How to move more school-leavers towards degree apprenticeships

Key stakeholders must understand that apprenticeships are as valuable as any other degree, says Jassiem Moore

The Department for Education is making worrying noises about having to make “hard choices” to avoid an overspend of the apprenticeship levy. Jonathan Slater, the department’s permanent secretary, told the Public Accounts Committee this week that if funding were constrained at its current level, “that would require choices to be made between level 2 and level 6”.

Removing funding for apprenticeships at levels 6 and 7 would, however, impact their potential to support social mobility. Degree apprenticeships have already proved they can increase female participation in male-dominated subjects (34 per cent compared with 29 per cent in similar traditional degree courses) and a higher percentage of learners from low participation areas access degree apprenticeships (30 per cent) than go to university (26 per cent), according to the Office for Students’ analysis of degree apprenticeships.

While we do not want to promote degree apprenticeships as a tick-box exercise for widening participation, they do open up another route to higher education for those who may be traditionally disengaged.

At DANCOP, we present degree apprenticeships and university as different sides of the same coin. However, when working in schools and colleges we regularly see the lack of parity. So where are we missing the mark, and what can we do to address the misconceptions?

It can be difficult for young people in schools and colleges to get accurate information and guidance about apprenticeships. In sixth forms and colleges, pupils are still steered towards the traditional university route.

Knowledge within schools can be lacking and there may be other pressures on teachers and advisers to promote university. Schools often see it as a badge of honour when many of their pupils progress to university – end-of-year newsletters are filtered with images of young people who have won places at prestigious universities. Degree apprenticeships do not receive the same attention.

However, this lack of knowledge and encouragement could also be for practical reasons –teachers and advisers now have less time to support learners with their apprenticeship applications, which can be an unknown beast. With no centralised system or standardised procedure, proofreading personal statements for university courses is a piece of cake compared with supporting prospective apprentices with assessment centres, psychometric tests and reference requirements.

Of course, support is not limited to that provided in school. Parents/carers and friends are key influencers in a pupil’s decision of what to do post-school. Peer pressure, for example, remains key for young people: when all your friends are preparing their personal statements it may be difficult to consider a different higher education experience.

Parents/carers may still hold views that stigmatise higher-level apprenticeships by conflating them with traditionally vocational routes. If a young person is surrounded by these views, as well as being influenced by their school or college’s heavy promotion of the traditional university route, it is easy to see where their preference comes from.

If we hope to achieve parity between apprenticeships and university, we need to focus on raising awareness among key stakeholders so they understand apprenticeships are as valuable as any other degree. We should also work towards a centralised platform for accessing information about apprenticeships and enforcement of legislation to provide information to young people. If Ofsted had the powers to assess compliance of the Baker clause, it’s likely there would be an increase in the uptake of information sessions from employers and training providers, so increasing the awareness of the opportunities apprenticeships can offer.

There is a long way to go until degree apprenticeships are viewed in the same light as university. At DANCOP we always try to reframe the conversation from choosing “one or the other” to applying to “both together”. Removing funding for degree apprenticeships, as Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee, has warned, would be a “retrograde step” and would only increase the difficulty in accessing degree apprenticeships for young people.

Creating a quality apprenticeship system that will work for everyone

City & Guilds wants a universal framework for quality standards applied throughout FE inspections, says Kirstie Donnelly

As all of us working in technical and vocational education know that apprenticeships provide a key skills solution for employers and an important route into work. Seemingly, the government agrees and often talks about apprenticeships in glowing terms, using phrases such as “gold standard”, “world class” and “quality first”.  

What does it actually mean, though, to create and deliver a quality apprenticeship system that provides the right returns for businesses and people? This is a question we asked ourselves five years ago, alongside our new Industry Skills Board (ISB).

