Ofsted watch: UTC impresses while colleges flounder

A university technical college stood out this week for the right reasons – it was rated ‘good’ in its first ever inspection.

General FE colleges didn’t reach the same heights, with two large college groups dropping to ‘requires improvement’ while another received a second consecutive ‘inadequate’ report.

UTC Warrington was given a grade two after being commended for its effective governance and teaching since opening in September 2016.

Inspectors said the UTC has developed and improved over its first three years and that a very low number of pupils leave the college without continuing their education or taking up apprenticeships.

They added that leaders know what the college does well and what it still needs to do to improve, and is prepared to address aspects that have not been fully successful.

University of Brighton also received a grade two rating in its first inspection, after “successfully” developing apprenticeships.

The education watchdog said the leaders and managers work well with the local NHS trusts to ensure their staff develop new skills and knowledge, and have taken effective action to recruit experienced and highly qualified staff into leadership and teaching positions.

Another HE provider, University of Bradford, made ‘reasonable progress’ in its first monitoring visit since it started delivering apprenticeships in January last year, after being found to have established a “clear rationale” for the delivery of the apprenticeship programme.

But it was bad news for Hull College, which fell from a grade two to a grade three after Ofsted founds the quality of teaching, learning and assessment is “not yet consistently good” across all types of provision.

Managers of the college, which teaches over 15,000 students, were accused of being too slow to address the programme’s weaknesses, resulting in apprentices making slow progress and not being challenged sufficiently to reach their full potential.

Cornwall College was also rated ‘requires improvement’ this week, down from ‘good’.

Ofsted said leaders’ and managers’ initiatives to improve quality have “yet to show a significant impact”.

Teaching, learning and assessment and students’ achievements are improving, “but are not yet good enough across all programmes and training routes”.

Governors “have not challenged leaders and managers sufficiently to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment”.

The downgrade follows news that the college secured a £30 million government bailout to drive forward its “fresh start” business plan.

And Moulton College retained its grade four rating, with Ofsted criticising leaders and governors for failing to improve its performance.

It was also bad news for employer provider Goodman Masson Limited, which was given two ‘insufficient progress’ ratings and one ‘reasonable’. Leaders were accused of overlooking the need for apprentices to complete externally awarded qualifications as part of their apprenticeships.

More successful was Norwich City College of Further and Higher Education, which was found to have made ‘significant progress’ since its merger with Paston Sixth Form College in December 2017. Cambridge Regional College also made ‘significant progress’ in two provisions and ‘reasonable progress’ in another following its merger with Huntingdon Regional College in August 2017.

Lancaster and Morecambe College was found to have made ‘reasonable progress’ across all provisions following a grade three report last April.

Two specialist colleges, Goldwyn Sixth Form College and Brentwood Community College, also received monitoring visits after previously being rated grade three. The former made ‘reasonable progress’ in one provision, ‘insufficient’ in another and ‘significant’ in another, while the latter made ‘reasonable progress’ across all provisions.

Elsewhere, it was an average week for private providers with four – Performance Learning Group Ltd, Steve Willis Training Ltd, North Humberside Motor Trades GTA and PBC Associates Limited – making ‘reasonable progress’ across the board in early monitoring visits.

Enabling Development Opportunities made ‘reasonable progress’ in two areas but ‘insufficient progress’ in one provision since being given grade three rating.

And following its grade four rating last year, DV8 Training (Brighton) Limited was found to have been made good progress after introducing “well-designed” traineeships as a short-term method of fulfilling their commitment to the small number of new students who were expecting to be on a study programme.

Showcase Training made ‘significant progress’ in its first visit. Inspectors said leaders have prioritised the quality of training and maintained the confidence of employers while having a clear strategy and vision for the organisation in the childcare sector.

Lastly, adult learning provider North East Lincolnshire Council made ‘significant progress’ in one provision and reasonable progress in two areas after being given a grade four last year, and employer provider Unipres (UK) Limited made ‘reasonable progress’ across all areas in its early monitoring visit of its apprenticeship provision.

