Ten trade unions are involved in a dispute with a cash-strapped college that trains “thousands” of their members each year, after several unionists were suspended or were threatened with redundancy.

Their leaders have written to Ruskin College after the University and College Union said branch officer and lecturer Lee Humber was sacked on 12 July for circulating information about a motion of no confidence in principal Paul Di Felice, which passed days before Humber was suspended.

The vote of no confidence was brought due to alleged threats of redundancy hanging over the heads of tutors whose courses “do not recruit sufficient students”, and because of what the union called Di Felice’s continued “mismanagement and general incompetence”.

Three other union representatives, who are staff members at the college, have been placed under disciplinary investigation and two union members have been placed at risk of redundancy, according to the UCU.

In the letter, leaders of ten unions speak of their “profound concerns about the way Ruskin College management appears to be victimising UCU trade union reps”.

Ruskin College states on its website that it “continues to have close ties with the Trade Unions, a relationship that has seen thousands of Trade Unionists educated at the college each year and many of Ruskin’s alumni go on to take key positions on trade unions bodies”.

It has refuted allegations that it has victimised union representatives, and said its ongoing disciplinary investigations into staff are not related to any of their trade union activity.

Ruskin’s managers “continue to pursue positive dialogue with the UCU to bring a swift resolution” to the dispute, the spokesperson continued.

But they said it would be “inappropriate and unfair” to make any further comment on this matter while investigations are ongoing.

It has been claimed the college wants to get rid of four posts, which the UCU believes will lead to the withdrawal of all the higher education courses that have traditionally been run by the college for trade unionists.

“We are concerned this course of action is not only wrong in itself, but also risks undermining the founding principles of the institution,” the letter reads.

The college spokesperson said the redundancies that have been announced will only affect those teaching on courses with poor recruitment and retention and have nothing to do with trade union activity by the involved staff members.

Ruskin has only recently climbed out of financial difficulty, having had to approve a recovery plan in November 2017 to address “severe solvency issues faced and the significant historic operating deficits incurred by the College over many years,” its 2017/18 accounts say.

It achieved a surplus of £221,000 that year, after generating a deficit of over half a million pounds in 2016/17.

It has faced further problems during 2018, when it was subject to an FE Commissioner report which criticised Ruskin College’s past failure to address the deficits.

Commissioner Richard Atkins also commented on the low student numbers and the under-utilised areas of the college.

However, while claiming they are trying to address areas with low student numbers, the UCU’s acting general secretary Paul Cottrell said staff have made it clear they have “no faith in the direction the college’s management is heading”.

He accused Ruskin of “lurching” from educating and nurturing trade unionists to sacking them.

A meeting between the UCU and the college has been scheduled for Friday, and the union has warned that unless managers step back, it will consider calling for unions to boycott the college.

The trade union leaders which signed the letter are:

• Ian Lawrence (Chair of TUCG, and General Secretary, NAPO)
• Ronnie Draper (General Secretary, BFAWU)
• Matt Wrack (General Secretary, FBU)
• Michelle Stanistreet (General Secretary, NUJ)
• Kevin Courtney (General Secretary, NEU)
• Mark Serwotka (General Secretary, PCS)
• Steve Gillan (General Secretary, POA)
• Mick Cash (General Secretary, RMT)
• Dr. Jo Grady (General Secretary, UCU)
• Bob Monks (General Secretary, URTU)

The new chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is top skills civil servant Jennifer Coupland.

She is currently the director of professional and technical education in the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and was previously acting chief executive of the Standards Testing Agency.

Prior to that Coupland spent three years as the deputy director of the Apprenticeships Unit where she was responsible for apprenticeship reform including creating new apprenticeship trailblazers, degree apprenticeships and the public sector apprenticeship duty.

She will replace current chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan, who was appointed to the post in 2017 and completes his two year contract in November 2019.

“I am really excited about taking on this new role later in the year,” Coupland said.

“For the past two years I have been working closely with Sir Gerry and seeing at first-hand the great work the Institute is doing, and the great people that work there.

“I am looking forward to leading the Institute into the future of technical education – delivering the first wave of T-levels; working closely with employers to develop apprenticeships that deliver for our learners and our economy; and making England the standard for high-quality technical education.”

Skills minister Anne Milton said Coupland has shown “outstanding leadership on the vital work to deliver the new T-levels” and “was also closely involved previously in our reform programme for apprenticeships”.

“I have no doubt that she has exactly the right skills and knowledge we need to lead the Institute through its next phases of its development,” she added.

“I wish her every success in her new role.”