In the intervening years we’ve seen huge change in the apprenticeship system with the introduction of new standards, end-point assessment and, of course, the apprenticeship levy. Political and economic turmoil has also forced businesses to think differently about recruitment. Given it’s such an important time for apprenticeships, it feels like the right time to reflect on whether the system is working as it should and what needs to change to make it better.   

This week, to coincide with the Annual Apprenticeships Conference, we are launching the latest version of our Making Apprenticeships Work report. This builds on the quality framework we developed four years ago and provides updated recommendations for all involved in delivering apprenticeships.

There have been some wins since 2014 when we advocated for an independent employer-led body to have central oversight of apprenticeships. What actually materialised is the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), which is a step in the right direction, if not quite the arm’s-length independent-from-government body that we hoped for.

We would also have liked more change and still find ourselves calling for better promotion of apprenticeships in schools and through recruitment channels, as we all know that there simply aren’t enough people being signposted towards apprenticeships.

The central theme of our first and latest report, however, is the quality framework for apprenticeships.

The recent National Audit Office (NAO) report quite rightly highlighted a real concern with the system as it is today, and recommended a greater government focus on outlining the success measures against which an apprenticeship programme should be measured, as well as a clear indication of how it brings value to employers and individuals.

This value attached to an apprenticeship is at the core of our quality framework. We believe that for an apprenticeship to be of high quality, it must be deemed intrinsically demanding and worthwhile by employers and employees.

There needs to be more meaningful engagement with employers

Not only that, but new apprentices must have the support of existing employees, who provide feedback within a defined learning programme. Apprenticeships are also subject to reliable, valid and robust independent end-point assessment, and apprentices should be aware of a clear career progression route beyond their apprenticeship.

To support this, we are recommending that a universal framework for quality standards is applied throughout all Ofsted, Education and Skills Funding Agency and external quality assurance organisation inspections. 

Our report has coincided with IfATE’s publication of its Quality Strategy, which appears to express an intention rather than outline concrete actions. In this time of uncertainty, I would hope that the institute will call for a common quality framework that will match its rhetoric.

First, however, there needs to be more meaningful engagement with employers to understand how the system is working for those who invest in it. We know that there are big issues stopping many employers from benefiting from apprenticeships and until these are tackled, no matter how high-quality the system, it won’t have the desired impact unless businesses actually engage with it.

It is only by working collaboratively with education providers and employers, and making changes that unlock the power of apprenticeships, that the government will be able to fully deliver the “world-class” quality system that we so desperately need.

City & Guilds Group’s “Making Apprenticeships Work” report can be viewed and downloaded here

This much-needed focus on colleges must be capitalised on

The chair of the new Independent Commission into the College of the Future sets out his agenda

Colleges for far too long haven’t received the recognition that they deserve. Happily, amongst policy wonks at least, this is starting to change.

The post-18 education review led by Philip Augar is yet to publish its recommendations, but it has been tasked with looking at developing a better-balanced post-18 system and has had significant discussions over the past year of the role of colleges. Damian Hinds’ speech in December set out plans to develop a new quality level 4/5 pathway to run parallel to undergraduate degree options – with much of this anticipated to be delivered through our colleges.

The state of play is much more advanced in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where colleges are better recognised as the central community anchors that they are. And yet there is still a great deal more to be done in these contexts too – addressing inequities in esteem, inadequate articulation between different parts of the system and between colleges and other parts of public policy-making, including, crucially, in terms of the welfare system.

This growing and much-needed focus on colleges must be capitalised on, including learning lessons from what is happening across the different corners of the UK. From changes in technology, attitudes, demography and climate, we face clear national and global challenges to which colleges – as dynamic institutions rooted in their communities, with expertise in engaging with a diversity of people at all ages and stages, and with often excellent relationships with businesses of all sizes – must be a key part of the answer.

If colleges are to play that role, then we have a lot of work to do to ensure that they are not just given their rightful central place within education policy, but beyond the traditional edu-chatter. They must come to be a critical part of conversations on industrial strategy and regional growth, welfare policy, health and social cohesion and integration.

