Williamson has his work cut out if he’s to get Britain’s skills system up to scratch

The new education secretary has his work cut out. Additional funding for skills and apprenticeships must also be met with reform. The skills funding system is the place to start, says Lawrence Barton  

Assigning direct responsibility for skills and apprenticeships to the education secretary was certainly unexpected. If it does lead to a genuine prioritising of the brief in Government then the move should be welcomed. The fear, however, is that Williamson’s portfolio, even with the support of Kemi Badenoch, becomes so unwieldy that skills ends up being neglected.

And be under no illusion – the challenges the education secretary faces are significant. The pledge to invest more in further education is encouraging, but money alone is not enough if we are to see the genuine transformation of skills and apprenticeships the UK workforce needs.

The fear is that Williamson’s portfolio becomes so unwieldy that skills ends up being neglected

Funding needs to be met with real reform and the skills funding system is a good place to start. The adult education budget (AEB) funding allocation system is antiquated, overly complex and prevents money getting to where it’s needed.

The funding allocation figures recently published by the ESFA illustrate this point. Despite being deemed by Ofsted as being in a state of required improvement, Newcastle College Group (NCG), Birmingham Metropolitan College, and Barnet and Southgate College have ranked among the largest recipients of automatically allocated AEB funding. Collectively, they received over £5 million. Moulton College, rated by Ofsted as ‘inadequate’ in consecutive years received over £1 million.

The list is littered with colleges judged by Ofsted as having significant shortcomings, and yet still find themselves in the privileged position of receiving automatic funding each year. Independent training providers (ITPs) meanwhile, irrespective of the quality of their training provision, are excluded.

The funding list demonstrates one aspect of the inequity between colleges and training providers, but the imbalance extends elsewhere. As Ian Ross wrote here recently, irrespective of any automatic allocations, colleges and local authorities can still bid against training providers for additional funding through open procurement.

As well as stifling competition, the heavy emphasis towards colleges creates a bottleneck in funding. Each year money fails to get to where it’s needed. As FE Week’s analysis has shown, procured college funding frequently results in persistent underspends, which often occur despite approaches by independent providers to sub-contract training during the academic year. Instead, poor monitoring of enrolments and drawdowns mean colleges often only recognise their underspend when it’s too late. The nature of the current system means there is little incentive to improve their monitoring.

In the past, effective relationship managers at the then Local Skills Council (LSC) could provide some respite through their understanding of local allocation and demand and so would be better placed to keep the cogs of the system turning. Significant staff cuts at its reincarnation – first as the SFA and now as the ESFA – mean this is no longer the case. 

Add to this the reduction in growth request opportunities training providers are able to submit to the ESFA and you’re left with a system that is uncompetitive, breeds complacency among poor performing colleges, restricts the ability of successful training providers to grow and stifles learner outcomes.

The situation is made more frustrating because effective solutions are achievable. Rather than precluding those FE colleges in receipt of automatic funding from tendering for procurement funding as some have suggested (and thus stifling competition further). Instead, the government should allow independent training providers in good financial health, with turnover above a certain threshold, and with a consistent Ofsted rating of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ to qualify for automatic funding. Smaller providers meeting financial and quality criteria, meanwhile, should have the opportunity to form regional consortia with other providers to receive automatic funding.

Running in parallel – and like the requirements imposed on independent training providers currently – those colleges who consistently fail to achieve satisfactory Ofsted ratings of ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ over two consecutive inspections should have their automatic AEB allocations reduced.

Only by simplifying the funding system, introducing effective competition and bolstering the provider liaison resources of the ESFA can we drive up standards for the betterment of both providers and learners.

NCG announces new chief executive

England’s largest college group has appointed Liz Bromley as its new chief executive.

NCG will welcome the former deputy vice chancellor at the University of Central Lancashire to the top post on 19 August.

She will take over from the college group’s deputy chief executive Chris Payne, who has been serving as acting chief executive since October 2018 when Joe Docherty stepped down with immediate effect following a turbulent year.

Liz will bring huge drive and creativity as well as a successful track record in education leadership

NCG had begun its hunt for a new permanent chief executive immediately after Docherty resigned but paused the process in early 2019 after its initial hunt proved fruitless and it turned its focus to “improving standards”.

Bromley said she is “truly delighted” to be joining this “ambitious group of colleges”.

