Thirteen more colleges will receive a total of £1.8 million in grants through a fund designed to support struggling colleges, the government announced today.

Skills minister Anne Milton has named the second round of colleges set to receive the cash, which is part of the £15 million strategic college improvement fund.

The 13 institutions are:

Colleges that received a SCIF Main Phase Grant in round 2	Lead Partner College
Brockenhurst College	Exeter College
Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College	Tameside College
Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College	Derwentside College
Hull College	Chichester College Group
John Ruskin College	East Surrey College
Kensington and Chelsea College	Abingdon and Witney College
Lambeth College	Buckinghamshire College Group
Peterborough Regional College	New College Stamford
South Essex College of Further and Higher Education	East Kent College Group
St Charles Catholic Sixth Form College	St Dominic’s Sixth Form College
West Nottinghamshire College	Leicester College
Wigan and Leigh College	Craven College
Wirral Metropolitan College	Burnley College

 

The programme was introduced in October 2017, and 63 colleges across England have been successful in securing funding from it so far, according to the DfE.

Colleges rated ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ overall, or for their apprenticeship provision, are able apply for grants of between £50,000 and £250,000. The exact allocations for the latest round have not yet been announced.

Each application had to be supported by a stronger college, rated at least ‘good’ at its most recent Ofsted inspection.

At the time of its launch, the government said the scheme would “enable colleges to access resources that they need to improve their provision for students, including the best practice of other colleges, while at the same time mobilising and strengthening improvement in the FE sector”.

In November last year, colleges were invited to bid for the second round of cash.

“I’m thrilled to announce the second round of colleges to receive funding from the scheme,” Milton said today.

“We’ve seen great success so far and I look forward to hearing how they are all progressing.”

Meanwhile, Teresa Kelly, a deputy FE Commissioner, said: “I am really pleased that another group of colleges have been awarded a SCIF grant. The initiative is proving to be very popular across the sector and we are beginning to see the real benefits to students that can result from colleges learning from each other through the development of best practice.

“Many colleges have fed back to me that they consider that the SCIF initiative is proving to be so successful as it is harnessing what is best in teaching, learning and assessment and enabling teaching staff to enhance the quality of their practice in a wide variety of settings”.

The Department for Education said a recent research on the initiative has found the scheme has helped colleges “boost the quality of teaching and learning, strengthened their collaborative working approaches, and raised aspirations and supported college-wide improvements in culture and leadership”.

Bill Watkin, chief executive at Sixth Form Colleges Association, said the fund has proven to be a “well-structured and well-funded programme” that has “encouraged and facilitated system leadership in the college sector and has enabled colleges to share their strengths and to learn from each other”.

A training provider is launching legal action against the Education and Skills Funding Agency following an allegedly botched European Social Fund tender.

The agency ran its latest ESF procurement, worth around £282 million in total, towards the end of last year and was supposed to award contracts to the winning bidders on January 29.

But after multiple providers claimed the government broke tender rules, namely by excluding the “track record” section when marking bids, it delayed issuing contracts.

We will be submitting a series of final pre-action disclosure requests to the ESFA

The agency then had to delay the contracts again in February for 12 areas in the tender while it reviewed an “error”, as it named Serco Regional Services Ltd as the winner instead of Serco Limited.

On Friday, over a month after the review of the “error” started, the ESFA confirmed the outcome to providers and launched a fresh 10-day standstill period.

“As you’re aware you have received a message relating to investment for Serco Regional Services Ltd were incorrectly identified as the written winning legal entity under a number of lots,” a message to providers, seen by FE Week, said.

“The winning organisation for those lots is Serco Limited. Financial due diligence was applied.”

Providers who lost out are however perplexed at how such a mistake could be made, considering the ESFA’s bidding system, Bravo, only allows a company to bid as the legal entity it is registered as.

One provider that wished to remain anonymous told FE Week the situation is “unprecedented” and questioned how the ESFA could “legally commit to awarding contracts when they have acknowledged that an error has been made, especially when it involves something so critically fundamental as a company’s name”.