There are, of course, critical questions as we ensure the colleges of the future are best suited to meet these challenges. This must involve questions of their role, scope and purpose and how they relate to other parts of the education system, to employers, to people and to governments. Who should they teach, how and what should they teach? How do we ensure that we have the properly supported staff in place to deliver this work? Finally, questions on the role of colleges in enabling all people to have a life of learning and, for some, for learning to give them the skills to escape in-work poverty.

For me, this agenda is pivotal. And that’s why I am so pleased to be leading a new Independent Commission into the College of the Future, which will undertake precisely this work. We will look at what we all need from our colleges right across the UK, and what this vision for the college of the future can be.

We will be using this process to ensure that as many people as possible who have a stake in the agenda are able to engage and have their say. And we will use this process to ensure that many of those who don’t yet realise the relevance of colleges to questions they are looking at come to see new connections and possibilities.

Alert raised on the high volume of ‘tie-breaks’ in latest ESF tendering process

Further questions are being asked about the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s recent European Social Fund tender, after FE Week discovered an “unprecedented” amount of tie-breaks in the controversial procurement.

Many providers have alleged that the competition, worth around £282 million in total, was botched after the agency broke tender rules and made “errors”.

One aggrieved provider even threatened legal action, as revealed by FE Week last week, but has since decided to drop this because of the likely cost and a fear of repercussions from the ESFA.

It makes a mockery of the scoring process

Now, however, this newspaper has discovered, via a Freedom of Information request, that 37 of the 95 lots, or 39 per cent, tendered in the three competitive areas of the procurement resulted in a tie-break after the ESFA marked many bids as scoring the maximum.

One college director, who used to work at the ESFA and who wished to remain anonymous, told FE Week that the number is “unprecedented”.

“It makes a mockery of the scoring process, or demonstrates inexperienced scorers,” the director said.

“All the bidders will have scored the maximum 100 for each of the four questions to end up in a tie-break – [which is] unbelievable. And how come all these tie-breaks were resolved in an award? What’s the probability of that?”

In a tie-break, the bidders were asked to “respond to a single tie-break question”. Whoever the agency deemed to have scored the highest in this question would win.

Many of the tie-breaks included multiple organisations, and one lot, for the Sheffield Transition area, comprised five providers. Overall, 87 providers were involved.

FE Week’s FOI also showed that the ESFA employed four temporary staff, at a cost of £43,000 in total, as well as their full-time European Social Fund staff, to mark the bids.

“The use of temporary staff to mark these tenders is an insult to the providers, who spent weeks preparing their responses,” said the chief executive of a provider who bid in the tender but who did not want to be named.

“The FE Week findings prove that this wasn’t an open and competitive procurement process, given that such a high volume of providers with no infrastructure, resources or tangible track records in the specified regions were able to score 100 per cent and enter into tie-breaks in multiple contract package areas.”

He added that since the results were announced, three successful bidders have “approached us to deliver their newly won contracts as they have no capacity to deliver the contracts themselves”.

Each of the bidders had scored 200 out of 200 on their “readiness to deliver” the contract.

The chief executive said his provider understands that the ESFA is currently undertaking “penetration audits” to test the validity of what was written in the bids.

Another provider, who wished to remain anonymous, said they are “alarmed” by the tie-break figures and “think that the procurement has not been designed to capture the best provision locally”.

This wasn’t an open and competitive procurement process

“Over one-third of lots going to tie-break shows that not enough due diligence was carried out in analysing the accuracy of the responses,” this provider added.

“We are seeing this in the results of the awards, with, for example, providers that have no staff, infrastructure, supply chains and stakeholders in region [who] are not ready for the April 1 go-live date.”