GFE Colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Hull College 07/05/2019 18/06/2019 3 2
Cambridge Regional College 09/05/2019 19/06/2019 M n/a
The Cornwall College Group 14/05/2019 20/06/2019 3 2
Lancaster and Morecambe College 08/05/2019 19/06/2019 M 3
Norwich City College of Further and Higher Education 09/05/2019 19/06/2019 M n/a
Moulton College 30/04/2019 19/06/2019 4 4

 

Independent Specialist College Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Goldwyn Sixth Form College 15/05/2019 18/06/2019 M 3
Brentwood Community College 09/05/2019 19/06/2019 M 3

 

Independent Learning Providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
DV8 TRAINING (BRIGHTON) LIMITED 21/05/2019 21/06/2019 M 4
Enabling Development Opportunities Ltd 23/05/2019 18/06/2019 M 3
Performance Learning Group Ltd 16/05/2019 20/06/2019 M n/a
Showcase Training 21/05/2019 19/06/2019 M n/a
Steve Willis Training Ltd 15/05/2019 20/06/2019 M n/a
North Humberside Motor Trades GTA 21/05/2019 21/06/2019 M 3
PBC Associates Limited 15/05/2019 21/06/2019 M 2

 

Adult and Community Learning Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
North East Lincolnshire Council 14/05/2019 17/06/2019 M 4

 

Employer providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Unipres (Uk) Limited 14/05/2019 17/06/2019 M n/a
Goodman Masson Limited 09/05/2019 19/06/2019 M n/a

 

Other (including UTCs) Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
UTC Warrington 14/05/2019 20/06/2019 2 n/a
University of Bradford 21/05/2019 17/06/2019 M n/a
University of Brighton 14/05/2019 18/06/2019 2 n/a

Milton in interdepartmental talks to set up new youth pre-employment programme

Skills minister Anne Milton wants to launch a new youth pre-employment programme as early as next January.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week, Milton revealed she is already in cross-departmental discussions with ministers about the programme, which would prepare 16- to 25-year-olds for employment, whether that be apprenticeships or another route.

She said: “I don’t think we are meeting the needs of that group of young people who possibly leave school without the minimum qualifications.

“I think you’ve got several departments who are doing work with some of them and I think we need to join all that up and set up a pre-employment programme which would be really good.

I don’t think we are meeting the needs of that group of young people

“One of the issues for me is that if you are 16 or 17, nine months makes up a large percentage of your life, so every month that we don’t do something is a large percentage of that person’s life.”

The Department for Work and Pensions has discussed the initiative with her, as has the Department for Education’s early years’ minister Nadhim Zahawi, as the programme could benefit people coming out of care.

But she has not consulted the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, as they are “busy and they have other things to do. They’re working with employers designing apprenticeships. I don’t think it should sit with them.”

The programme could even be implemented without the usual review and pilot programme, which the minister said would be “the worst possible thing to do because it would take for ever”.

Milton would instead rely on work that has already been done within the government on similar programmes such as traineeships, and also collect information from job centres, colleges, schools and not-for-profit organisations such as the Prince’s Trust.

Her next step will be to get ministers from various parts of government together to compile an action plan.

“If you ask me the next thing I want to concentrate on it would be that: ministers coming together behind a programme that really works, and jointly putting money in a pot to make it work.”

Without having discussed it with civil servants, Milton said she would like something “on the racks” by January – giving the government only six months to put the programme together from scratch.

For comparison’s sake, from the government’s first mention of a traineeship programme in June 2012, it took until the following May for it to be launched, after originally being scheduled to launch in September 2013.

FE Week’s interview was conducted following the release of a report into traineeships, which revealed that 75 per cent of those who take part move on to work or further study within a year of completing their programme.

The minister said when the report was published that she was “thrilled” to see how traineeships are “supporting young people to start their apprenticeship journey, get their first job or go to further study”.

Nadhim Zahawi

Many of the features of Milton’s new initiative are seemingly already being done through traineeships, which prepare 16- to 24-year-olds for apprenticeships, though she said the new cross-departmental initiative will not be called traineeships as that would be “slightly misleading”.

During the interview, Milton admitted her days as skills minister may be numbered, as whoever is elected the next Conservative leader and prime minister could remove her from the post.

She said: “We are going to have a new prime minister and government, and I would like you to press me or whoever comes into this job” on creating the programme.