Another provider who lost out to Serco and also wished to remain anonymous told FE Week they are preparing to launch a legal challenge.

“We will be submitting a series of final pre-action disclosure requests to the ESFA in order to clarify the discrepancy between the organisation that was assessed at the pre-qualification questionnaires stage of the ESF procurement and the organisation that has received the latest award decision notification,” the chief executive of the company told FE Week.

“We will issue proceedings if there is any inconsistency between the entities (Serco Limited and Serco Regional Services Limited) submitting information throughout the procurement process as this would constitute an illegal direct award.”

The provider continued: “We will be making pre-action disclosure requests from the ESFA to provide evidence that there has been no misrepresentation on the part of the bidding entities and that the same entity has been assessed by the ESFA throughout the entire procurement process.

“Failure on the ESFA’s part to provide substantive evidence and reassurance to these requests leaves us with no alternative but to challenge the award in court.”

Documents about the anticipated ESF winners, seen by FE Week, shows that Serco won at least £37 million of European Social Fund cash in the tender.

Failure on the ESFA’s part leaves us with no alternative but to challenge the award in court

The training provider made losses of £29.5 million in 2017, according to its latest accounts, and is rated “requires improvement” by Ofsted – although this is just for its apprenticeships provision.

Serco Limited has maintained that it bid as itself, and not Serco Regional Services Limited, and is not sure how the alleged admin error was made.

The ESFA would not comment on the situation when approached by FE Week, as it is still considered a live tender.

The ESF contracts are supposed to come into force from April 1.

One person close to the debacle said the provider challenging the ESFA might have a case following the precedent set by the Eurotunnel saga.

In December, the Department for Transport contracted three suppliers to provide additional freight capacity on ferries for lorries. But Eurotunnel complained the contracts were handed out in a “secretive” way.

It resulted in the government agreeing to pay £33 million to the company to settle a lawsuit over the botched tender.

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

All level six and seven apprenticeships, including those with integrated degrees, should be removed from the scope of levy funding to relieve mounting pressure on the budget, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers has said.

The radical proposal comes just weeks after the National Audit Office warned there is a “clear risk” the apprenticeship programme is not financially sustainable after finding levy payers are “developing and choosing more expensive standards at higher levels than was expected”.

After the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education revealed modelling that the apprenticeships budget for England could be overspent by £0.5 billion this year, rising to £1.5 billion during 2021/22, the NAO suggested the government should think about reducing the level of public funding for certain types of apprenticeship.

The AELP estimates that up to £573 million has been committed to level 6 and 7 apprenticeship starts since August 2016, and the association’s chief executive Mark Dawe has warned: “Unless the government decides it wants to levy more money from employers, the apprenticeship budget will soon be exhausted and therefore a new way of funding the highest level apprenticeships has to be found.”

The association, which represents over 900 training providers, recommends level 6 and 7 apprenticeships, which are equivalent to a bachelor’s and master’s degree respectively, should instead be funded by employers, a student loan to the apprentice, and any government grant which is available to full-time HE students.

But Robert Halfon, the chair of the Commons education select committee and a degree apprenticeships champion, has warned doing this would be a “retrograde step”.

“Degree apprenticeships help build the prestige of apprenticeships, meet our high skills deficit and provide a ladder of opportunity for the disadvantaged to do higher apprenticeships, without taking on the burden of a huge student loan,” he said.

“Students earn while they earn, have not debt and have a good skilled job at the end. Degree apprenticeships should be a strategic priority of the government, with the aim of getting 50 per cent of students having the chance to complete them.

“Far from discouraging degree apprenticeships, we should be rocket boosting them.”

The AELP argued degree apprenticeships will not be diminished by the proposed change, as there were 135,000 employer-funded degree apprenticeships in existence before the levy system was introduced.

The recommendation is part of a submission paper to the Department for Education, titled ‘A Sustainable Future Apprenticeship Funding Model’.

The submission suggests the government should also consider reducing or removing the payroll threshold companies have to pass before they pay the levy and increasing the amount companies that pay towards it.