The agency has delayed issuing contracts several times, since – as previously reported by FE Week – multiple providers claimed that the government broke tender rules, namely by excluding the “track record” section when marking bids, while the ESFA has admitted to “errors”, such as naming Serco Regional Services Limited as a winner instead of Serco Limited.Contracts are supposed to go live on April 1.

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

The three areas of the tender that had tie-breaks were “skills support for the workforce”, “skills support for the unemployed” and “skills support for NEET [Not in Education, Employment or Training]”.

The other part of the tender was for community grants, and it is understood there was only one application for each area, thus none resulted in a tie-break

Ofsted watch: Mixed results for FE providers

It has been a varied week in the FE sector, with three providers receiving ‘good’ grades from Ofsted while three others were told they require improvement.

The education watchdog also published four monitoring visits, where two providers were found making ‘significant progress’.

Good news came in for the Open University and the University of Sheffield, who both received a grade two.

This was the first inspection the Open University has received, where it was praised for quickly developing apprentices’ clinical skills and knowledge that meet the high standards of employers.

Apprentices, of which there were nearly 165 on level 5 healthcare assistant practitioner and nursing associate courses, “benefit from a wide range of good support provided by university staff”.

This “helps them to overcome barriers to learning”.

The University of Sheffield improved from grade three to grade two after “successfully” creating an inclusive culture of high expectations throughout its apprenticeship provision.

Ofsted said most apprentices acquire valuable knowledge and skills that meet and sometimes exceed the needs of their employers.

Access Skills Ltd, a private provider which trains nearly 500 apprentices and work placed adults, was rated ‘good’ in its first ever inspection.

“Leaders have a clear strategy to train effective leaders and managers of care settings,” Ofsted found.

“They have developed highly effective partnerships with employers to achieve this aim.”

Two providers, Blackrock (London) Ltd and employer provider UK Power Networks (Operations) Ltd, received early monitoring visits, where they were found to have made ‘reasonable progress’ and ‘significant progress’ respectively.

At the time of the visit, Blackrock had six learners on programme of the 15 that started in 2017. Earlier this year, the provider told the Education and Skills Funding Agency that it will no longer continue as a levy-funded apprenticeship provider. The final six learners will complete their end-point assessments next month.

Ofsted found it had developed a programme that prepares apprentices “effectively”.

UK Power Networks was foudn making ‘significant progress’ across the board as its senior leaders provide “effective oversight” of the apprenticeship programme and “place a high priority on off-the-job training, which is of a very good standard”.

The employer currently has 69 apprentices. Inspectors said senior leaders and managers “ensure that the apprenticeship programme is central to their strategy to recruit and retain staff to meet the needs of the business now and in the future”.

Meanwhile, Ofsted said that Chichester College, which has a grade one rating and has since the last inspection gone through a merger with Central Sussex College, has made “significant progress in strengthening the leadership and management of the merged college”.

In the first monitoring visit since the merger took place in 2017, inspectors visited the group’s Crawley College campus.

They found the ethos of the college has changed to “putting students at the heart of everything done and to placing greater importance on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment”, and student achievement has improved has a result.

“Leaders and managers have improved the monitoring and tracking of student participation, progress, attendance and retention,” Ofsted said.

South Staffordshire College has made ‘reasonable progress’ since last year’s inspection, when regulators said at the time the overall effectiveness of its provision required improvement.

Since then, governors have increased their level of scrutiny and challenge of the actions being taken by leaders to support college-wide improvement, while the senior management team implemented a “suitably challenging” quality improvement plan. However, some of the actions taken by governors have been “too slow”.

Two private providers, Aspect Training Ltd and Quality Transport Training, were rated ‘requires improvement’ this week in their first inspections.

And Springboard Sunderland Trust, an adult and community learning provider, saw its rating decline from a grade two to a grade three.

Inspectors found leaders and managers have been “slow to react to he decline in the proportion of learners on study programmes who complete their courses and achieve their qualifications”.

They were also accused of not monitoring the progress of leaners on study programmes and the quality of the provision thoroughly enough.