“Further Education has never been needed more or been better placed to answer the needs of our emerging workforce, and to offer opportunities to everyone who wants to learn,” she added.

“NCG represents everything that matters most in the education sector – offering relevant learning at all levels in our local communities, but also working across boundaries to ensure best practice in teaching and leadership development right across the sector.”

Bromley’s appointment comes at a time of change and trouble for NCG. It is currently consulting on major staff redundancies at its two private providers – Intraining and Rathbone Training.

Intraining in particular has been hit with quality concerns, which have included falling achievement rates, a poor Ofsted report, and a mystery audit that found dodgy data.

Elsewhere, staff at its colleges in London have gone on strike in a row over pay – with union officials even calling on the FE Commissioner to consider de-merging them – and a free school that the group sponsored, the Discovery School, was forced to close down by the government last year.

NCG is currently subject to intervention from the FE Commissioner owing to its Ofsted grade three, and has been waiting for a “diagnostic visit” over the summer.

Still, Bromley is eager to get started: “I am looking forward to working with my new colleagues and privileged to be leading NCG as we open up opportunities for learners right across the UK,” she said.

Having worked in other senior roles across the education sector – including at the University of Salford and Goldsmiths, University of London – Bromley has also been a board member of the National Centre for Entrepreneurship in Education, the CBI North West and a governor and trustee of the Sir John Brunner Foundation.

“We are very excited about Liz joining the team here at NCG and can see the immediate value she will be able to add to our journey to make the group a great place to learn, teach and work,” said Payne.

Peter Lauener, NCG chair, added: “Liz will bring huge drive and creativity as well as a successful track record in education leadership.

“On top of that she brings an absolute commitment to developing the highest standards of education and training in all our colleges so that they can provide a beacon of opportunity for all our learners in the diverse communities we serve.”

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

Labour’s advisory board considering tax credit employer incentives

A Labour Party commission has set out what it calls a “radical new direction” for lifelong learning, including the potential role for tax credits in leveraging employer engagement in training.

The political party’s independent Lifelong Learning Commission, which is co-chaired by former education secretary Estelle Morris and general secretary of the Communication Workers Union Dave Ward, has today published an interim report.

It describes “deep-seated” challenges facing lifelong learning, from a funding fall of nearly half in real terms since 2009-10 for adult education and apprenticeships, to the “catastrophic loss” of people aged 19 or over in further education, where numbers have fallen from 4.7 million in 2004 to 2.2 million in 2016.

This interim report identifies some of the major issues with the current education system

The commission says the current adult learning sector is characterised by a “disjointed framework in which provision is driven by funding, and entitlements are narrow and prescriptive”.

It has not yet produced fixed policy proposals, but following a series of plenary sessions since its creation in March, the commission said a number of “key themes” have begun to emerge about the “potential building blocks for a fairer and more accessible system of lifelong learning”.

Among the areas that will now be explored further is the creation of a “single integrated system” that involves all FE and HE providers “working in conjunction with credit accumulation” and creating a “credit transfer system”.

It will look at how tax credits and other financial incentives could be used to leverage employers’ engagement in training – an idea that was floated Robert Halfon last month when he launched the Commons education select committee’s own lifelong learning inquiry.

There is also a commitment to explore a set of “clear entitlements to learning – some universal and some tailored according to need – supported by appropriate funding and infrastructure”, as well as a “shift in the relationship between learners and providers from short-term transactional enrolment to a lifelong, mutually beneficial relationship”.

The commission also believes a new, independent, national information, advice and guidance service, which helps people to understand their learning entitlements and options for progression, is needed.

To take forward these ideas, four “workstreams” – people, providers, employers and funding and policy – have been established where individual stakeholder groups will “provide a forensic, detailed focus and collation of insights”.

This will include an “initial assessment of the costs and benefits of our proposals, taking into account cross departmental responsibilities and the wider benefits of learning”.

Labour’s lifelong learning commission has been set up to develop the party’s policy of free education “from cradle to grave” in its proposed National Education Service.

The policy has come under a lot of fire for its lack of detail to date but the commission’s final report, which will be published later this year, is promised to include comprehensive proposals complete with real funding models.

Gordon Marsden

“This interim report identifies some of the major issues with the current education system and seeks to set out a radical vision for lifelong learning in the twenty-first century,” said Ward and Morris.