Antony Jenkins, chair of the institute, said Coupland has a “huge wealth of knowledge and experience in further education and, in particular, apprenticeships that will be integral to further developing the work of the Institute”.

“She will already be a familiar face to many of the people in the Institute and I am sure they, like me, are looking forward to working with her more closely,” he added.

“I should also like to thank Sir Gerry for his excellent work as chief executive. He has made a huge contribution to the work of the Institute.”

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said his organisation was “delighted” with the appointment of Coupland, and is “really excited to be working with her”.

“We hope that this will be the dawn of a new era at the Institute which will combine practical common sense and good policy implementation,” he added.

 

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has pushed back its £40 per learner charge for apprenticeship quality assurance to November and committed to reviewing the arrangement in the longer-term.

It follows sector criticism of the “unfair” charge, which outraged assessment organisations after they were originally told it would be implemented from September.

They had received no formal communication and only heard about it when the institute’s chief operating officer Robert Nitsch mentioned it during his speech at the Association of Employment and Learning Provider’s conference in June.

Time is needed over the summer to look at the whole future of external quality assurance

After raising concerns in a letter to the institute’s chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan earlier this month, the boss of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, Tom Bewick, has today received a response.

“We appreciate that end-point assessment organisations (EPAO) will need time to adapt to the introduction of this charge and in some cases to discuss it with employers,” Berragan’s letter, seen by FE Week, said.

“As such, we have reviewed our roll-out plan and determined that we will now implement charging from 1 November 2019; we will also provide three-months’ notice of any changes in the future.

“We will be taking the opportunity of the time this now gives us to strengthen our communications with external quality assurance (EQA) organisations and also employers; we will be writing to all EPAOs in the next few days.”

A spokesperson for the institute confirmed to FE Week that despite opposition from FAB and AELP, the charge will apply retrospectively to apprentices already on programme, not just new starters.

Berragan’s letter said in the “longer-term”, funding arrangements will be “considered within our on-going discussions with Ofqual and Office for Students regarding opportunities for simplifying and optimising EQA”.

And working with the ESFA, the institute will “also continue to assess the suitability of all aspects of the charging arrangements within the apprenticeship system”.

Bewick wants EQA of apprenticeships to be treated as a “national infrastructure cost”.

He told FE Week that end-point assessment organisations will be “delighted that the institute has been pushed back into a re-think”.

“As Sir Gerry’s letter acknowledges, time is needed over the summer to look at the whole future of external quality assurance, and the federation will keep pushing for a more streamlined version of EQA linked to a mandatory and single compliance framework,” he said.

“We believe discussions need to continue between the institute and Ofqual as they look to combine remits and resources into something that does not result in a fragmented market for something as fundamental as securing public confidence in England’s reformed apprenticeship system.”

Approved EQA bodies monitor end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs), to ensure the process is “fair, consistent and robust”.

The EQAs are allowed to apply a charge as long as it is on a “cost-recovery basis”. FE Week revealed the “ridiculous variability” in these charges in February, which were criticised by sector leaders for ranging from a free service to £179 per apprentice.

The IfATE has offered this service for free to date, but has always said it would eventually start applying a charge.

Many across the FE sector have long called for Ofqual to be the sole provider of EQA. The exams regulator currently does EQA for 65 apprenticeship standards and offers the service for free.

The whole EQA and EPA system will be a big area to tackle for new IfATE boss Jennifer Coupland, who will become its chief executive in November when Berragan completes his two-year tenure.

A college involved in a bitter row over pay is facing weeks of staff walkouts when the new academic year starts – with plans for a mammoth 15 days of strike action during September and October.

Members of the University and Colleges Union are angry about new contracts being offered by Nottingham College, which it claims would leave over 80 staff more than £1,000 a year worse off.

The union said its members were furious at the college’s “deplorable tactic” of threatening to dismiss staff who refuse to sign up to them.

It said staff had made their frustrations clear at a meeting last week where they unanimously backed the extensive walkouts.  

The strikes will start with a one day walkout on Wednesday 11 September, escalating to strikes of two, three, four and five days in subsequent weeks.

Staff at the college walked out for a one-day strike on 1 July.

UCU said the proposed contracts would also see all staff lose up to eight days’ holiday, cuts to sick pay, and the removal of an agreement designed to protect staff against work overload.

A spokesperson added that staff at the college have not received a pay rise since 2010.

UCU head of further education, Andrew Harden, said: “UCU members at Nottingham College are furious at the way they are being treated. Threatening dismissal in order to strong-arm staff into signing a new contract is a deplorable tactic that we haven’t seen in further education for many years, and one which our members will resist with full force.

“The college is completely out of step with what is happening elsewhere in the sector, where we have been working positively with good employers to improve conditions for staff.