GFE Colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
Chichester College 27/02/2019 29/03/2019 M 1 SSSS
South Staffordshire College 06/03/2019 27/03/2019 M 3 RRR

 

Independent Learning Providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
Aspect Training Ltd 11/02/2019 25/03/2019 3 N/A  
Access Skills Ltd 26/02/2019 25/03/2019 2 N/A  
Quality Transport Training 05/03/2019 28/03/2019 3 N/A  
BlackRock (London) Limited 26/02/2019 26/03/2019 M N/A RRR

 

Adult and Community Learning Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Springboard 05/03/2019 29/03/2019 3 2

 

Employer providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
UK Power Networks (Operations) Limited 15/02/2019 28/03/2019 M N/A SSS

 

Other (including UTCs) Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Open University 26/02/2019 28/03/2019 2 N/A
University of Sheffield 12/02/2019 26/03/2019 2 3

Grade one college chief executive says sorry after dodgy data exposed

The chief executive of a grade one college has apologised after an audit exposed data manipulation that resulted in more than £500,000 being paid back to the government.

Lowell Williams (pictured), the boss at Dudley College, told FE Week he even considered resigning over the “blunder”, which has led to the college being excluded from this year’s national achievement rate tables.

Following complaints from a whistleblower last year, the allegations of which are unknown but which have been “dismissed”, the Education and Skills Funding Agency conducted a “review” of the college’s data in December. This found numerous late withdrawals of apprentices and work-placed learners.

There’s no question that the college is at fault in this matter

Once notified of these “concerns”, the college began an internal investigation, which identified the late withdrawals in 2015/16 and 2016/17, which artificially inflated achievement rates.

It also found some learners’ end dates were inaccurate, which resulted in one senior member of staff tendering their resignation.

Dudley College then appointed auditing firm RSM to undertake an “advisory audit”, in agreement with the ESFA, which confirmed the findings this month.

RSM reported that the college had “historically had a poor system for tracking and monitoring the continued activity of apprentices and adult education budget learners where delivery is offsite”.

As a result, “funding has been overclaimed for both adult education budget learners and apprentices as withdrawals have not been actioned in a timely manner to ensure funding was returned in the correct year”.

Williams, who has been at the college for over 10 years and led it to being rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted in June 2017, told FE Week he was “mortified” by this “professionally and personally”.

“There’s no question that the college is at fault in this matter,” Williams said.

“The management of large work-based learning programmes, delivered offsite on a national basis, is complex, but it is our responsibility to get it right and we didn’t.

“We have made provision to return £504,000 to the agency, which represents less than 1 per cent of our total funding claim in these years and does not have any material impact on the college’s financial health.

“I recognise the reputational damage caused by these errors to the college, our stakeholders and the wider sector. I apologise for these mistakes.”

Asked if he considered his own position in the course of the investigations, he added: “The truth is absolutely yes. I’m a national leader of further education and I considered that my position was compromised.

“But advice I received from people I’ve worked with over a career is not to let a single mistake wipe out a lot of good work that has been done over a number of years.”

Williams said the college is “extremely disappointed” to be excluded from the national achievement rate dataset for 2017/18, which was published by the ESFA today, after the agency “could not confirm the accuracy of the college’s achievement rate for adult apprentices” in time.

He added that the college’s website has published the unofficial data instead, which show achievement rates for all apprentices at 80.7 per cent in 2016/17 and 77.2 per cent in 2017/18. 

I considered that my position was compromised

Williams was “grateful” that the ESFA brought the dodgy data to the college’s attention, and said it would be “helpful for the sector in the future if there was a more effective system to analyse and report on late withdrawals and an automatic reconciliation of funds between Individualised Learner Record years”.

“I note that we are not the only college to have fallen foul of these complexities, so it is a good time for us all to take stock and learn lessons for the future,” he added.

