain what value we are adding.”
To this end he’s been instrumental in getting the chairs of all ten Greater Manchester colleges to agree to pool marketing resources and work together on putting out a united message, under the auspices of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
But doing it in one city is not enough, he says. “On our own we can only do so much. We need to build capacity, share learning. Ultimately we have one message to deliver, which is about how fantastic FE is and what potential it supports, and the journey it takes people on. We need to do this together.”