Milton started in the role in June 2017, having previously served as deputy chief whip.

Despite being tipped by Fleet Street to replace Jeremy Hunt as health secretary in the cabinet reshuffle of January 2018, Milton stayed at the DfE and recently reached her two-year anniversary in the position.

She was supporting former education secretary Michael Gove in the election, who was knocked out of the race on Thursday. The contest is now between frontrunner and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson and Hunt, the current foreign secretary.

Layoffs loom at RNN Group as DfE cuts off bailouts

One of the biggest college groups in the country has said it has “no alternative” than to cut staff numbers as it battles to cut its deficit, knowing it will “no longer be ‘bailed out’ by the government”.

The RNN Group, which has around 1,200 staff and nearly 15,000 students, has put 130 jobs at risk, with an initial 40 redundancies planned.

The group was formed following a merger between Rotherham College of Arts and Technology and North Notts College in 2016 and another merger with Dearne Valley College in 2017.

It went from an £868,000 surplus in 2016-17 to a £2.45 million deficit in 2017-18, which it said was “exacerbated by merger activities and costs”, on an income of £45.5 million.

While its cash flow increased from £2.95 million to £4.94 million in 2018, cash and cash equivalents for the year decreased by £5.5 million.

The senior leadership has now outlined a “series of proposed costsaving measures” after experiencing a reduction in income “across all funding streams, and increased employer costs are causing serious problems”.

Jason Austin, who became RNN Group’s chief executive last month, said: “This is an extremely challenging time for the FE sector, and colleges up and down the country are facing difficult decisions in response to year-on-year real terms government funding cuts, increased competition and declining demographics.

“There is no financial support available. Colleges will no longer be ‘bailed out’ by the government. We simply have to reduce the operating deficit.”

The Department for Education has kept many colleges afloat by offering multi-million-pound handouts in recent years.

But these have now stopped following the introduction of the insolvency regime, which allows colleges to go bust for the first time.

Austin continued: “We obviously clearly regret having to put colleagues’ jobs at risk, but we have no alternative.

“We are working closely with colleagues and unions during the consultation period to explore all options open to us to make the savings we need to achieve.”

According to minutes from a meeting that took place in March, the board recently secured a new £1 million bank loan, which the group has since told FE Week would cover a portion of the capital costs for its University Centre Rotherham, which is due to open next month.

FE Week understands the group spent around £12 million constructing the university centre.

The minutes also showed the board approved the disposal of land at its Dinnington Campus. But a spokesperson said the college had not disposed of the campus, and that it was currently investing in new electrical, plumbing and gas workshops which are being fitted over the summer.

“We are continually reviewing our assets in the light of emerging business needs, which includes considering options for both development and disposal at any of our campuses,” she said.

The RNN Group was downgraded from “good” to “requires improvement” by Ofsted last month. Inspectors said senior leaders and governors have presided over a period of “significant decline in the quality of education and training following the two mergers”.

John Connolly, the group’s formal Layoffs loom at RNN Group as DfE cuts off bailouts principal who stepped down with immediate effect last year after concluding he was no longer the “right person” to lead it, received a payment of £150,000 when he left.

According to the group’s accounts, the “emolument” was “in lieu of notice, entitled holiday pay and early access to pension funds”.

Traineeships – remember them? Well, they could be in for a welcome boost

Something of a surprise this week from the Department for Education – a press release about traineeships in which the skills minister, Anne Milton, was “thrilled”.

The surprise for me wasn’t the good news – that research found the majority of the first trainees in 2014 progressed into work or further training. The surprise was that the traineeship scheme was being talked about at all.

Without taking the time to check, I don’t recall a DfE press release or minister choosing to talk about traineeships since their introduction at the back end of 2013.

Since then, over 300 providers have been recruiting 16- to 24-year-olds on to the pre-employment scheme at a rate of over 20,000 per year.

After the initial fanfare when launched, many providers either chose not to recruit participants or did so in relatively small numbers.

Many struggled to sell the concept of a six-month unpaid work placement to both young people and employers, leading to inevitable design changes. Most traineeship schemes now last less than 12 weeks.