FE Week revealed last week that Intraining, a provider part of England’s largest college group NCG, was one of several dozen providers hit with recent mystery audits, and faces not only a clawback but also being removed from the official achievement rate tables.

As previously reported by FE Week, this major review of apprenticeship data is expected to result in the sector being officially warned about unacceptable data practices, as was the case nearly a decade ago when the then chief executive of the funding agency published a letter to the sector.

IfA chief ‘stepping down’, claims headhunters

The chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) will step down when his contract is up, FE Week understands.

In an email seen by this paper, the headhunters Gatenby Sanderson said Sir Gerry Berragan would not reapply for the post he has held for the past 16 months.

He refused to tell FE Week in January whether he wanted to stay on.

“It’s none of your business,” he said.

A job advert, posted on the Civil Service Jobs website earlier this month, says the postholder will earn an annual £140,000. Applications close on April 29.

A spokesperson for the institute said: “Nothing has changed since the job advert was published.

Sir Gerry has not announced his intentions and it would not be appropriate to comment further
while the recruitment is live.”

He added that it was a “spurious story”.

Berragan, chief executive of the former Institute for Apprenticeships since November 2017, has overseen massive change.

In December 2017, the institute launched the “faster, better” programme to make the process of
approving apprenticeship standards more efficient.

Since last year he has also been steering IfATE through the controversial funding band reviews
in which the bands for a number of apprenticeship standards have been cut, some by as much as £5,000.

IfATE sparked controversy in the FE sector when it estimated the apprenticeship budget would
overspend by £0.5 billion in 2018-19, rising to £1.5 billion during 2021-22.

And in February this year it took over the delivery of T-levels and the technical education brief from the Department for Education.

Berragan told FE Week in January that IfATE’s increased staff numbers from about 86 in summer last year to about 150 in January to accommodate the new T-level responsibilities.

Its budget has also doubled this year from £8.6 million to £15 million, and is expected to rise to “around £20 million next year”.

The chief executive’s contract limits him to serving a two-year term, as he did not go through a formal recruitment process and instead volunteered for the role.

In an interview after he started the job, he told FE Week about the unusual recruitment process.

IfATE began recruiting for a replacement for Peter Lauener in April 2017.

Its initial drive and a later foray by headhunters were both unsuccessful.

“There was a bit of an imperative to get someone in place,” he told FE Week. (Lauener was due to retire at the end of the year.)

A breakthrough came during a two-hour working dinner with two fellow board members, Antony Jenkins, the IfATE chair, and former Barclays chief executive, and Dame Fiona Kendrick,
who chairs Nestle UK.

“That’s when I said to the Antony Jenkins, ‘well, you know, if you want, I’ll throw my hat in the ring’,” Berragan said.

“The only way they could appoint me was for a two-year period because I hadn’t gone through the formal recruitment process. After that, I’d have to go through another recruitment process if I wanted to stay longer.”

Funding clawback for college at risk of cash crisis

A college already in financial difficulty is being forced to pay back nearly £1 million to the government as a result of working with a subcontractor investigated for falsifying learner records.

In a report published last Friday by the FE commissioner, North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College was warned that it needed to take “urgent action” to secure its longterm future after it was over-optimistic in its forecasting, with “overly complex, expensive” staffing costs to income ratio.

According to its 2017-18 accounts, the college generated an operating deficit of £2.9 million, up from £612,000 the year before.

But the accounts also reveal its financial situation could deteriorate as it faces a liability of up to £900,000 to the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), following an investigation into its use of a subcontractor that entered into liquidation in 2017.

Before its merger with North Warwickshire and Hinckley College in 2016, South Leicestershire worked with Ambertrain Ltd, which the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMchE) bought in November 2015.

Two years later, IMchE announced it was placing the provider into liquidation after uncovering “historical practices undertaken by some individuals at Ambertrain that have given rise to claims against the company”.