Companies currently have to cross a threshold of spending £3 million on payroll, before they have to pay the levy, and those that do pay 0.5 per cent of their payroll bill towards it.

The recommendations come ahead of a Public Accounts Committee hearing on the apprenticeships system with government officials in the House of Commons on Monday.

It comes at a time of increasing pressure for degree apprenticeships, after skills minister Anne Milton said in December the government “needs to look at whether we continue to fund apprenticeships for people who are already in work, people doing second degrees”.

Milton said the apprenticeship system should be about progressing people with level two qualifications onto level three and four apprenticeships.

The minister has also said, in reference to the rise in degree apprenticeship starts,  that fears of a “middle-class grab” on apprenticeships are valid. 

Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman added her voice when she said that month the inspectorate was concerned about levy funds being spent on higher level apprenticeships at the expense of young people on lower levels.

The Department for Education is currently researching what’s behind the drop in level two apprenticeships, as the latest statistics show numbers have fallen by more than a third in the space of a year.

To address these concerns, the AELP has previously called on the government to fully-fund level 2 and 3 apprenticeships and ring-fence at least £1 billion every year to small-to-medium enterprises which do not pay the levy, to spend on apprenticeships.

Last month, FE Week revealed that the non-levy funding for providers to train apprentices from small businesses had already started to run dry and some were having to turn apprentices away, but it would appear the government has no cash left in the system to ease the situation.

Dawe said the government “seems to have lost sight of the importance of SMEs offering apprenticeships when they have been the bedrock of the programme over the last two decades”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said:  “The apprenticeship programme is designed to be employer-led, so that business can choose the type and level of training that they require to meet their skills needs.

“Higher-level apprenticeships give employers the opportunity to strengthen and expand their training in a way they may not have done previously.

“However, we are aware of the NAO’s report and we will look carefully at this ahead of the Spending Review.”

The government’s consultation on plans to withdraw funding for thousands of applied general qualifications including BTECs is not manipulation of the market to ensure T-levels are a success, the skills minister has insisted.

Speaking to FE Week, Anne Milton said: “There is no manipulation whatsoever. If somebody is providing or teaching qualifications that are of high quality, have a clear purpose, have good progression and are necessary, and they feel they need to sit alongside T-levels, A-levels and apprenticeships then they should have nothing to fear.”

She stressed that this is an “open consultation” and the Department for Education has “not pre-judged any of the qualifications available”.

There is no manipulation whatsoever

Earlier today the department launched the first part of a two-stage consultation to decide the futures of over 12,000 vocational qualifications at level 3 and below.

The review includes applied generals, tech levels and technical certificates, which are vocational alternatives to A-levels. While these cover a wide range of courses, BTECs, awarded by Pearson, make up the large majority of them.

The government claims many of these qualifications, of which there are more than 12,000, are of “poor quality” and their existence leaves young people and employers “confused”.

Open for 12 weeks, the government is firstly consulting on “only providing public funding for qualifications that meet key criteria on quality, purpose, necessity and progression” and “not providing public funding for qualifications for 16 to 19 year olds that overlap with T-levels or A-levels”.

Sector leaders have expressed concern to FE Week that the review appears to be a way of pushing out BTECs, qualifications which over 200,000 students take every year and have survived multiple sector reforms since the 1980s, to ensure parents and young people opt for T-levels to make them a success.

The consultation document even has a section entitled: “Making T-levels and A-levels the options of choice for students undertaking level 3 classroom-based education.”

When quizzed on whether the review was a way of manipulating the qualifications market, Milton said: “This [consultation] is not a way of doing anything. We have A-levels and T-levels which are classroom-based qualifications and we have got apprenticeships that are work-based. So what we need to do is look, this review is about looking at what else we need, what other qualifications we need to sit alongside those.

This review is about looking at what else we need, what other qualifications we need to sit alongside those.

“Bearing in mind we want qualifications to be high-quality, have a clear purpose, good progression and to be necessary, the first stage [of this consultation] is about looking what principles we should adopt.

