Signalling a change in approach to the previous government, Smith said Labour would consider retaining “other qualifications alongside T Levels and A Levels”.
The Tories had planned to cut a range of popular vocational courses that overlapped with T and A Levels in a bid to “streamline” students towards technical or academic qualifications that were “high quality and lead to good outcomes”.
This caused concern that popular courses in areas such as health, construction and electrical, travel and tourism and uniformed protective services would be lost.
But Smith said the government would “maintain” qualifications if the review “identifies the balance of learner and employer needs within a sector requires level 3 qualifications other than T Levels and A Levels”.
She added: “This may well be in areas that overlap with T Levels, which is a change from the approach taken by the last government.”
Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association which has led the Protect Student Choice campaign against defunding plans, welcomed Smith’s “commitment to ensuring that a broad range of level 3 qualifications will be available alongside A Level and T Levels in the future”.
He said his association now “expects” the 38 popular applied general qualifications that are part of the review – in subjects such as applied science, health and social care, IT and engineering – to “successfully navigate the review process”.
“We will continue to work constructively with ministers and officials to ensure that no gaps are left in provision,” Watkin added.
Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said Smith’s announcement on allowing overlapping courses was a “fundamental shift” in government policy.
He added: “The review will look at which high-quality qualifications are still necessary alongside T Levels and I’m confident we will end up with a good set of outcomes.”
Many in the education sector, and most vocally the Protect Student Choice Campaign supporters, had called for Labour to pause and review the wholesale culling of courses due to fears thousands of people would be left without a viable education option because T Levels did not suit them.
Appearing to recognise concerns about T Levels – that include low student satisfaction, complex assessments and major work experience requirements – Smith said the DfE needed to look at how delivery “can be improved” so more young people can enrol and succeed with a T Level.
But responding to concerns about only delaying cuts due to start last month, Smith said she was “not willing to go slow” on improving qualifications and did not want to “leave uncertainty hanging over the system”.
More courses ‘expected’ to survive
The previous Conservative government said it would only continue funding post-16 courses that did not overlap with A Levels or T Levels and were “necessary, have a clear purpose and lead to meaningful progression outcomes”.
In a guide published in April, the Department for Education said defunding overlapping courses would ensure T Levels were the “core of the new technical offer at level 3”.
Some non-A Level or T Level post-16 courses would be approved as either “technical” or “alternative academic qualifications” (AAQs) under a “new, rigorous process” run by the Department for Education, skills quango the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and exams regulator Ofqual.
AAQs at level 3 would only be approved for “strategically important” areas that T Levels did not cover such as STEM or NHS careers, with some cut down to smaller sizes – equivalent to one A Level rather than three.
Technical qualifications would only be allowed in areas not covered by T Levels and would link “much more closely with employers’ needs” by basing their content on occupational standards designed by IfATE and employers.
Chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies Rob Nitsch, formerly IfATE’s second-in-command, said: “I do think it’s right that the government takes a considered view of T Levels alongside other high-quality qualifications and that we take a considered view of how these are performing.
“It is also important that all stakeholders are actively engaged so that we get the best possible outcomes.”
David Smith took charge of England’s largest apprenticeship provider at a time of financial and quality trouble last year. Here, he discusses Lifetime Training’s recovery journey, gives his take on outdated funding rules and reveals how the new Labour government is driving companies like his to explore alternative training markets
Chief executive David Smith is billed on Lifetime Training’s website as a “dynamic and visionary leader”. And who could argue when you see his employment track record and the turnaround task he’s currently leading.
Smith took over the country’s biggest apprenticeship provider in July 2023 at a tumultuous time: Ofsted had downgraded the firm to ‘requires improvement’, it was subject to an Education and Skills Funding Agency audit and had just been sold by private equity owners to lenders.
Fast-forward one year, and Lifetime Training has been returned to a ‘good’ judgment from the inspectorate, cleared £100 million worth of debt and almost put its funding dispute to bed.
Smith’s appointment was not by chance. He was headhunted as an experienced troubleshooter amid a series of leadership changes at Lifetime.