“In announcing 15 days of action, staff at the college are sending a clear message that they will not be cowed by their employer. If the college wants to avoid serious disruption it needs to start negotiating with us in earnest.”

A Nottingham College spokesperson said: “We are saddened that our UCU colleagues have voted to pursue further and extensive strike action. Everybody in the college cares passionately about providing our students with the best possible education and we are continuing to talk to UCU in an attempt to reach a collective agreement and avoid any further strike action.

“While we respect the rights of our staff to take industrial action our priority will be to ensure we do everything we can to ensure students’ studies, health, safety and welfare are not affected.

“The college will remain open as usual throughout any industrial action.”

The full strike dates are:

Week 1: 11 September

Week 2: 19 and 20 September

Week 3: 23, 24 and 25 September

Week 4: 30 September, 1, 3, and 4 October

Week 5: 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 October

With the government about to reopen the window in which sixth-form colleges can academise, Jess Staufenberg asks how the process has worked out for the first principal who did so.

Matthew Grant, the principal of Priestley College in Warrington, was awoken at 7am by two texts: “Let’s do it”, was the gist of the messages sent by a couple of secondary headteachers.

It was 2016, and the day after the government announced that sixth-form colleges could academise and form a trust.

Priestley College lost little time in becoming the first in the country to become a converter academy, though it has kept its full name.

Grant helped set up the Challenge Academy Trust which includes Priestley, two primary and five secondary schools, with Grant as chief executive.

The aim was to lift the attainment of pupils and to secure the financial viability of the institutions in the trust. Has it worked?

The question comes at a pertinent time for sixth-form colleges (SFCs), because the government is set to re-open the window in which they may academise.

Converting and therefore not having to pay VAT has been possible for nearly all SFCs for four years now, but the window of opportunity closed in March, when the £726 million restructuring fund designed to help colleges implement area review changes ended.

Since then, the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) has campaigned for an end to the “arbitrary” deadline and, as FE Week reported last month, their wish looks likely to be granted.

So, will more sixth-form colleges follow Priestley College’s example?

Many already have, according to SFCA: up until February this year, 23 SFCs had academised, of which three are in single academy trusts, and five have joined existing multi-academy trusts; the other 15 have helped set up academy trusts.

A further 54 SFCs remain private corporations – at least for now.

The saving on VAT is usually swallowed up in the running costs of the college

Grant believes that being instrumental in setting up the academy trust was key to the success of not just the college, but also the trust.

“Where I’ve heard there might be issues with academising is where a sixth-form college has joined an existing academy trust and all the trustees are already in post, all the policies are there, and there’s no opportunity to influence the culture or the way it operates.

“We’ve ensured our trustees didn’t come mainly from one organisation within the trust.”

Although there are 55 sponsors of academy trusts from the “FE sector” in England, according to government data (some of which are sixth-form colleges), Priestley College is not one of them.

Making the Challenge Academy Trust sponsor-led would have given Priestley College sole responsibility for improving the other schools; instead, a central team drawn from all eight institutions in the trust is collectively responsible for driving improvement.

“If we were the ones sponsoring the trust, there would be a very limited pool of people with expertise outside 16-19,” explains Grant.

“I’m not putting my teachers in secondary schools telling them how to do key stage 4! If you’re the sponsor, you’ve then got to buy in people to help those schools, like external consultants. But they can walk away.”

Bill Watkin, SFCA chief executive, says that colleges that decide to become sponsors often face a “moral conundrum” about whether to second their subject experts to failing schools or “protect the mothership” by ensuring their own students still have access to the best experts.

“If a college does engage in outreach work, it needs to make sure there is sufficient personnel so you don’t take your eye off the ball at home.”

By not being the trust sponsor, it seems to me that Priestley College has the right amount of influence within the trust without too much responsibility.

The college has worked in equal partnership with all schools in the trust and has not had to buy in consultants, Grant points out.

That has left the formerly incorporated college to advise on what it knows best: financial acumen.

Under Grant’s guidance, all the schools moved to new payroll providers, a new insurance company, and appointed new internal auditors.

A number of schools have new contracts with a catering provider and new photocopier contracts.

Surely this is the stuff of academies that minister Lord Agnew’s dreams of.

“With some of the existing contracts I was thinking, ‘How did you manage to sign this?’,” says Grant.

On top of that, the college is saving about £250,000 a year by not having to pay VAT.

Grant is clear the VAT is peanuts in comparison to the real financial boost, which comes from increased student numbers. Again, Watkin echoes him.