The programme has also suffered because there has been no dedicated budget. Instead, 16- to 18- year-olds are funded based on their planned hours from existing study programme funds, which has not incentivised growth. And 19- to 24-year-olds are funded from the greatly diminished national adult education budget.

This awkward placement within two very different funding streams has done little to support expansion, with numbers falling in recent years.

It has also meant there is little traineeship-specific provider data available to highlight the successes of the programme. The government publishes little to nothing about the millions spent on traineeships, or which providers are delivering them.

And in the current Ofsted inspection framework they can include a narrative section along with a grade for traineeships. But they typically ignore the provision, arguing that there is an insignificant number of trainees without actually defining a threshold for exclusion. In 2017-18 there were just six providers awarded a traineeship grade (one grade one, four grade twos and one grade three) and in 2018-19 (the nine months from September 2018 to the end of May 2019, just two traineeships judgments (both grade three).  And in the new Education Inspection Framework being introduced in September the option to include a traineeship section and grade has been removed.

It was also perhaps surprising that in the last two chief inspector annual reports, traineeships did not feature at all.

So Ofsted has very little to say about traineeships, and in their new slimmed-down inspection reports will say even less.

The renewed interest does seem long overdue – and even seems to be extremely popular with participants. Researchers interviewed 2,153 young people on traineeships and the findings published by the government in 2017 concluded “trainees were very positive about their time on a traineeship. More than nine in ten trainees (92 per cent) said that they would recommend traineeships to other people, and seven in ten trainees (70 per cent) said that they would speak highly of traineeships when speaking to  others.”

Traineeships, a preemployment programme for young people, should be much higher profile and more joined up with other government departments, such as the Department for Work and Pensions.

As the skills minister Anne Milton revealed to me, she is now in active talks across government with a view to doing just that.

After two years in office implementing the policies of previous ministers, such as apprenticeship and T-level reforms, she should be supported in taking ownership of a policy to renew focus and investment on supporting unemployed young people into work.

Is 3aaa’s Marples back in the education game?

The co-founder of a disgraced training provider that is subject to an ongoing police investigation has launched a new consultancy firm that “specialises” in schools growth and apprenticeship levy strategy.

Peter Marples (pictured) stepped away from Aspire Achieve Advance (3aaa) in September in the midst of a second government investigation into the firm, which he set up alongside Di McEvoy-Robinson in 2008.

A month later, the apprenticeship giant was put into administration after the Department for Education pulled its skills-funding contracts. The police have since launched a formal criminal investigation following allegations of fraud.

Marples has refused to formally comment on the investigations to date, but set up a new company in February, called Aquifer Solutions Limited, with his wife, who owns 100 per cent of the shares.

According to its website, Aquifer Solutions is a “dynamic, action-focussed strategy consulting business that spans a wide range of sectors” and has “specific specialisms in the apprenticeship market and schools market as well as sport and consumer products”.

Marples himself is the former chair of the Spencer Academies Trust and has worked in apprenticeships for well over a decade.

In the “our services” section, the Aquifer website states that it does “financial due diligence in the schools sector”, “strategic review of multi-academy trusts’ capacity to grow and focus”, “Baker Clause reviews” and “apprenticeship levy strategy”.

FE Week approached Marples for comment about his move into the schools sector on Tuesday.

However, he replied the next day and said: “Aquifer solutions does not work with any schools and is not focussed on the schools sector so I have no idea where you get that information from. There is no intention to work with schools in any capacity.

“It also does not work with any businesses in the apprenticeship market, nor will it do so.”

He added that the business has a “focus on the commercial arena and overseas and will continue to do that”.

FE Week checked Aquifer’s website following the comment and found that Marples had removed all sections related to schools and apprenticeships overnight.

When this was pointed out, with evidence, he said: “As I have said, we do no work in the schools or apprenticeship market. Aquifer Business Solutions have no intention of doing so.”

The day before references to schools and apprenticeships were taken off Aquifer’s website, the text stated: “We are active now in the engineering space, sport, IT and media and still doing work in the education space.

“Focussing on the multi-academy trust market – we deliver robust financial due diligence service in a cost effective way. Clear, concise conclusions to protect your board from potentially poor decision making.”