“We hope that this, along with the commission’s final report later in the year, will inform Labour’s National Education Service and that our society will become one where opportunities for high quality learning throughout life are available in every community.”

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden told FE Week the Labour party is “very pleased” with what the commission has achieved since March to “stake out the radical transformational strategy, and already in an interim report that makes very clear that ambition and direction of travel, to indicate areas which its workstreams have been covering”.

The commission is asking for feedback on its ideas. Views can be sent to labourlifelonglearning@gmail.com by 22 August.

Second round of apprenticeship standard reviews launched

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has today launched a route review of standards in the creative and design industries.

It will look at 15 different apprenticeships across the sector, including bespoke tailor and cutter, watchmaker, bespoke saddle maker and broadcast production assistant (see full list below).

The review follows an announcement by the IfATE of a review into the hair and beauty route on Monday, which will look at just one standard – the level 2 hair professional.

The institute said both reviews are necessary in order to ensure high standards in the sectors and retain a good match between the skill set offered by the apprenticeship, the needs of the apprentice and the needs of employers.

Both reviews are beginning with an eight week public consultation, which will allow stakeholders including employers, providers and apprentices to offer their feedback on the standards.

Anna Osborne, the deputy director of approvals at the institute said of the creative and design sector review: “I would like to thank all of the creative and design employers and stakeholders who helped develop the broad variety of apprenticeships we have in place so far.

“The focus of the review will be to improve the quality of our apprenticeships and ensure they are fully up to date with apprenticeship requirements and the needs of both apprentices and employers. This will ensure they’re well placed to serve the creative and design sector for years to come.”

Iain Smith, co-chair of the institute’s creative and design route panel of sector experts, added that this is a “fantastic opportunity to help shape the future of apprenticeships in sectors where there are notable skills gaps”.

The first such route review was conducted by the IfATE last year into the digital sector, which published its recommendations in May. The outcome saw 12 standards become nine.

Among the wider recommendations was a trial of “gender-neutral” language – after research found “masculine” words in job adverts, such as “ambition”, “challenging” and “leader”, deter women from applying.

In early 2018 the institute came in for criticism for having failed to carry out any formal review of duplicate, narrow or low-skill standards since its launch.

It was urged to do so “at the earliest opportunity” by Lord Sainsbury in his report of the independent panel on technical education, published July 2016.

This week’s review announcements come nearly a month after another batch of results of the IfATE’s second funding band review.

It covers 30 standards and to date, 27 have had new funding bands signed off. The remaining three standards are expected to have their final funding bands revealed later this year.

The creative and design route consultation closes on 24 September, and the one for hair and beauty closes on 22 September.

 

The 15 standards in the creative and design route review:

 

Bespoke Tailor and Cutter

Watchmaker

Spectacle maker

Junior Journalist

Outside Broadcast Engineer

Live Event Rigger

Assistant Technical Director – visual effects

Junior 2D Artist – visual effects

Broadcast Production Assistant

Creative Venue Technician

Junior Content Producer

Bespoke Saddler

Organ builder

Live Event Technician

Publishing Assistant

The standard in the hair and beauty route review:

Level 2 Hair Professional

Ofsted finds ‘significant’ safeguarding concerns at specialist college

A specialist college that teaches students with autism and other complex needs has dropped two grades to ‘inadequate’ after Ofsted found “significant” safeguarding concerns.

Cambian Lufton College, based in south Somerset, received the lowest possible rating from the education watchdog today after previously receiving a grade two in July 2016.

Inspectors found that senior leaders’ actions to “maintain or improve” the quality of education have been “ineffective”, and they have not ensured that students are studying courses at the “correct level”.

Most concerning was that leaders and governors have been presiding over a culture of “ineffective” safeguarding, where they do not ensure all students “are kept safe”.

Staff have “comprehensively mismanaged” safeguarding records, according to Ofsted, and senior leaders “do not consistently respond to incidents appropriately and quickly” nor do they review incidents “thoroughly enough”.

Those caring for students with complex health needs, including epilepsy, “have not received appropriate training”, while senior leaders “do not ensure effective oversight of incidents of physical restraint”.

Senior leaders also do not review medication errors to ensure further incidents can be prevented. “When errors are made, there is a lack of follow-up discussion, training and monitoring of staff in order to minimise future risks to students,” Ofsted said.