The Birmingham-born accountant has worked at Deloitte, Mercury Communications – the telecoms challenger to BT in the 1980s and 90s – played a key role in Parcelforce Worldwide’s turnaround in the 2000s, and held leadership positions at Royal Mail, City Link and most recently estates management company Bellrock Group.
He was also managing director at the Post Office for six months in 2010, a position that led to him giving evidence to the current public inquiry into the Horizon IT debacle earlier this year – a story dramatised in ITV show Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Smith, himself the grandson of a postmistress, said his “sympathies and heart are with those affected” and while he supports where he can, there is “very little at a practical level I can get involved in”.
Almost all the companies Smith has worked in, which span around seven sectors, have been in the business services space. This experience involved working with apprentices from an employer’s perspective.
Aside from the top job at Lifetime Training being a challenging role for an ambitious person, it was these encounters that attracted him to the skills training arena.
Repositioning, stabilising, turning around
He said: “I got quite a strong desire to work with individuals and apprentices who had not had the best start in life, and watch them grow and develop in their careers. Having done that from the side of large employers, I could see things that work well and things that worked a bit less well and thought it would be good to work on the other side of the fence.
“But if you look at what I’ve done in all those businesses, it has largely been around repositioning, stabilising, turning around. When I got to Lifetime, it had been through some pretty tough times with Covid particularly. And so I came in when the new owners, Alcentra, came in to basically put it back on an even keel.”
With a mandate to secure long-term sustainability, Smith restructured Lifetime, including by reducing its 1,000-strong workforce by around 5 per cent.
Lifetime’s latest Ofsted report
Latest accounts for the training firm show after-tax losses increased from £9.2 million to £21.1 million during the 18 months to July 2023. The company had made a profit of £6.9 million in the year ended July 2020.
A major restructuring of the group’s balance sheet took place in July this year – the same month that Ofsted upgraded the provider to ‘good’ – which involved Alcentra effectively waiving £100 million of debt that was racked up under previous private equity owner Silverfleet Capital.
Smith said this action could be viewed as £100 million being invested into the skills sector and will place Lifetime in a much better position to bid for procurement contracts going forward.
The company’s next set of accounts is expected to show its current negative EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation) turning modestly positive, with Smith adding, “we’re back in a stable period financially”.
Training expansion
His reference to future bidding opportunities hints at an expansion from Lifetime’s focus on apprenticeship training.
Smith admits this is the next stage – steering the company towards more commercial training and other potential opportunities such as skills bootcamps and the adult education budget, not least because of Labour’s plans to turn the apprenticeship levy into a growth and skills levy which can fund non-apprenticeship training.
He said: “It’s great that we have secured ourselves both financially and in terms of quality, but what does the business now want to do in this bright new world of the Labour government and AI technology opportunities?
“We’re just now embarking on looking at other areas for the business. We will certainly be starting to build out our commercial offer this year. We’ll be looking with interest at how combined authority funding and the shorter course content are going to work. I would be surprised if, in a year’s time, we haven’t done something in that space as well.”
Lifetime Training has recruited more apprentices than any other provider in the country for several years, delivering to big-name employers including the NHS, KFC, McDonald’s, JD Wetherspoon, B&Q and David Lloyd, as well as the civil service.
Most apprenticeships for Lifetime are in hospitality and care, two of the areas most impacted by Covid. Starts at the provider hit 23,000 in 2018/19 but dived to 13,000 in 2020/21. Those numbers have recovered to almost 17,000 in the past two years – a level that Smith expects to maintain from now on.
He claimed that since the general election was announced, some employers had put apprenticeship opportunities on hold while they wait and see what Labour allows to be funded through its reformed levy.
While awaiting the details, Smith anticipates Lifetime will move into potential growth areas such as digital skills, wellness and wellbeing, general management training and the green agenda.
“If it’s funded through the levy then tick, we can do it that way, or if it’s funded through mayoral authorities, well, we can potentially do it that way. And if it’s not funded through either of those then we’ll look at a commercial solution,” he said.