“Nobody should second guess anything we do because it is an entirely open consultation. Qualifications should serve a student well, so if you are a student you should have a qualification that gives you real currency in the work place or further study.”

Asked if a BTEC has its funding withdrawn and a student can no longer do that qualification, but there is no appropriate T-level industry placement or apprenticeship in their area, what options there would be for that student at age 16, Milton said: “That is precisely why we’re doing the consultation.

“Exactly the points you have raised we want to hear all those comments from everyone in the sector.”

The minister also pointed out there is a “whole suite of qualifications” at level 3 and below for people who have learning difficulties and disabilities, “so we are very aware we need qualifications that cater for everybody’s needs” but added “we do need a more simplified system”.

Milton said the rollout of T-levels, which will start in 2020, is “rightly quite slow” and the DfE “would not switch off qualifications if there weren’t T-levels available”.

The embattled Hadlow Group has been bolstered by the appointment of two new interim chairs for its colleges’ boards: an ex-chief executive of the Association of Colleges and a mergers and acquisitions expert.

Martin Doel, who will chair West Kent and Ashford College’s board, and Andrew Baird, who will chair Hadlow College’s board, are the latest appointments to the group since the start of an FE Commissioner investigation into financial irregularities at the group over a month ago.

Baird is on the FE Commissioner’s National Leaders of Governance scheme, appointed last October and the Department for Education pays £300 per day for supporting colleges identified as needing extra help.

Doel is not a member of the NLG, but FE Week understands he was asked to assist and will also be remunerated.

Since leaving the chief executive role at the Association of Colleges in 2016 after spending eight years at the helm, Doel has become a Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL) professor of leadership in FE at University College London.

He’s also a governor of Cambridge Regional College, a trustee of education charity CVQO, the Challenge Network and Royal Society for Blind Children, as well as an independent member of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s audit and risk committee.

Doel, who had a multitude of leadership roles in the Royal Air Force before joining the AoC, said: “Having visited the College and spoken with the interim principal, staff and stakeholders, it is clear that West Kent and Ashford College faces a range of financial and related problems.

“However, these conversations have also demonstrated to me how talented and dedicated the staff are and how highly regarded the service that they provide is to students, communities and employers in Kent. I look forward to doing all I can as interim chair to ensure that this vital work continues in a sustainable way.”

Baird has been a governor at Oakwood School in Surrey since 2013 and was elected permanent chair of governors at East Surrey College last July, for the period September 1, 2018 to August 21 2020.

Between December 2018 and February 2019, in his capacity as a member of the NLG scheme, he also acted as interim chair at financially struggling West London College.

According to Baird and Partners website: “Andrew is the founder of Baird Partners, working in Mergers and Acquisitions since 1988 when he ended his career in International Banking, having filled roles  in London, Geneva, Paris, Jersey (CI) and Amsterdam.

“In the last 30 years he has concluded over 80 transactions in a number of sectors, including Banking, IT, Plastics, Facilities Management, Steel, Electronics and Industrial Services. Has also served on the boards of several IT and Plastics businesses and  is currently Chair of a FinTec startup.”

“From my time at the college so far I’ve been really pleased to see the work being done by the staff to ensure the learners are unaffected by the current troubles the college faces,” Baird said.

“I’m pleased to be appointed as the interim chair whilst we explore options for the future of Hadlow College.”

FE Week reported earlier this month how the boards at the Hadlow Group went into meltdown as serious governance failings and financial inexperience were put in the spotlight.

Theresa Bruton, the chair of both Hadlow College’s and West Kent and Ashford College’s boards, resigned last week.

She was filling the latter role on an interim basis following the departure in February of Paul Dubrow, who claimed he and the board had been “misled and lied to”.

The Hadlow Group has seen a number of other departures since the FE Commissioner began an investigation into the group: five other governors aside from Bruton and Dubrow, including several members of the finance committee, as well as group principal Paul Hannan and the group deputy principal Mark Lumsdon-Taylor.

The FE Commissioner was sent to visit the group following a request for over £20 million in restructuring funds as part of plans to merge.

With cash running out, the group has in recent weeks been in receipt of government bailouts.