“The saving on VAT is usually swallowed up in the running costs of the college anyway. When it gets its VAT money back, it often just means it can now afford to repair its buildings.”

The real win for Priestley College, which has almost 2,000 learners, is that it has a 7 per cent increase in student applications for next year.

Recruitment problems in certain subjects, such as modern foreign languages, can also be tackled early on: the two primary schools have a focus on languages that will secure a “supply chain” of learners in later years, says Grant. 

Meanwhile, two more primary schools are looking to join the trust.

The drive for efficiency across the trust has also had a clear impact: one of its secondaries, Bridgewater High School, is closing its sixth-form this year, meaning that 30 students will be looking for post-16 places in Priestley College or elsewhere.

This year about one-third of post-16 learners across Warrington moved to the college, and about half of students from the trust’s five secondary schools did so.

“That’s more than we used to get,” notes Grant.

The beneficial impact appears to be mutual. SATs results across the primaries, which have not yet been released, have improved, says Grant.

With its large staff body, Priestley College has also contributed significant expertise to the trust’s English, maths and science hubs.

Watkin is clear that sixth-form colleges are “often seen as a major asset to a trust, because although they sit in the FE sector, they teach a schools curriculum, including A-levels.”

Their average size of 2,000 learners allows sixth-form colleges to boast of a broad A-level offer, another bonus for the trust’s image.

There’s so much to gain from forming a trust

Priestley College has been rewarded for its efforts with a grade 2 at its latest Ofsted inspection in May.

But Grant says that conversion hasn’t all been plain sailing.

The main issue has been administrative, with the Education and Skills Funding Agency demanding “a lot more” information returns from the college.

A new unique reference number also led to delays to adult learner loans and a mix-up with progress data.

But the greatest frustration is that not everyone understands what an academy converter sixth-form college is, says Grant.

He describes the recent Ofsted visit: “The inspector said, ‘The ESFA and the FE commissioner will be in touch’. I said, ‘You mean the regional schools commissioner?’ A lot of exam boards, the ESFA and Ofsted – they’ve struggled to understand exactly what we are.”

But for him, it’s a minor drawback.

“There’s so much to gain from forming a trust, I don’t know personally why people wouldn’t.”

As the window to academise looms closer, Watkin reflects: “Sixth-form colleges won’t be thinking about academisation as a financial escape route. It’s about working more closely with local schools and exporting their strengths.”

A college at risk of insolvency after its income halved in seven years has been handed a financial health notice to improve by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College is one of two colleges to be handed such a notice today; the other, Warrington and Vale Royal College, was served the notice after having ‘inadequate’ financial health in 2017/18.

Both have now been referred to the FE Commissioner Richard Atkins for intervention.

The notice to Cheadle and Marple says “there is, or in the foreseeable future there is likely to be, a risk to the solvency or financial viability” of the institution, which generated a £3 million deficit in 2017/18.

A £7 million drop in income, which was blamed on a declining student intake and funding reductions, took the college from £15.6 million in 2010/11 to £8.3 million in 2017/18.

In order to make up for this shortfall, the college sold land to the Department for Education in 2017 for £6.3 million, to build two new free schools.

The area review for the college, based in Stockport, recommended it convert to an academy and join a multi-academy trust.

However, the college instead proposed it join a federation supported by Liverpool Hope University, a move that was endorsed by the ESFA.

The college’s latest accounts show there was an operating cash outflow of £3.6 million in 2017/18.

A grade three college, Cheadle and Marple received a share of a £1.8 million strategic improvement funding in March, as part of a scheme to help struggling colleges.

A college spokesperson said about the notice to improve that it was working with the ESFA to explore options for dealing with cash flow issues it expects to face “over the coming months”.

It said the issues had been “largely caused by a number of years of low demographics against a backdrop of funding cuts”.

Warrington and Vale Royal College also received a grade three at its last inspection, but was found to have made ‘reasonable’ or ‘significant progress’ in every area of an ensuing monitoring visit.

It won a contract in the Liverpool City Region AEB tender in May, but its 2017/18 accounts predicted it would fail to meet its bank loan covenants in 2018/19.

Following its creation in a merger between Warrington Collegiate and Mid Cheshire College, staff costs soared at the newly-formed institution by more than £6 million.

Principal Nichola Newton said the college has experienced “continued financial challenge”, and it has been working closely with the agency and the FE Commissioner throughout the last year to monitor the college’s financial health, something that will continue to happen going forward.

Both colleges have been set a series of conditions by the ESFA as a consequence of the notice to improve.

They must work with the agency and the FE Commissioner, who may intervene at either of them; must submit a draft financial recovery plan and monthly management accounts; and allow the agency to attend board meetings.