“What is clear is the demand for those skills, regardless of which way it’s ultimately going to get funded. We can consider a very strong and positive future direction for that.”
‘Don’t just stop training your staff’
Smith urged Labour to be “careful about the speed of change” and ensure plans are properly thought through and consulted on – unlike the party’s “unintended” message in opposition which came across as allowing employers to spend up to 50 per cent of their levy on whatever training they liked.
He is “generally supportive” of Labour’s aspiration, but it “certainly has caused a schism in the marketplace” he said, adding, “we’re seeing much lower levels of apprentice take-up over the last six months across the sector so a clearer, slower, better-signposted journey is required that we can all jump on board with.
“What providers are having to do is not place any large bets in one direction. So, we’re building out more modular, more flexible curriculums.
“But our message to our customers is ‘nothing is going to change very much over the next 18 months. So please don’t just stop training your staff’.”
Smith is “encouraged” the government is putting more responsibility “under one banner” by closing the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education and ESFA, and launching Skills England.
But there are “fundamentals” he says the government and its new quango must address alongside levy reform: simplification of funding rules including those that are “past their sell-by date” like the block on non-EU enrolments, and the prerequisite for apprentices to pass functional skills.
He praises the government, however, for starting strong with last week’s announcement that it will remove the 12-month minimum duration rule for some (but currently unknown) apprenticeships in the future.
Policy ‘needs to catch up with the real world’
The most “fundamental thing” for Smith, however, is that the funding model for apprenticeships has not evolved since the Conservatives’ levy reforms.
“You get the same amount of money for a hospitality course now as you would have done in 2017, but the cost base hasn’t stayed the same, and the asks from the regulatory bodies and their various guises have increased,” he said.
“We do more around careers advice and safeguarding, for example, than we would have done in 2017, and so fundamentally, as a sector, there is a real financial stretch that has resulted in a number of competitors disappearing financially because they can’t make ends meet. And even at the size and scale that Lifetime is at, it’s very difficult, even with the economies of scale that we can bring to the model, to say that this is easily sustainable.”
Lifetime had to repay over £5 million to the ESFA recently following a historic audit into the provider’s additional learning support claims. Smith said this is another area where government should clarify the evidence that is required, adding that smaller providers would find it “difficult” to stay afloat if the same happened to them.
One of the CEO’s biggest concerns is the “opaqueness” of what qualifies as off-the-job training, as well as the rule’s application in certain sectors like hospitality where “they simply don’t have 20 per cent of their time free on the rota for them to be able to do off-the-job work”.
Smith also outlined employer and provider frustration with government rules that prevent non-EU citizens from doing apprenticeships.
He said: “Therules around who’s eligible and who’s not eligible to take the course were built in a world when we were inside the EU. We’re now sitting here with more of our workforce coming from outside the EU than we had before, but they’re not eligible.
“We have a big provision in the care sector with employers like HC-One, for example. Between 30 and 50 per cent of their staff nominations for an apprenticeship are ineligible for an apprenticeship.
“Those are the sorts of things where policy needs to catch up with the real world.”
A training provider had its national adult education budget (AEB) contract scrapped after falling foul of the Department for Education over poor apprenticeship achievement rates, its owner has claimed.
Officials also allegedly withheld AEB payments from the provider to recover a “significant” apprenticeship clawback.
Sapphire Logistics and Consultancy, which trades as Sapphire Education and Training, delivered publicly funded training in care work until officials terminated its contracts last week.
Owner Harpal Baines claimed the DfE ended Sapphire’s apprenticeship agreement “based on low [qualification achievement rates] data for 2022/23” and following an audit which demanded “significant clawback”.
DfE statistics show that between 2020-21 and 2023-24, Sapphire, based in Dudley, West Mids, logged 80 to 180 apprenticeship starts per year, but only had “low” completers which produced a null achievement rate.
The government currently uses its apprenticeship accountability framework to assess provider performance against a range of 10 measures, including achievement and retention rates.