The commissioner’s team, the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and Hadlow’s own board are all currently running their own separate investigations into Hannan and Lumsdon-Taylor.

Pictured left to right: Martin Doel and Andrew Baird.

Up to 300 jobs are on the line at England’s largest college group, after it announced plans to close its two private training providers.

Staff at Intraining and Rathbone Training, which are part of NCG, are being consulted on the redundancies.

The providers currently train 4,500 learners between them, of which two-thirds are apprentices. Some could be forced to find alternative providers if the centres do end up shutting.

Last year, FE Week reported that staff numbers were being cut by up to a fifth, from 500 to around 400, at the providers in an effort to save £3 million. Intraining had already shed more than a third of its 1,200-person workforce back in 2015.

But the staff-cutting efforts do not appear to have been enough to save the providers.

“We have today opened consultation with Intraining and Rathbone staff on some fundamental changes to the way in which we operate in England, including the closure of our network of training centres and a radical refocussing of our apprenticeship proposition,” a spokesperson for NCG said.

“Intraining and Rathbone accounted for less than 20 per cent of group revenue in 2017/18. The changes we are proposing will strengthen NCG’s already robust position, supporting our ambition to invest in teaching, learning and facilities.

“The unfortunate effect of these proposals would be substantial redundancies in Intraining and Rathbone. We will confirm our future plans once the consultation has concluded.”

The spokesperson confirmed the providers currently employs over 400 people across 19 centres, and 300 jobs were now at risk.

He said that moving forward, it will “put the interests of learners first and support them to finish their programmes wherever possible”.

“If we proceed as currently proposed following consultation, we will in future operate a single, smaller, digitally-enabled business focussed on delivery of high-quality apprenticeships for the tech, management and professional occupations,” the spokesperson added.

NCG, which is chaired by former Education and Skills Funding Agency chief executive Peter Lauener, has ran into trouble in recent years.

Achievement rates across the group fell way below the national average in 2016/17, staff at its colleges in London went on strike in a row over pay last year, and a free school that the group sponsored, the Discovery School, was forced to close down by the government.

All this happened before Ofsted downgraded the group from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’, which triggered intervention from the FE Commissioner.

Earlier this month NCG told FE Week it expects the commissioner’s team to carry out a “diagnostic visit” as a result of the grade three, and while he has “not yet visited”, the group expects this to happen “before the end of the academic year”.

As well as FE Commissioner intervention, it is expected that NCG will be dropped from the government’s final bidding round for Institutes of Technology as a result of its grade three Ofsted rating.

Following the turbulent year, NCG’s principal Joe Docherty decided it was time for him to resign in October.

As revealed by FE Week earlier this month, the college group has paused recruitment for a new chief executive until the Spring, after its initial hunt proved fruitless. Instead, they will focus efforts on “improving standards” as it awaits a follow-up visit from Ofsted following the grade three rating in June.

NCG comprises Newcastle College, Newcastle Sixth Form College, Lewisham College, Southwark College, Carlisle College, Kidderminster College, West Lancashire College, Rathbone Training and InTraining.

The future of thousands of applied general qualifications including BTECs hangs in the balance as the government launches its first consultation on plans to withdraw their funding.

The Department for Education has been reviewing vocational qualifications at level 3 and below since announcing plans to introduce new “high-quality” T-levels.

The review includes applied generals, tech levels and technical certificates, which are vocational alternatives to A-levels. While these cover a wide range of courses, BTECs, awarded by Pearson, are the most popular.

The key issue will be to ensure the government is not artificially trying to close down market choice

The government claims many of these qualifications, of which there are more than 12,000, are of “poor quality” and their existence leaves young people and employers “confused”.

Today, at 09.30am, the DfE will launch the first part of a two-stage consultation to decide their futures.

Open for 12 weeks, the government is firstly consulting on “only providing public funding for qualifications that meet key criteria on quality, purpose, necessity and progression” and “not providing public funding for qualifications for 16 to 19 year olds that overlap with T-levels or A-levels”.

