The Federation of Small Businesses has chosen GCSE results day to call on the new Secretary of State, Gavin Williamson, to take urgent action to increase apprenticeship funding.

Their chief executive, Mike Cherry, points out that some students picking up their results today will now want to start an apprenticeship. But, he claims, their choices will be restricted as apprenticeship funding becomes increasingly scarce for small employers.

FE Week was first to report overall levy budget concerns, being shared privately by the Institute for Apprenticeships last December.

The biggest challenge attached to engaging with apprenticeships is the recruitment of an apprentice

The forecast of an overspend in 2020 was subsequently acknowledged by the National Audit Office and then during a Select Committee hearing by the top civil servant at the Department for Education.

Cherry said: “There are serious concerns about the likely exhaustion of the levy budget and the consequences for non-levy paying employers. Which is why the forthcoming spending review is crucial to ensuring that funds are replenished.”

“The new secretary of state must also do more to reduce the upfront costs attached to the recruitment of apprentices. Our research shows the biggest challenge attached to engaging with apprenticeships is the recruitment of an apprentice, with 42 per cent of smaller businesses with apprentices struggling with this.”

Employers with an annual pay bill below £3 million don’t pay the apprenticeship levy and they rely on funding being available from a limited pot set aside by the Department for Education.

The shortage will quickly become much worse unless the government delivers quickly on Boris Johnson’s funding promise

This latest intervention from the FSB will add further pressure on the Treasury and Department for Education to find more funding, following a recent survey of apprenticeship providers conducted by AELP and reported by FE Week, which found three quarters were running out of cash for small employers.

AELP chief executive Mark Dawe said at the time that “The clear message from apprenticeship providers is the shortage will quickly become much worse unless the government delivers quickly on Boris Johnson’s funding promise.”

Responding to the FSB demands a Department for Education spokesperson told FE Week: “Large businesses can now transfer up to 25% of their levy funds to smaller employers so they can invest in high-quality apprenticeship training for their staff. To help smaller employers manage their own apprenticeships more effectively, we are also bringing them onto the digital apprenticeship service from November.

“However, we are aware of the concerns raised by the FSB, which is why we asked the National Apprenticeship Service to work with the FSB to support smaller employers to recruit apprentices. We are also continuing to look carefully at the future priorities for the apprenticeship programme.”

France has won the right to host WorldSkills 2023 by a landslide after receiving more than double the votes for rival Japan.

The biennial competition will be heading to Lyon following Shanghai in 2021, after France won by 44 votes to 20.

All 82 countries are entitled to vote in the secret ballot.

Speaking at WorldSkills Kazan, where preparations are well underway for the competition this weekend, a WorldSkills France representative said they wanted their event to be “beautiful” and to contribute to the WorldSkills movement.

Lyon are old hands at WorldSkills, having already hosted the international skills competition in 1995.

Their bid document says the competition will be held at Lyon’s 14,000sq m EUREXPO centre and it proposes the competition be held between 13 and 16 September 2023.

Competitors will be housed at scientific research and engineering school INSA Lyon, which will be providing 2,000 beds.

WorldSkills UK chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann gave his congratulations to France, and said that while Kazan had set the bar high, he believed France could deliver “an amazing showcase for global skills excellence”. 

He continued: “Our participation in WorldSkills is more important than ever, because we need to learn from the best of the rest of the world to help upgrade our skills systems to world-class standards, not only to boost productivity, but also support more and more young people get the best start in work and life. The road from Kazan to Shanghai in 2021 and France in 2023 is vital to help the UK achieve its skills ambitions.”

FE Week is proud to be the official media partner for WorldSkills UK and Team UK. FE Week will bring you all the latest developments in the lead up to WorldSkills 2019 and will be onsite in Kazan to bring rolling coverage of Team UK’s progress.

To find out more about the what, when and why of WorldSkills, read our handy guide.

 

Team UK got the chance to see the WorldSkills flag relay, leave a permanent sign of their skills, and visit Kazan’s very own Kremlin today, a few days before WorldSkills 2019 begins.

Proving it’s not all floristry, painting and metalwork with WorldSkills UK, the 41-strong party of 37 competitors and four team leaders took in the sights of the venue city.