In May 2017 the ESFA wrote to the college about its concerns with the learning provision carried out by Ambertrain, and requested an investigation.

At the time of its insolvency proceedings, liquidators said Ambertrain had debts of £167,456 due from colleges, including South Leicestershire, which was “investigating claims against the company for falsification of learner records”.

Despite the result of this investigation being expected to translate into a large clawback to the agency, North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College did not make provision for it in its 2017-18 accounts because the sum had not yet been agreed.

However, a spokesperson for the college said it had “fully provided” in its three-year financial plan for the impact of Ambertrain’s liability.

“This plan, which shows the college returned to the ESFA’s financial health grade of satisfactory in the current year and moving to good in 2020-21, was submitted to the ESFA and to the FE commissioner last November,” she said.

Before the merger, South Leicestershire and North Warwickshire colleges were already in a precarious financial situation. After a visit to the colleges in 2015 Dr David Collins, then commissioner, recommended that they speed up plans to merge after he saw how their recurring deficits were hitting finances.

This week Richard Atkins, the current commissioner, said the college “should be able to avoid insolvency for the time being” only if it improved the way its “costed curriculum plan is monitored in year and adjustments made accordingly”.

The commissioner’s report, dated November 2018, said the college, which received a financial health notice to improve after the government assessed its monetary situation as “inadequate”, was at risk of a “cash crisis” this year. However, it stressed it was “not currently in crisis”.

According the FE commissioner, the current financial situation was driven by poor forecasting, an overall decline in apprenticeship contract and provision, failure to attract enough students to deliver the adult education budget contract, an “over-dependence” on a late increase in distance subcontracting and the requirement to accommodate more than 100 unfunded 16 to 18-year-olds, which cost £1 million.

The report said the college now needed to review its organisational structure, which Anne Milton, the skills minister, said was “unnecessarily complex” in a letter published alongside the commissioner’s report.

Milton agreed with the report’s findings, saying it was clear “urgent actions are now required”.

Marion Plant, the college’s principal, said the college had since made “rapid and significant progress” against all the recommendations.

Apprenticeship off-the-job calculation change? Wait for further clarification

There has been some confusion about the off-the-job training funding rule since it was introduced for all apprenticeship starts on frameworks and standards since May 2017, particularly how to calculate the minimum 20 per cent hours.

The ESFA has worked hard to help providers understand what counts as eligible activities and the associated calculation of the minimum hours, by publishing additional guidance and myth busting documents.

Last Friday afternoon the ESFA updated the guidance, and to their credit it includes a helpful spreadsheet which employers can use with providers to agree a compliant delivery model.

Unfortunately, however, paragraph 69 has left employers and providers scratching their heads, as it says: “For funding purposes 30 hours represents a full-time role and should be used in all calculations, even if the apprentice works more than 30 hours.”

The reference to a 30 hour per week cap in the calculation has never been said before. In fact, in the first version of the guidance there was even an example based on a 40 hour cap.

But far from being a mistake or even a change, when FE Week asked the Department for Education for clarification they said: “To be clear the published guidance does not contradict ESFA apprenticeship funding rules”.

Accordingly, providers have begun revisiting training plans and associated commitment statements, recalculating the minimum off-the-job hours.

One person on the ESFA message board FE Connect wrote: “The 30 hours cap will significantly reduce the number of off-the-job hours required for our learners, some by around 100 hours.”

Another wrote about the 30 hour cap: “I’ve managed to create and negotiate a plan with senior managers to put this to delivery staff, learners and employers.”

When I asked the Director of Apprenticeships at the ESFA, Keith Smith, about the 30 hour cap in a question and answer session at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference, he agreed there was now a “contradiction” between the funding rules and this updated guidance.

He told delegates the ESFA would provide further clarification shortly, within a few days.

So my advice (at 18:54 on 28 March 2018) would be to ignore the latest guidance that includes reference to a 30 hour minimum calculation and wait for another ESFA clarification.