The framework states that providers will be classed as “at risk” if they have an overall achievement rate under 50 per cent.
Level 2 and 3 care worker apprenticeship standards have high volumes of learners but consistently low achievement rates and high dropouts. Sapphire was awarded its apprenticeships contract at the height of the Covid pandemic in April 2020.
After the provider’s apprenticeship contract was terminated, Baines alleged the DfE served notice on the company’s adult education budget contract “purely on the basis of our apprenticeship contract issue”.
Sapphire was one of only 55 private training providers to secure a national AEB contract in the government’s controversial 2023 tender. It hadn’t been inspected by Ofsted at the time it won the £448,196 deal.
Its latest accounts show the company had 13 employees including directors.
The DfE confirmed it terminated the company’s contracts but declined to comment further based on the commercially sensitive nature of the issue. A spokesperson did not respond when asked to verify or deny Baines’ account.
Under clause 42.8 of the AEB contract, the Education and Skills Funding Agency states it can terminate a contract if it has ended another contract “on fault grounds where a similar right of termination exists in this contract”.
Baines said this clause was quoted to him by the DfE and complained it had “no regard” of Sapphire’s performance under the adult education contract, which he claimed had “positive outcomes for learners”.
He added the DfE asked for a “significant clawback” of apprenticeship funding, which it obtained by withholding payments for adult education budget courses Sapphire had delivered.
Baines would not say what the clawback specifically related to.
In August 2023 Ofsted graded Sapphire as ‘requires improvement’ in its first full inspection due to “fast-paced” teaching practices that focused on the completion of assessment tasks.
A monitoring report in April this year found ‘insufficient progress’ in training delivered to the company’s 70 apprentices.
This included concerns about governance, apprentices leaving early and teaching practices.
Baines said: “Our organisation was delivering solely to the care sector and was established during Covid lockdowns.
“During this period we delivered to frontline care staff during the most difficult circumstances, most of which completed their diplomas but did not complete full apprenticeships due to the varying challenges associated to them which is why the sector as a whole has low apprenticeship achievement rates.”
After FE Week spoke to the company earlier this week its website was taken down for maintenance.
A year has gone since we launched The FE Literacy Movement, and it has been monumental in securing interest and discussion surrounding literacy across our sector.
We have welcomed FE professionals from across the United Kingdom to join ‘the movement’.
We have been kept busy with not only our events, but with building on our existing relationships with The National Literacy Trust, The English Association, Lexonik and Citizen Literacy, to name a few.
We have been interviewed by The Post 16 Educator magazine and have featured on a number of podcasts.
So we are confident that we are raising the profile of literacy within our colleges and proud to share that we are moving at speed!
As co-convenors for the Learning and Skills Research Network, we are passionate about bringing research and practice from both FE and HE institutions across the UK. So we were delighted that teachers from England, Wales and Ireland were able to attend across our events.
In our Autumn term, we gave our ‘movers’ the space to discuss what they needed to know most about building literacy. The outcome was an oracy-focused training event in March, ‘Talk for Learning in Further Education’, hosted by us at Nottingham College and led by the National Literacy Trust. This was the first FE-specific oracy training of its kind.
The jewel in our crown was our end-of-academic-year inaugural conference ‘Literacy, English and the Subject Specialist Teacher’, held at the University of Derby in June. This main event was attended by over 80 practitioners from across the UK and from both FE and HE.
The conference blended evidence-based practice with our core mission: ‘to improve life chances for learners across the FE sector by harnessing literacy as a vehicle for social mobility’.
We are raising the profile of literacy and moving at speed
We were blown away by the powerful messages and research shared throughout the day, which was kicked by Get Further’s Dr Alice Eardley outlining the challenges and positives that the condition of funding requirements can bring for our disadvantaged 16-19 year old students.
With this, she explained, comes the need to draw upon cognitive science and make words come to life by modelling our own expert reading and writing skills.