In another section, it said the firm delivers “strategic review of multi-academy trusts’ capacity to grow and focus” which involve a “series of workshops and interviews and analyses of your current position, the opportunities in the market and delivers a strategic for growth and excellence”.

Under “Baker Clause reviews”, it read: “A speciality of our work and specifically aimed at schools. We will advise you how to be fully compliant with the Baker Clause requirements to enable access providers into your schools to aide careers advice other than 6th form opportunities.”

And under “apprenticeship levy strategy”, the website said: “A specific specialism of our business is a strategic focus for business in both the public sector and private sector to utilise their apprenticeship levy. With over £2.5 billion collected by the government each year and with less than 10 per cent annually spent, this is an opportunity to use your levy to support your people-development strategies.

“We can build you a plan, we can manage your plans on an ongoing basis and can do this on a very cost-effective basis.”

It is not known if McEvoy-Robinson has joined or set up any other companies after resigning from 3aaa at the same time as Marples.

When the firm, which was rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, went bust it had 500 staff and government skills contracts worth £16.5 million.

A previous ESFA investigation into the provider in 2016, carried out by auditing firm KPMG (where Marples is a former consulting partner), had found dozens of success rate “overclaims”.

Over 4,200 apprentices were affected when 3aaa went bust. As revealed by FE Week earlier this month, nearly one-third of them had still not been found a new provider seven months after its collapse.

The police and official receiver told FE Week their investigations into 3aaa were ongoing.

NUS calls on colleges to do more to tackle student sexual harassment

Colleges have been urged to develop more “robust” policies to tackle sexual harassment and violence, after a student survey found three quarters had an unwanted sexual experience.

And in its first targeted research into sexual harassment and violence within further education, the National Union of Students found that, of the 75 per cent of female students who had an unwanted sexual experience, only 14 per cent reported it.

According to the survey of 544 students, the majority of respondents had experienced unwanted sexual contact such as pinching or groping, with a similar proportion having had someone attempt to kiss them against their will.

One act or threat of sexual violence is one too many

One in five respondents said they had been kissed when they did not want to be, and a similar proportion reported unwanted exposure of their own bodies, such as someone else lifting their skirt or pulling their trousers down.

One in three experiences of sexual harassment took place at college, according to the report, of which 13 per cent occurred inside classrooms.

The NUS said unwanted sexual behaviour and harassment included wolf-whistling and catcalling, genital exposure from another person via photos, and being stalked.

The Association of Colleges has now called on the Department for Education to “urgently establish a working group with college leaders to make sure that we are doing everything we can to share best practice, learn from each other and stamp out unacceptable behaviour, and to support those impacted and to make clear to potential perpetrators that this behaviour is never acceptable and will never be tolerated”.

The NUS survey found women were most likely to have experienced sexual harassment and violence, with unwanted sexual behaviour being “common place” among them. NUS said women were significantly more likely to experience harassment on social media and public spaces, but fear of revenge and violence from men stop them from reporting it.

Additionally, 15 per cent of respondents confessed to having considered suicide as a result of these incidents, with 7 per cent actually attempting to end their own lives. 

The most common impact of unwanted sexual behaviour is anxiety, which 42 per cent of respondents said they suffer from, and depression, which affects 33 per cent.

The NUS has now pleaded with colleges and training providers to equip non-specialist staff who have the most contact with students – academic staff – with skills to deal with disclosures, such as through first responder training.

The profile of staff who deal with sexual harassment should also be raised, such as a safeguarding team, “creating opportunities for students to become more familiar with them to allay any concerns they may have over the process”.

NUS said providers should ensure that responses to reported unwanted sexual behaviour are not limited to reporting or complaint processes, but also include support services centring on student survivors’ welfare and wellbeing.

Moreover, they should provide workshops on consent and healthy relationships, and promote alternative of different masculinities across institutional policies and practices by recruiting staff in non-traditional gender roles.

The union also called sector bodies to develop guidelines for FE colleges on responding and preventing sexual harassment and violence, as well as to ensure that sex and relationships education is inclusive of disabled and LGBT+ students, avoiding heteronormative assumptions.