The two landscape gardener competitors got a chance to leave a permanent reminder of their visit by planting a tree at the site of the competition village.

Visual merchandising competitor Konnar Doyle said: “It’s great seeing different cultures, even different buildings like Kazan’s Kremlin.”

He said he was looking for the medallion of excellence “at an absolute minimum” in his competition, but he faces challenge from competitors who have been practising for years, while he has been at it for five months.

We were honoured to be asked to plant a tree in the village in which we’re staying @WorldSkillsKZN to commemorate the competition. Fortunately we had just the person for the job – Shea who is competing in #LandscapeGardening 🌲#bitwobbly #moresoilneeded pic.twitter.com/ljovDavSBA

— WorldSkills UK (@worldskillsuk) August 21, 2019

The medallion is given to competitors who score above 500 points, but do not achieve a bronze, silver or gold medal. 

Manufacturing team challenge competitor Isaac Khan said they had been tasked with building an electrical wheelchair for their competition, which will be tested around an 2.5km obstacle course, involving a 200mm step.

The team has a “good attitude”, he believed, and they would be happy with any result.

He said the competitors’ village was “bigger than they expected” but it was “fantastic to see everyone getting along”.

The WorldSkills flag relay took place at the competitors’ village this morning, after it has been to Russia’s space station, every country which has hosted a WorldSkills competition (with a short trip to Coleg Sir Gar in Wales), as well as the Madrid college which hosted the first WorldSkills competition in the the 1950s, and every region of Russia.

The flag consists of a WorldSkills logo and patches from everywhere it has visited.

FE Week is proud to be the official media partner for WorldSkills UK and Team UK. FE Week will bring you all the latest developments in the lead up to WorldSkills 2019 and will be onsite in Kazan to bring rolling coverage of Team UK’s progress.

To find out more about the what, when and why of WorldSkills, read our handy guide.

Pictured: Shea McFerran, one of the landscape gardening competitors, with the tree he has just planted

The Chartered Institution for Further Education looks to have broken its bye-laws set by the Privy Council after failing to publish its 2017-18 accounts.

FE Week has been repeatedly asking for their financial statements, which should have been signed off in December, since March.

The institution’s own bye-laws state that the ruling council “shall ensure at least once in every year the accounts of the institution shall be audited, and audited accounts published”.

After months of silence a spokesperson for the institution today said a “minor technical error” in its 2017/18 accounts had delayed their publication. The institution refused to say what this error was.

FE Week asked the Cabinet Office what repercussions the institution could face from the Privy Council, which set the institution’s bye-laws; but a spokesperson said the council has no enforcement role in respect of chartered bodies.

It is just the latest in a long line of problems for the CIFE.

The brainchild of former skills minister John Hayes, the institution was created to get high-achieving FE providers a royal seal of approval.

It took three years for the institute to attain chartered status, before finally achieving it in June 2015, and began accepting membership applications in November of that year; it claims to currently have 16 member organisations.

The Department for Education stopped funding for the institution in January, insisting the expectation was always that it should be financially independent.

However, by then the department had already handed the institution £1.5 million in subsidies since it was formed in 2012.

CIFE’s 16 members are far fewer than the 80 the institution’s former chief executive Dan Wright previously said it would need to be “completely free” of government subsidy.

In April, the institution admitted it had no members of staff and was relying on its ex-chief executive, working as a volunteer, to help the council members run the show.

The CIFE spokesperson said the institution “has undergone significant internal structural change over the last six months to move to a sustainable footing that does not rely on government funds”.

“During this time, we have focussed solely on implementing and cementing this change,” they continued, adding once the error is resolved, the accounts will be published.

Membership of the institution costs £5,000, but for interested parties there is also a £3,000 non-refundable fee to have an application reviewed in the first place.

Within the last few months, it has held a private inauguration ceremony in the City of London in May, where membership was conferred on a number of providers, including Warwickshire College Group, London South East Colleges and Bedford College.

At the ceremony, fellowships were conferred on Trafford College principal Lesley Davies, Working Mens College principal Helen Hammond and East Riding College principal Mike Welsh.