We were humbled too by the calibre and expertise of our keynote speakers and presenters. We heard from English curriculum specialist Beth Kemp, University of Warwick and GCSE Resit Hub’s Dr Becky Morris, head of the University of Derby’s institute of education and dyslexia expert Sarah Charles, King’s College London literacy specialist Rose Veitch, adult literacy specialist Kerry Scattergood, Nottingham City of Literature director Hannah Trevarthen, Citizen Literacy’s Diane Gardner and John Casey, and national secondary assessment lead Helen Hewlett.
Each speaker shone a light on the potential we, as educators, have to shape better futures by equipping ourselves with what research shows us works to improve literacy across further education.
Finally, we were uplifted by a keynote from Dr Jo Bowser-Angermann, author and associate professor at Anglia Ruskin University, who has researched English resits extensively. She rightly pointed out that while post-16 resit policy is well-intentioned, we must pull away from teaching-to-the-test and embrace the freedom to innovate in our resit classrooms.
Further education colleges are more than just a mop-up for our students’ broken secondary education. We have the power to reignite creativity and must do so to truly re-engage students with improving their literacy skills, not forgetting that literacy crosses every vocation and discipline.
Our work continues across the next academic year, where we look forward to welcoming even more ‘movers’ to help us get closer to levelling the playing field for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Our events will be announced across the year, and they are not to be missed! This isn’t a top-down directive. This isn’t a commercial enterprise. What it is, is a grassroots movement that is putting FE literacy on the agenda
Every FE professional is welcome, so join us – and let’s shake things up.
At South Devon College, we’re rethinking the way we respond to student behaviour. We’ve adopted a relational and restorative approach.
Zero-tolerance methods can work well for institutions, but not necessarily students. They are not needs-focused and they respond to ‘bad’ behaviour as a symptom rather than a form of communication.
In my experience, the most common misconception about restorative practice is that it’s permissive – that it sets low expectations and lets students ‘get away’ with poor behaviour. This is simply not the case.
The practice is not about being ‘soft’ on behaviour. Quite the opposite. Restorative practice holds students to high standards, with kindness, warmth and care. We never excuse bad behaviour; we address the underlying causes and support our students to move on from it.
This is especially important in FE, where many learners come to us having struggled at school, feeling as though they’ve already failed. For many of these young people, traditional punitive measures just don’t work.
‘Team Student’
Often, students who display poor behaviours are in distress. They may have unmet emotional or social needs or significant gaps in their ability to manage relationships and social interactions. They struggle to cope in a college setting.
Using a restorative approach allows learners to consider their actions, understand the effect of their behaviour on others and accept responsibility for their actions. By focusing on relationships, we’re giving learners valuable skills for life.
Done well, restorative practice can be transformative. Imagine a learner, let’s call them Danny, who hasn’t attended college for weeks. Traditionally, Danny might be disciplined, put on report, called to a meeting with their parents or even excluded.
The restorative approach starts by asking “what’s going on, Danny?”. This opens the door to a structured conversation to explore their thoughts and feelings, discuss the impact of their actions and work with them to resolve issues.
Far from lowering standards, this helps us understand the reasons behind Danny’s behaviour. We then develop a tailored support plan and share it with ‘Team Danny’, the group of staff who work closely with them. That way, everyone is aligned in helping Danny meet their needs and succeed.
While this process takes more time and resource, it’s already proving effective. We’re seeing fewer conflicts, and when issues do arise, they’re resolved in ways that strengthen our community rather than fracture it.
A five-year plan
We’re at the early stages of this journey. Restorative practice is more than a policy decision; it‘s a way of being. To properly embed it will take a few years.
We’ve started with staff training and awareness, and the goal is to integrate these practices into every level of our organisation – from how we handle behaviour in the classroom to how we engage with parents and the wider community.
We need to go further because the needs of our students are constantly evolving.
Like many colleges, we’ve seen increases in mental health issues, levels of social anxiety and challenging behaviours post-pandemic. We know a relational and restorative approach isn’t a fix-all, but it’s a start, a way of creating a college culture where everyone can feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.