This culture has been normalised to such an extent that unhealthy sexual behaviour has become harder to identify

Sarah Lasoye, NUS women student’s officer, said: “The findings show we need urgent responses to tackle sexual harassment and violence in FE institutions. This culture has been normalised to such an extent that unhealthy sexual behaviour has become harder to identify.

“While students may understand the concept of consent they struggle to put it into practice, with women fearing revenge and anger from men, and LGBT+ and disabled students at the sharpest end of sexual violence.

“The sooner we can open up our understanding of feminism and educate young people on sexual harassment and assault, along with healthy and transformative gender relations – the sooner we will be able to eradicate the toxic behaviours and attitudes that replicate and concretise themselves in the minds of young people.”

The union said it will now develop workshops for FE as part of its Women’s Campaign’s ‘I Heart Consent’ programme, and “train the trainer training” for students and staff.

It will also create activity funds for students groups to deliver campaigning and education to prevent and tackle sexual harassment and violence.

David Hughes, chief executive of the AoC, said: “This new report from NUS makes for sobering reading. Everybody has the right to learn, to work, and to live without the threat of sexual violence. 

“For most students, campuses are a safe space, with safeguarding at the heart of everything that colleges do. However, one act or threat of sexual violence is one too many. Reporting sexual violence and threats of sexual violence is never easy but we would urge students to speak to staff so that they can provide them with the right levels of support and protection and to help them to improve their zero tolerance policies.”

Put the entire adult education budget out to tender, says AELP

The entire £1.5 billion adult education budget should be put out to tender owing to “persistent annual underspends and too much poor-value subcontracting”, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers has said.

It wants the “now totally discredited system” of allocating funds abandoned, including in devolved areas, which are set to take control of half the AEB from September.

Analysis by the AELP shows a budget underspend of £63 million in 2016-17 and an estimated underspend of £76 million in 2017-18 – a year in which private providers could only win AEB cash by bidding in a £110 million tender, while colleges had their contracts automatically renewed.

We can’t afford to tolerate any more the poor value being delivered

Colleges were, however, allowed to bid to gain extra funding, and FE Week research published last week showed that, of those colleges who won in the procurement, they underspent their original procured allocations by 26 per cent.

In stark contrast, all other providers exceeded their initial contracts by 31 per cent.

Moreover, four of the 19 college tender winners failed to deliver any of their procured AEB funding, and admitted that their non-procured contracts were sufficient to meet demand.

AELP estimates that in the same year, just under a quarter of total AEB was subcontracted, “essentially by colleges to independent providers for the latter to deliver adult skills provision”. 

A spokesperson said that while good AEB subcontracting “plays an important role, it is AELP’s view that too much subcontracting is not being driven by strategic planning designed to benefit local communities”.

“This results in less money reaching frontline training because funding is being swallowed up by management fees and undesirable brokerage,” he added.

A new policy paper by the AELP has also described how the devolution of the AEB for 2019-20 has resulted in “major changes” to the way the funding is being allocated and procured across England, which has led to “unintended consequences”, particularly for private training providers.

There is now a risk that “flexible, high-quality and specialist adult education and skills provision may be removed from areas, leaving gaps for learners and potentially having a detrimental impact on the social mobility of unemployed adults and adults in employment looking to progress”, it said.

The Greater London Authority and six other mayoral combined authorities are due to get control of half the country’s total AEB funding from 2019-20.

Nearly all of the devolved areas have procured anything between 22 and 30 per cent of their allocations. But one, Tees Valley, has put all of its devolved AEB out to tender.

The AELP said a 100 per cent procurement approach for the national and the devolved AEB would be an “effective way to ensure the funding is directly available to those providers who meet the local needs for individuals and employers”.

Under AELP’s proposals, all provider groups would be required to bid for “realistic” funding amounts based on their capability to deliver against the priorities set out under each area’s skills plans and emerging Local Industrial Strategies.

The association has also called for greater transparency around the level of AEB that is being subcontracted, with twice-yearly reporting by the authorities and agencies of the relevant data.

AELP’s chief executive Mark Dawe  (pictured) said: “The uncertainty over Brexit means that it would be foolish for anyone to get their hopes up on what the Spending Review might yield for further education and skills. 