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Today, Team UK fly out to WorldSkills 2019 in Russia.  Here’s our short, but handy explainer about the competition, competitors and what chance Team UK has of topping the medal tables at the closing ceremony in 10 days time.

What is WorldSkills?

WorldSkills is a biennial competition that will this year take place (from Friday 23 to Monday 26 August) in the Russian city of Kazan and feature over a thousand competitors from over 60 countries taking part in 56 competitions based around trade skills.

The competition will be officially opened on Thursday 22 and Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to attend.

A closing ceremony is on the following Tuesday, when WorldSkills will be handed over to representatives for WorldSkills 2021, which will be held in Shanghai.

Who is in Team UK?

Team UK is fielding 37 competitors in 32 competitions and will be competing for gold, silver or bronze medals in such varied disciplines as visual merchandising, restaurant service, and plastering and drywall systems.

The team members were whittled down from 150 apprentices and learners from all around the country, after they competed in heats in March and April.

Once the final team was chosen, the competitors were put through their paces at a boot camp at Loughborough University, where they are trained by a number of professional coaches.

Competitors were taught how to diet, exercise and sleep to get them in prime condition and then each morning in Kazan, the competitors will have to be up at 6.30 for Yoga and stretching.

They have also been trained up for the competitions by training managers, many of whom are former competitors themselves and have helped the competitors get acquainted with what will be expected of them in Kazan.

FE Week visited two training days in the final weeks before the competition: in Gloucester, with hairdressing hopeful Phoebe McLavy; and Toyota UK in Derby with mechatronics team mates Jack Dakin and Danny Slater.

What are the UK’s chances?

At the last WorldSkills competition, held in Abu Dhabi in 2017, the UK came tenth in the total medal points chart, with 21,261 points.

Team UK earned one gold medal, 3 silver medals, 3 bronze medals and 13 medallions for excellence.

The gold was won by Kaiya Swain, after she was voted the world’s best young beauty therapist.

This time around, the UK is hoping to come in the top 10 of countries yet again.

FE Week is the exclusive media partner of WorldSkills UK and will be reporting live from Kazan.

The new chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust has defended the decision to nearly double the membership fee that university technical colleges have to pay.

The annual fee will increase from £5,500 to £10,000 from September.

The unexpected hike comes despite the majority of UTCs struggling to survive due to dwindling student numbers, a situation which has seen 12 of the institutions close since the programme launched in 2010.

“Like anybody when a bill goes up almost two-fold, it is on us to justify it”

A number of others have survived on government bailouts, while around half of the 48 UTCs which will still be open next month are now part of multi-academy trusts.

Simon Connell (pictured), who took over as chief executive of the charity behind the UTC programme this month, said the 14 to 19 providers have had “quite a good deal” up until now, and claimed the services that the licence fee covers have cost around £20,000 per college for the last few years.

These services include policy coordination with the Department for Education, analysis of student destinations and progress, national PR and marketing, free access to the Schools, Students and Teachers network and The Duke of York Award, and facilitating the sharing of best practice.

BDT also offers bespoke advisory support to individual UTCs in areas such as multi-academy trust rebrokerage, finances and student recruitment.

Despite the new fee still being well below the £20,000 cited by Connell, he promised that UTCs would be getting more for their money come September.

“I want to provide more support and advice to help UTCs to raise their own money, and another is a more formalised approach to the research we do,” he told FE Week.

“The other thing is raising the profile and celebrating these good student stories – so for every difficult story they read, we need to be celebrating some great student stories.

“Like anybody when a bill goes up almost two-fold, it is on us to justify it.”

The Baker Dearing Trust was set up by Lord Baker in 2010. Its income in 2017-18 was £2 million, while its expenditure totalled £1.7 million.

It relies heavily on donations from a range of charities with links to other Lords, such as the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, which was founded by David Sainsbury, also known as Baron Sainsbury of Turville.

Its accounts for 2017-18 show it received over £1.7 million from donations in that year, and just £272,000 from licence fees – just 14 per cent of its total income.

The biggest donation it received in that year was for £667,250 from the Edge Foundation.

In the same period, six UTCs received bailouts from the government totalling almost £1 million, while nearly every UTC had to hand funding back to the government after overestimating pupil numbers the year before.