How to get started
For any college considering making this shift, here are a few tips based on our experience:
Put relationships first
Everything starts with strong, positive relationships. If students feel that their teachers care about them, they’re more likely to engage. Don’t just focus on academic goals.
Make leadership visible
Senior leaders need to be active and visible, greeting students, building trust and setting the tone for a welcoming environment.
Work with educational psychologists
Engage professionals who understand trauma-informed practice. They can offer guidance on how to support students with complex emotional needs. Your SENDCo will be able to make introductions.
Appoint a champion for behaviour and attitudes
Designate a key person or team to drive this cultural change to ensure restorative practices are embedded across the college.
Drive the change from the top
For lasting impact, senior leadership should be committed to creating a culture that prioritises understanding and resolving conflict rather than resorting to exclusion or punishment.
Attracting the best talent is crucial; colleges need ambitious and responsible educators and leaders to shape the future. Our people are the heart of our organisations, so it is an important strategic pillar. That’s why over the past four years, NCG have developed a people-centred approach that prioritises recruitment, development and retention.
When we launched our Leadership Hub in 2020 to provide development for aspiring and experienced leaders, we knew that not everyone aspires to become a leader or a manager. However, the qualities of leadership should be accessible to everyone, so our programmes cater to colleagues across our organisation at every level and every stage of their journey.
We want our colleagues to know that they don’t need to be in a leadership position to be able to have influence and make contributions to their teams and departments. To back that up, we ensure our approach addresses their diverse needs.
So, alongside our Leadership Hub, we also launched a coaching pool and a mentoring programme. All new colleagues are assigned a mentor, many of whom have undertaken professional qualifications in these areas.
Differentiating between mentoring and coaching is important. Mentoring involves a more experienced colleague guiding a newer one, while coaching is about unlocking an individual’s potential by encouraging self-reflection and problem-solving. This tailored approach addresses the unique needs of each person.
Historically, mentoring might have been confined to subject-specific guidance, for instance matching a new dance teacher with an experienced one. However, our Leadership Hub has expanded to ensure that mentoring goes beyond technical advice to include personal and professional development.
Importantly, this creates relationships between people in different departments, and even in different colleges and areas of the organisation.
This strategic focus on development means that any of our colleagues, regardless of role, can be a future leader at NCG. Someone joining us in an entry-level position this year could be our future chief executive if we ensure the development opportunities are in place to support that possibility.
You don’t need to be in a leadership position to have influence
We are a very large organisation spread all over the country, but this approach has made us feel like a smaller, close-knit team. We have always aimed to be ‘One NCG’ and it is initiatives like the Leadership Hub and coaching programmes that help show our colleagues that they are part of something bigger.
Since we launched these initiatives, we have seen an improvement in staff perceptions, engagement, and a positive cultural shift. In staff feedback, some of our strongest areas are development and belonging, so we know we are creating a real community.
For any new colleague joining NCG, having a mentor can reduce the overwhelming feelings that often accompany the start of a new role, provide a sense of belonging and a clear pathway for development.
As for student-facing staff who access coaching, they get an insight into a new perspective that sits outside of their usual day-to-day. We always talk about real-world experiences for students, and this is a way for our team to get out of the classroom, even figurately, by talking to someone with an outside perspective.
We expect our students to approach their learning with curiosity and commitment, and we expect the same of our colleagues. Our role is to ensure they feel supported to do just that, and that their development is valued.
The collaborative nature of coaching and mentoring fosters a culture of continuous improvement. As educators share best practices and innovative approaches, the quality of education across the institution rises.
This approach is not static; it is an evolving practice that adapts to the changing needs of the educational landscape. We’re very clear on our ambitions as an organisation, and our approach to development is not aimed at creating an identikit workforce.
The programmes we run through our Leadership Hub aim to equip our colleagues with the knowledge and tools they’ll need to be the best leaders they can be.
The goal is to ensure that every educator, regardless of their role or location, feels supported and has access to the resources they need to succeed.
And the best means to that end is to value each one as a leader in their own right.
Ofsted has provided further details on how it will draw up plans to assess whether education providers are inclusive in new inspections.