A spokesperson for the college said it was “disappointed by the findings” as “this is not the standard that we expect”.

“We have a clear plan to address the areas where we have fallen short and return the college to its previous recognised high standards,” he added.

While safeguarding and senior leadership needs urgent improvement, Ofsted did praise Cambian Lufton College for ensuring its students make “good progress” in English, maths and information and communication technology.

Students also “enjoy their learning and the wide range of additional activities on offer to them” and they develop “useful skills to help them in their future lives, such as cooking and budgeting”.

The college currently teaches 88 students.

Wave of companies join apprenticeship register in first major update in nearly a year

A wave of organisations have been added to the refreshed register of apprenticeship training providers, while nearly 20 have been removed – in its first major update in almost 12 months.

Forty three additional providers have been allowed on by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, including 25 main providers, 14 supporting and four employers.

Nineteen providers, meanwhile, have been removed from the register, most of which were main providers.

Eleven have changed from being main providers to being supporting, so they can only work as subcontractors; and two have made the opposite journey.

This update follows a year-long review, started in October 2017, that led to new “stringent and challenging entry requirements” for the register.

These requirements were brought in by the ESFA after FE Week uncovered instances where companies run by their sole director from their home address were being given access to millions in apprenticeship funding, despite having zero experience of delivering government-funded programmes.

Analysis by this publication in December found that almost a third (580) of providers on the register did not deliver any apprenticeships in 2017.

But under this stricter regime, applicants had to have been trading for 12 months at least in order to be eligible, and provide a full set of accounts to be on the register.

Subcontractors delivering less than £100,000 of provision a year also needed to register.

Additionally, the agency will throw providers off the register if they go 12 months with no delivery after joining the register.

Getting onto the register, then, will be a relief for many providers, especially after most were left hanging by the government for months following their applications in December.

This is despite the ESFA planning to tell providers if they have been successful 12 weeks after their bid.

Since October 2018, only 23 other companies have been added to the register – all of whom were supporting providers.

The full list of new providers is below:

 

FE Commissioner called in as principal on leave for ‘personal reasons’

The FE Commissioner’s team will visit Richmond-upon-Thames College next month after its principal went on indefinite leave for ‘personal reasons’.

Robin Ghurbhurun has been the high-profile leader of the college since 2014, on top of seven non-executive roles, including chair of the Association of Colleges’ technology portfolio group and director of JISC.

However, since at least early this month his role has been filled on an interim basis by the deputy principal, Jason Jones, who joined the college in March.

It is understood intervention from the government is connected to financial failings amid plans for an £80 million investment in a new building.

Learner outcomes are one of the success stories from Ghurbhurun’s time at the college, as achievement rates have risen from 77.3 per cent in 2013/14 to 83.5 per cent in 2017/18.

This improvement helped bring the college up from an Ofsted grade three to grade two in 2017, with inspectors praising Ghurbhurun, governors and managers for being “very successful in improving rapidly the outcomes for students” across all levels, qualifications and the majority of subject areas.

But there has not been a similar success with the college’s finances: the FE Commissioner’s visit comes after the college generated a £2.4 million deficit in 2017/18.

Between November 2016 and April 2017, the college had to make use of an overdraft facility of £750,000, which was fully paid back in May 2017.

In addition, it has seen a 47 per cent decline in 16-18 student numbers between 2014/15 and 2018/19, equating to a 38 per cent decline in funding over that period according to the ESFA allocations.

Richmond was previously in FE Commissioner-led financial intervention from November 2015 until July 2016.

Despite the college’s difficult financial straits however, work started in June last year on a new campus building costing £80 million.

Asked whether the project was still on track, contractors ISG said it is progressing exactly on schedule and on budget, and they have a “strong and positive working relationship” with the college.

A spokesperson for Richmond-upon-Thames College said: “The college confirmed today that its principal and CEO, Robin Ghurbhurun, has resigned from his post with immediate effect for personal reasons.

“Transitional arrangements are in place.  Jason Jones will act as interim principal and CEO and the college’s accounting officer pending the search for a permanent replacement.”

Ghurbhurun declined to comment.

Ex-No 10 adviser: Williamson taking skills role “not good” for FE policy

A former Downing Street advisor gives his insider view on what Gavin Williamson taking the skills brief will mean for the sector – and he does not believe the DfE’s promises this will make FE more of a priority.