Two UTCs, Heathrow Aviation Engineering and UTC Plymouth, had £994,000 in re-brokerage debts written off by the government between them in 2018-19.

As there will be 48 UTCs still open in September, Baker Dearing will see its income from licence fees rise to £480,000 next year.

“This fee increase has been discussed with us and we have agreed to it”

Connell said this gives the charity a “more even balance” in terms of where its income is brought in from.

He said all UTCs have been made aware of the price hike, and the reaction has been positive.

Asked for his thoughts on the hike in membership fee, Nick Crew, executive principal at The Sheffield UTC Academy Trust, which runs two UTCs, said: “We appreciate the support that we receive from Baker Dearing Trust. This fee increase has been discussed with us and we have agreed to it.”

While the majority of UTCs have struggled to recruit enough students to remain financially viable, many others have struggled to impress Ofsted – just 59 per cent of all inspected UTCs are currently rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.

Connell, who took over as chief executive of BDT from Charles Parker this month, has made it his mission to improve this picture.

You can read his wide-ranging interview with FE Week in our first edition of 2019/20 in September.

The WorldSkills 2019 opening ceremony starts at 5pm (UK time) today and can be watched live via this link: https://worldskills2019.com/en/live/opening-ceremony/

The ceremony will also be broadcast on SKY 192 and Freesat 161.

FE Week is the exclusive media partner of WorldSkills UK and our reporter Fraser Whieldon will be tweeting live from Kazan throughout the competition.

 

 

Nearly half of the new providers which have had Ofsted reports published this week have made ‘insufficient progress’ in at least one area.

YMCA George Williams College and London School of Commerce & IT Limited are among those to receive the rating for Ofsted’s objectives of ‘successful apprenticeship provision’ and ‘positive outcomes for apprentices’.

The inspectorate found a lack of quality leadership at YMCA George Williams College, deeming its governance “weak”. Trustees were said to have failed to provide leaders with the support and challenge needed to be effective.

The report highlighted the poor implementation of support on the programme, with most apprentices making “slow progress” as a result.

The provider had failed to successfully expand apprentices’ skills, and had high levels of absence and drop-out from the programme. Staff were said to not act quick enough to provide good student outcomes, with some apprentices waiting “too long for written feedback on a unit assessment.”

It concluded that the provider does not efficiently prepare apprentices for their functional skills qualifications and vocational application. 

London School of Commerce & IT Limited was criticised for not having “planned to use their funding effectively to help learners”. “Nor do they have strong partnerships with the local job centre”, inspectors added. This was said to provide little opportunity for learners to progress onto the next level upon completion of the course.

Despite the majority of learners achieving functional skills qualifications, they did not adequately develop their English and mathematics skills.

Leaders were accused of not sufficiently measuring the impact of the courses, meaning that ultimately learners’ “individual needs” were not met.

AAA Training and Recruitment and CPC Training Consultants Ltd also received ‘insufficient’ judgements.

However, AAA has criticised Ofsted for handing down the judgement after sampling just a fraction of its apprentices.

Meanwhile CPC Training Consultants Ltd in Oldbury was criticised for not tracking learners’ progress after they had completed the programme. “As a result, managers do not have reliable information to analyse how successful the curriculum is in supporting learners to return to work.”

The investigation drew attention to managers not sufficiently using “the information on learners’ starting points and prior experience to place them on the right level of programme.” This apparently led to students either being over-stretched or under-challenged.

“Tutors do not set precise targets to improve learners’ skills”, Ofsted judged.

Fortunately, ‘reasonable progress’ for ensuring effective safeguarding (the third and final criteria of the report) was said to have been made for all four providers.

There was better news for UKfast.Net Limited in Manchester, which was the only provider this week found making ‘significant progress’.

Ofsted praised UKfast.Net in all areas of its early monitoring report, commenting on the provider’s “culture of high expectations”.

It said that the directors have “established strong links with stakeholders” and have “planned skilfully a challenging curriculum”. Consequently, apprentices make “very good progress” and most achieve distinction grades.

Staff had been recruited “carefully”, and were effective in developing significantly English and mathematical knowledge, as well as providing swift and overall “excellent support”.