The inspectorate has pledged to introduce a new “criterion” for inclusion in the inspection report cards set to be rolled out for schools, colleges and training providers from September next year.
The tricky issue of how inclusivity will be measured is due to be consulted on, but Ofsted last month awarded the National Children’s Bureau (NCB) charity a £90,000 seven-month contract to help it “conceptualise vulnerability and inclusion”.
This research will aim to answer how Ofsted can “better understand vulnerability and its complexity” so it can assess inclusive practice, terms of reference published today state.
Research in Practice, part of the NCB, will also look into how vulnerability is currently understood in the education and social care sectors, including the “strength and limitations of different understandings”.
What’s the approach?
NCB will carry out a “rapid evidence” review of existing literature around the definitions and understanding of inclusion in the education settings Ofsted inspects and regulates.
The charity will appoint an expert academic reference panel to provide quality assurance for the project, and engage with a representative range of stakeholders, such as students, professionals and senior leaders across sectors including FE and skills.
Key findings from both will be collated into a report to help Ofsted “better understand vulnerability”. The inspectorate said this will inform its future inspection work.
Ofsted aims to publish the findings of this research “anticipated in 2025”.
It has provided little detail so far on what metrics it will use to judge inclusion.
But it will “evaluate whether education settings are providing high-quality support for disadvantaged and vulnerable children”.
The watchdog has said it will consult on the new report card, including the “criterion” on inclusion, in January.
While ministers are right to consider reforms of end-point assessments (EPAs) in apprenticeships, the independence of the assessments themselves is the cornerstone of employer confidence in the system and must be maintained.
EPAs validate an apprentice’s hard-earned knowledge, skills and behaviours, boosting their confidence and providing a clear pathway into future employment.
For employers, it is crucial that these assessments are fair and rigorous. Without an independent assessment system, the trust employers have in the competence of employees – and in the apprenticeship system as a whole – would be severely undermined.
We recognise that the system is not without its challenges. Many apprenticeship providers have reported difficulties with EPAs. These include the availability of assessors, the consistency of end-point assessment organisations (EPAOs), the complexity of the process and the inclusion of mandatory qualifications within certain apprenticeship standards.
However, EPAs have provided a rigorous, outcome-based method of assessment since their introduction in 2017. As DfE begins to roll out pilots, here are some of the suggestions making the rounds and why each involves substantial risks.
Pilot 1: Provider-led EPAs
We understand that one of the options under consideration is for apprenticeship providers to carry out their own EPAs. The Association of Colleges argues that colleges could maintain the necessary rigour and independence, but this approach poses a number of challenges.
First, if providers are required to gain Ofqual recognition as EPAOs, this doesn’t necessarily streamline the process and could add more bureaucracy. There’s also potential for confusion stemming from colleges and ITPs administering EPAs alongside EPAOs.
Moreover, colleges deliver less than one-fifth of apprenticeships (17.4 per cent in 2022/23), and for smaller independent training providers (ITPs), setting up as an EPA organisation may not be feasible.
Then, there’s the significant risk of conflict of interest. With growing pressure to boost achievement rates, how can we ensure objectivity if those training apprentices are also responsible for assessing their competence?
And finally, we already have a shortage of assessors with the appropriate level of technical expertise, and provider pay lags behind the private sector. Therefore, they are unlikely to recruit and retain the staff they need to assess, in particular in emerging sectors such as technology and green energy.
Pilot 2: Employer-supported assessment
We understand that the pilots may also include the option to transfer assessment of behaviours from EPAOs to employers. This has some intuitive appeal; after all, employers see their apprentices in action daily and could be well-placed to judge workplace behaviours.
However, employers may lack the expertise required to measure them against apprenticeship standards, or at least would need significant support to carry out this role effectively.
More critically, placing this responsibility on employers risks introducing inconsistency across the system. It opens up the possibility of businesses applying varying standards, which may call into question the credibility of apprenticeship assessment.