“Therefore we can’t afford to tolerate any more the poor value being delivered under the adult education budget. By moving to full commissioning, more adults in local communities are likely to receive the support they need to secure sustainable employment.”

T-level providers share ‘extremely tight’ timescale concerns

“Extremely tight” delivery timescales, a lack of viable industry placements and limited public transport are among the key challenges facing the first providers set to deliver T-levels, according to research shared exclusively with FE Week.

Speculative fears about how the new post-16 technical qualifications could falter have been widely reported since they were first mooted in 2016.

A study by the National Foundation for Educational Research, which conducted interviews with half of the 50 providers that will deliver the first T-levels in education, construction and digital from September 2020, has now exposed the true challenges that are threatening their success.

Timescales were extremely tight, which could impact on the quality of their initial offer

According to the report, all of the providers were enthusiastic at the opportunity to be at the “forefront of what they saw as a major, exciting change to England’s technical provision”.

However, detailed information on T-level content, assessment and the industry placement is not scheduled to be available by March 2020, a timescale which means providers “only have about six months to fully develop their curriculum and industry placement plans, properly assess their capacity to deliver and the resources required, and address any skills and knowledge gaps”.

“Interviewees highlighted there was a large amount of work for them to do and the timescales were extremely tight, which could impact on the quality of their initial offer,” it added.

T-levels were originally meant to be rolled out from September 2019 but skills minister Anne Milton announced a delay of a year in July 2017.

The Department for Education’s permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, then had a request for another year-long delay rejected in the first ever ministerial direction issued by an education secretary last May.

Since then, top government officials including the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan have expressed fears about the “worringly tight” delivery timescales.

One of the biggest concerns found by the NFER was around the controversial minimum 315 hours T-level industry placement.

Most providers felt “reasonably confident” in securing the required placements for 2020. However, they reported “challenges in securing digital placements” due to the “small size of many of these businesses, as well as intellectual property and safeguarding issues”.

And, “over the longer term, as T-levels are scaled up, both providers and sector representatives viewed the capacity of local employers to provide placements of the necessary quality and duration as a major challenge”.

Their concerns included: “Not having the required number and types of employers/sectors in their area from which to secure placements (a more acute issue in rural areas); and the capacity of employers, especially micro and small businesses, to provide placements and find time to mentor students and concerns about over-burdening employers.”

Most interviewees said they were having to use up their Capacity and Delivery Fund – a pot of cash that is only currently available to the first T-level providers – in order to develop their employer engagement infrastructure and expertise.

One provider said: “In the longer-term, we are worried about how we will deliver 700/800 longer placements without the additional funding that we have now.”

Suzanne Straw, NFER’s education to employment lead, said it was “clear that providers, students and employers all need sufficient and sustained funding if the industrial placement is to be a workable element to this ‘gold-standard’ technical qualification” and the government should not ignore the plea.

READ MORE: Damian Hinds refuses permanent secretary’s request to delay T-levels

The DfE has partly listened to concerns by introducing some flexibilities to industry placements – including allowing multiple placements at different employers, as announced last month, as well as a trial of employer cash incentives.

But the NFER said even more flexibilities need to be introduced, including “more focus on students responding to employer briefs, simulations and virtual learning”.

Providers also reported public transport travel issues.

“This was a more critical issue in rural areas where large numbers of students travel into college by bus, as this provider pointed out: ‘An 8.30am to 5pm day which T-level students will need to cover the hours needed is not possible with the bus times we have’,” the report said.

Staff expertise was also noted as a concern, with providers reporting that they need extra funding for “incentives to help attract staff to fill key skills gap”.

Recruiting and retaining staff in digital and construction programmes, and engineering in the future, was a “major challenge because of education-industry salary differentials”, which “could lead to patchy and/or lower quality delivery of T-levels”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “As the NFER’s report recognises, we have worked closely with providers from the very beginning to make sure we get the delivery of T-levels right.”

She added that alongside the recently announced package of support, the DfE is “investing almost £60 million for post-16 providers to build capacity” to provide industry placements, as well as £20 million to “help prepare the sector for the introduction of the new courses and have announced a further £3.75m to support next year’s roll out”.

The findings of NFER’s research will be presented today at the Festival of Education, which is run by FE Week publisher LSECT.