What to make of the announcement – finally – that the Skills Minister portfolio will be held by the Secretary of State, rather than a junior minister?

On the one hand, clearly it’s a positive. FE will now have its voice heard around the Cabinet table, and by a senior member of the Cabinet at that. (It sounds technical, but more junior ‘attending Cabinet’ ministers – including Jo Johnson – tend to get called late on in any Cabinet discussion, after more senior ministers have spoken, and often when it is clear what the consensus view is likely to be and there’s less scope to make a counterpoint.)

But my overall view is that this not good for FE policymaking – and not good for the sector overall.

The secretary of state’s role, in any department, is largely to make final decisions on issues of policy. He or she does so, crucially, having taken detailed advice from junior Ministers who have considered any issue for more time. And the SoS also has an important role in being the final arbiter of a departmental position, when junior Ministers (politely, naturally), disagree with each other.

Both of these are at risk. Taking the first issue first, it is simply implausible for any secretary of state to dedicate as much time to FE as a junior minister will.

Gavin Williamson simply has too broad a portfolio to have diary space, or headspace, to do all the work that junior ministers do day in and day out – meeting stakeholders, engaging in discussions with civil servants, or doing committee work and dispatch box appearances in the Commons.

Good junior ministers are the lifeblood of making public administration run well. Any college, or FE organisation, is going to find it much harder to find time to discuss issues with the secretary of state than with a skills minister.

That means, in turn, that decisions made on these issues will not have necessarily had all the input from the FE sector which good policy requires.

This isn’t to say, of course, that the skills minister is the minister for the FE sector, and as no one needs pointing out, it’s not as if FE has always held a privileged position with regards DfE decisions, but at least government decisions on FE are theoretically informed ones.

The second issue is also now harder to achieve.

The SoS will need to make decisions in future months on the DfE position on anything from legislative time, to responding to other departmental proposals, to (pertinently) asking for funding in the Spending Review.

Human nature – and the experience of anyone who has watched impromptu children’s football games – tells us that if any individual is both a participant and a referee, it’s hard to do both well.

Let’s take a practical example – the policy on requiring post-16 GCSE resits.

The ‘skills’ perspective and ‘schools’ perspective on this may differ. If the secretary of state has considered the policy from a skills perspective and formed a view, would this realistically change when it comes to him for sign off as SoS, regardless of the merits of the counter argument?

Or let’s talk about funding. DfE will almost certainly want to ask for more money for FE in the Spending Review.

But it’s likely to want to do so for schools and for HE as well. If HMT says there isn’t enough for all of those and DfE has to prioritise, how is that final decision taken?

So, it’s bad for policy. But is it nevertheless good for FE if the SoS is – bluntly – biased towards them?

Cynically, that may be the case in some instances. But this is only true if he can genuinely take the time to form an opinion on the FE case.

Otherwise the risk is that in a discussion, a junior minister for another area, or a Secretary of State for another department, speaks up – and there’s no one in the room who makes the FE case at all.

 

 

 

Union critical of government axing skills minister post

Boris Johnson’s axing of the dedicated skills minister position has been criticised by the University and College Union.

In a highly unusual move, the Department for Education today revealed there would be no dedicated minister for apprenticeships and skills as there has been for at least the past decade, most recently Anne Milton.

The DfE instead announced that, almost a week after he was originally appointed, education secretary Gavin Williamson would take up the brief.

This comes after the appointment of two schools’ ministers, a universities minister, and a children’s parliamentary under-secretary.

And after it was mooted that universities minister Jo Johnson, who sits in cabinet with Williamson, would take on the FE brief.

UCU acting general secretary Paul Cottrell compared the situation unfavorably with that of higher education and schools, which have kept their dedicated ministers.

“We do not believe losing the dedicated skills minister is a positive step for further education, or suggests the sector is held in high regard by the new administration,” he said.

Boris Johnson, at his first Commons outing as prime minister last Wednesday, said FE and skills would be a “priority” for his government.

During his campaign for the Conservative Party leadership, he also pledged to “do more to fund our amazing FE colleges”.

Cottrell said they shall have to wait and see if Johnson’s commitments translate into proper funding.

Response from elsewhere in the sector to the news FE will be handled by a cabinet minister has been more positive: the Association of Colleges called it a “very positive sign”; while the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said it shows Johnson is “serious” about the sector.