Pilot 3: Simpler KSB assessments
One further option under consideration is to reduce the number of knowledge, skills, and behaviours (KSBs) that must be directly assessed. But while streamlining assessments could make the process more efficient (and should be considered) a one-size-fits-all approach risks undermining quality.
This is especially true for high-risk sectors such as science, technology, and engineering, where competence is critical to safety and performance. Employers in the science and technology industries have in fact argued for more – not fewer – assessment methods.
In short, simplifying the assessment process cannot come at the cost of protecting safety and competence.
The EPA system has evolved significantly since its introduction and, if reforms allow, will continue to do so. Proportionality and flexibility are key – streamlining where possible without sacrificing quality.
Testing new proposals with employers and sector skills bodies is also essential to ensure that changes work across their sectors.
But above all, preserving the independence of assessment is crucial. Independence ensures objectivity and upholds high standards; without it, we risk losing the confidence that makes apprenticeships such a vital part of our skills landscape.
As each day of the first half-term passes, I hear the knell of a ship’s bell.
It marks the students dropping out of their college study programmes. 30,000 won’t make it to day 43.
Needless to say, they are more likely to be from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds.
This is thanks to incoherent policy and regulation that seems unable to remember that compulsory education in England does not end at 16, and which systematically pushes older teenagers overboard.
They highlight the mismatch between what every teacher, leader, policy wonk, and Treasury official knows to be the definition of 16-19 disadvantage (having been eligible for free school meals in the six years prior to finishing secondary school) versus the jokers within the Department for Education who keep making up different definitions.
And yet, when it comes to college accountability measures, disadvantage is still based on the ‘proper’ definition of FSM6, perfectly illustrating the disconnect within DfE.
Meanwhile, 16-19 bursaries are very narrowly linked to benefits, for Tuition Fund (RIP) it was being “from the 27 per cent most economically deprived areas of the country”, and for the core blocks of 16-19 disadvantage funding it’s either postcodes or prior English and maths attainment.
Amid such chaos and confusion, it’s little surprise that EPI has also found that only 36 per cent of colleges are using the government’s data tool to identify who their FSM6 disadvantaged students are.
But I’m a ‘glass 78% full’ kind of guy (that’s a resits joke, teehee) so I think that 36 per cent represents a good-news story, driven by FE wanting to do the right thing in spite of any incentives or support to do so.
Let’s smash last year’s 36 per cent
You see, in 2021 it was 25 per cent, then 30 per cent in 2022, and 36 per cent in 2023.
I’m pretty confident DfE has done little, perhaps nothing at all, to promote the tool or train colleges in how to use it. (Although there is an urban myth about a rogue civil servant who kept trying to write it into grant agreements.)
In fact, in some years DfE’s tool for colleges to identify their new disadvantaged learners has not actually been up and running before day 42.
And it’s certainly not Ofsted driving improvement either. Its FE inspection framework explicitly and frequently mentions disadvantage in its ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ criteria, but they have been merrily handing out those grades to providers whether they had any idea which learners it referred to or not.
Wouldn’t it be poetic if there could be an unannounced inspection of Ofsted offices tomorrow to check how many FE inspectors actually know how to identify disadvantaged students?
No, this is a story of individuals within FE guided by their own moral compass and then sharing good practice with peers. Others have talked at length about FE as a self-improving system, but while they were busy navel gazing, these visionaries on the ground have been pro-actively doing something for their learners and for social justice that really matters.
Assuming DfE has the ‘Get Information About Pupils’ tool working before census day this year (it should be within your DfE provider portal), and we smash last year’s 36 per cent of colleges using it, then it could be life-changing for our otherwise-lost 30,000 young people.
And if you are about to withdraw a student and see they are flagged as disadvantaged, don’t cut them loose just yet. Try one more thing first.
Whether it’s one last phone call, one more one-to-one, or one more timetable adjustment to fit around whatever burden they are carrying, that disadvantage data empowers us to target our interventions on those who most need a helping hand to day 43.
Yes, they will almost certainly still need that help on day 44, and probably on day 144 too, but they will be safely in the lifeboat of FE, with a brighter future on the horizon.