Elsewhere, there were four monitoring reports which returned ‘reasonable progress’ scores across the board: Greendale Limited, Waltham International College Limited, Quest Training South East Ltd, Tendean Limited.

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Greendale Limited	01/08/2019	13/08/2019	M	N/A
London School Of Commerce & It Limited	17/07/2019	14/08/2019	M	N/A
Waltham International College Limited	25/07/2019	14/08/2019	M	N/A
YMCA George Williams College	04/07/2019	13/08/2019	M	N/A
Aaa Training Solutions Limited	11/07/2019	15/08/2019	M	N/A
CPC Training Consultants Ltd	10/07/2019	16/08/2019	M	N/A
Quest Training South East Ltd	17/07/2019	16/08/2019	M	N/A
Tendean Limited	24/07/2019	15/08/2019	M	N/A
Ukfast.Net Limited	09/07/2019	15/08/2019	M	N/A

A provider has hit out at Ofsted after the inspectorate sampled just a fraction of its apprentices to decide it was making ‘insufficient progress’ in an early monitoring report.

AAA Training and Recruitment is expected to be suspended from recruiting new apprentices by the government after it was given the rating in two of the three categories looked at by the watchdog.

Its report, published yesterday, said the majority of apprentices are “not receiving their full entitlement to off-the-job training” and previous leaders and managers, who have been replaced in recent months, had not ensured that apprentices “acquire substantial new skills and knowledge”.

“AAA has concerns regarding the process Ofsted followed”

AAA started delivering its own apprenticeships in January 2018 and currently has 598 health and social care apprentices all based with one national employer called City & County Healthcare Group.

The training company’s new chief executive, David Grant, said the inspectorate only sampled around 4 per cent of its in-learning apprentices during the inspection.

He has “concerns regarding the process Ofsted followed and subsequent implication on the business” and told FE Week his provider is “considering our options with regards to taking further action and are in discussion with the board and advisers”.

This is the same challenge put forward by the country’s former largest training provider, Learndirect, when it lost a High Court battle with Ofsted to overturn an ‘inadequate’ judgement, which led to its huge government funding contracts being terminated.

It argued in court that the report should have been quashed because the “meagre sample size” – just 0.6 per cent of 70,000 learners – used by inspectors was “ineffectively unreasonable”.

Ofsted claimed there was “a comprehensive evidence base clearly supporting the judgements made”, and the judge sided with the inspectorate.

Grant, who took over at AAA five months ago, said his provider’s inspection “lasted 1.5 days, they made judgements based on a small sample and did not make judgements based on a snapshot of the ‘here and now’ they based judgements on historical issues that had already been rectified by the new team”.

“Furthermore – one inspector tried to include a judgement that related to one learner (we challenged) and it was removed by the lead HMI,” he added. “I am not sure how many other judgements she submitted based on a few learners (she was representing the field based team) and reporting back.”

An Ofsted spokesperson said the sample size will vary for each individual inspection, but could not give a figure for what the typical size is.

“Inspectors make judgements based on a range of evidence – observations of training sessions are just one part of this,” she told FE Week.

“Among other things, inspectors also take into account work scrutiny, discussions with learners and employers, and analysis of provider and learner records.

“The mix of evidence will vary on each inspection, and is down to the inspector’s professional judgement, taking into account the handbook criteria and the specific circumstances of the provider.”

AAA’s report said the majority of apprentices are not making expected progress, and none have yet achieved within their expected finish date. Around a third have left without achieving their qualifications.

Historical issues at the provider included that some apprentices have had their assessors changed several times and experienced long gaps in the delivery of their programmes. Some have had to repeat lost work. “Too many” learning and review sessions are cancelled.

Ofsted did report that AAA’s new leadership team has identified the weaknesses in the provision and has “plans in place to remedy these”.

These plans include implementing a new management information system, an amended enrolment process, and regular meetings to review progress.

New training staff are also being recruited and although it is “too early to see the impact of these changes”, initial feedback from apprentices is “positive”, Ofsted said.

Grant said he was “pleased that recent changes and improvements were commented on during the monitoring visit and within the final report”.