A second consultation will follow later this year setting out the proposed criteria that will be used to determine whether a qualification continues to receive public funding.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said the “really significant” element of the consultation is the “review of applied general qualifications, which include the very popular and well-understood BTECs and CTECs (Cambridge Technical Extended Certificate)”.

“And this is not a minority pursuit,” he explained. “More than 200,000 16 to 18 year olds study these courses every year, often studying a combination of A-levels and applied generals on a blended timetable.

“The government may see the introduction of T-levels as the best way to address the skills gap, about which it is, quite rightly, concerned. But this should not be at the expense of applied generals.”

Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, told FE Week the “devil will be in the detail”.

“The key issue will be to ensure the government is not artificially trying to close down market choice for learners and employers; or to manipulate the existing level 3 technical qualifications, like applied generals, in order to make the T-levels effectively the only qualification learners and employers can choose from in future,” he said.

“Governments have a very poor history of second guessing the needs of diverse learner communities and the labour market, so we should rightly proceed with caution over the weeks and months ahead.”

Last year, exams regulator Ofqual ordered exam boards to strengthen their controls on certain types of applied general qualifications, after evidence was uncovered of grade inflation on old-style BTECs.

The regulator has also warned of “confusion” between legacy BTECs – which don’t feature any external assessment – and new versions of the qualifications. Sally Collier, the chief regulator, told MPs last week that outcomes for reformed BTECs would be under scrutiny.

We can improve the quality of the options out there

Education secretary Damian Hinds (pictured) said today: “We can’t legislate for parity of esteem between academic and technical routes post-16. But we can improve the quality of the options out there and by raising quality, more students and parents will trust these routes.”

The response to the first consultation will be published alongside the launch the second consultation later in the year.

OCR, which offers many applied generals, welcomed the consultation.

“We are confident that it will be open and wide ranging, taking full account of widespread views, and will ensure that young people continue to have access to high quality qualifications which will, in many cases, include Applied General Qualifications,” a spokesperson for the exam board said.

Catherine Sezen, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, said it is “crucial that there are study programmes and qualifications which meet the needs of all students as well as those of business and the economy” and this review “kick starts this important conversation”.

T-levels, which will attempt to streamline the 13,000 or so technical qualifications on offer into 15 routes to present a clearer choice between A-levels and T-levels, will be rolled out from 2020.

The tender process for the second wave of T-levels has been launched by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education.

From today, awarding organisations can bid for an “exclusive license” to develop and deliver the next seven T-levels, which will be taught from September 2021.

They will be split across six separate contracts worth over £30 million, with the bidding lots being:

.               LOT 1 Construction: Building Services Engineering and Construction: Onsite Construction (£5.83 million)

.              LOT 2 Digital: Digital Business Services (£4.78 million)

.              LOT 3 Digital: Digital Support Services (£4.65 million)

.              LOT 4 Health & Science: Health (£5.78 million)

.              LOT 5 Health & Science: Healthcare Science (£5 million)

.              LOT 6 Health & Science: Science (£4.87 million)

The bidding window is open until May 10.

The awarding organisations that will develop, deliver and award the first three T-levels from 2020 were announced in February.

NCFE has been awarded a contract to deliver the education and childcare pathway, and Pearson has been awarded contracts to deliver T-levels in design, surveying and planning as well digital production, design and development.

Sir Gerry Berragan, chief executive of the institute, said: “The launch of this second invitation to tender is an exciting milestone and shows that the Institute is well on track for the delivery of T-levels.

“These seven new pathways – split across six separate contracts – will provide high quality, stretching and engaging new qualifications for young people.

“We’ve involved employers and businesses of varying sizes throughout this process, ensuring that T-levels will be fit for purpose and relevant to the world of work.”

He added: “We were very happy with the level of interest for the first set of contracts and have worked hard to prepare awarding organisations for this second wave, through in-depth pre-market engagement. We encourage awarding organisations of all sizes to be part of this exciting new procurement process.”

The full suite of procurement documents can be found through the Institute’s online procurement platform Proactis, procontract.due-north.com/Login.