College in £1.4m legal battle with Nigerian state unblocks staff access to FE Week

Highbury College has unblocked access to FE Week on its internet servers following heavy backlash from government officials and the national media.

The Portsmouth-based college pulled the shutters down on this newspaper’s website last week following an exposé about its ill-fated venture in Nigeria.

But the fallout from the attempt to suppress the media coverage led to the story being published to a wider audience, following articles by the Press Gazette, Private Eye, and Portsmouth’s The News.

High-profile alumni from Highbury College’s renowned journalism centre even took to Twitter to condemn the action.

A spokesperson for the college confirmed today that access to FE Week has now been reopened on its internal internet servers, but would not comment further.

The college previously said that it blocked this newspaper’s website as it deemed the story, which revealed Highbury was locked in a £1.4 million legal battle with the Nigerian state and gave an insight its wider financial position, to be “inappropriate” and “inaccurate”.

This was despite and the story being based on the college’s own board minutes and accounts.

The college said it had a “duty of care” to protect its students and staff from such material.

Upon hearing about the unprecedented action, skills minister Anne Milton said she was “shocked”, while Ofsted’s chief inspector said the decision was “astonishing and concerning”.

Dominic Ponsford, the editor-in-chief at the Press Gazette, pointed out that Highbury College must have never heard of the ‘Streisand effect’ – “whereby attempting to hide or censor a piece of information you have the unintended consequence of publicising it far more widely than it would have been anyway”.

Following articles in Press Gazette and Private Eye, Tom Edwards, a broadcast journalist for the BBC and former Highbury student, tweeted that he was “embarrassed” for the college which “prides itself on training tomorrow’s journalists clamping down on press freedom”.

“Clueless and cringeworthy,” he added.

 

Mark Austin, a news presenter at Sky News and Highbury College alumni, tweeted: “I don’t think blocking legitimate news sites is a good idea. I support freedom of the press. I liked my time at @HighburyCollege.”

It comes at a time when FE Week continues to press the college to respond to a Freedom of Information request submitted last year.

This newspaper requested the college’s corporate expense claims for the past five years nearly 70 working days ago, but Highbury has chosen not to provide the information.

This is despite FOI law stating responses should take no longer than 20 working days, or 40 working days if the organisation needs to apply the public interest test.

An FOI expert believes the repeated refusal to release the material is “skirting with a possible criminal offence”.

FE Week has reported the college to the Information Commissioner’s Office for their failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

The spokesperson for Highbury previously said: “We look forward to having a positive conversation with the Information Commissioners’ Office about the vexatious nature of your FOI request.”

From a previous FOI, it was revealed that Highbury’s principal, Stella Mbubaegbu, used college cash to pay for a first-class return flight from London to Dallas at a cost of £4,132. The college has refused to say whether or not this flight was work related.

Colleges will put learners on inappropriate courses without funding increase, warns Ofsted boss

Colleges are likely to increase the amount of courses that “attract the most learners” but which don’t offer “real long-term life prospects” if funding isn’t increased, Ofsted chief inspector has warned.

Amanda Spielman appeared before MPs on the public accounts committee this afternoon, during which she was asked about the impact of cuts of the quality of FE provision.

“This is an area where I genuinely think to deliver what we expect of post-16, it’s hard to see how they can do without an increase in base funding rate,” she said.

Without such an increase, Ms Spielman said she would “expect to see continued efforts to slant FE provision towards the things that can be provided most cheaply” or that “attract the most learners in but don’t necessarily match people” with “the local labour market” or provide “real long-term life prospects”.

“I’d expect to see some clearer decline in the quality of teaching,” she added.

Her comments today follow her controversial speech at the Association of Colleges annual conference in November last year, when she referenced Ofsted research that found a “mismatch between the numbers of students taking courses and their future employment in the industry” in certain level two subjects – particularly arts and media.

At the time, she questioned whether colleges were “putting the financial imperative of headcount in the classroom ahead of the best interests of the young people taking up their courses”.

Today’s hearing wasn’t the first time that Ms Spielman has spoken about the impact of funding pressures on FE provision, and called for the base rate for 16 to 19-year-olds to be increased.

In October she wrote to the PAC to offer her “strong view” that the rate should be increased in the forthcoming government spending review, due sometime this year.

She said that the “real-term cuts to FES funding are affecting the sustainability and quality of FES provision”, but for the first time said this was now “based on our inspection evidence”, and called on the government to take action.

However, enquiries by FE Week at the time found only three published inspection reports that referred to stretched resources – and none that said quality had reduced because of funding issues.

Ofsted’s 2017/18 annual report, published in December, showed that  a higher proportion of general FE colleges are now rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ than last year – from 67 per cent to 76 per cent.

But there are also fewer colleges than in previous years – 178 at the end of 2017/18, compared with 189 in 2016/17 and 207 the year before.

Ms Spielman told MPs today that the “profile of inspection outcomes from last year” shouldn’t be taken “as a definitive statement”.

The recent area reviews of post-16 education and training, which led to a large number of failing colleges merging, “made the profile quite lumpy”, she said.

“It is an area about which I’m significantly concerned,” she said.

Today’s hearing came two days after as many as 50 MPs came together to debate a petition calling for FE funding to be increased.

There was unanimous condemnation from all sides over the real-terms cuts to funding, with rates for 16 and 17-year-olds having been frozen at £4,000 since 2013.

DfE U-turns over study programme rule change

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has U-turned on plans to bar 16- to 19-year-olds who’ve passed GCSE maths and English from following level one study programmes.

The announcement today comes after the agency received feedback from a “small but significant number of providers” on the rule change, originally announced last month.

“We have decided not to apply the change in 2019 to 2020 and will discuss the responses with the sector over the next few months,” today’s ESFA update said.

“We will then decide whether to proceed with this change for academic year 2020 to 2021. We aim to confirm our decision on this by the end of May 2019.”

The decision was welcomed by Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, who said it was a “good move”.

The “question about whether 16-year-olds with GCSE passes should be enrolled on level one courses” was a good one to be raised by the ESFA, he said, but “the original plan to change the rules in 2019/20 was wrong” – not least because “colleges are half-way through the information and advice cycle”.

“The skills that students are learning on these construction and engineering courses are very different to what they’re learning in school”, he said.

“A number of colleges contacted us to query ESFA’s original decision. We’re pleased that they’ve listened and will be looking at the issue in more detail in the run-up to 2020.”

The proposed rule change was first announced by the ESFA on December 18.

It said that learners “with prior attainment in English and maths at grade four or above that are undertaking a vocational qualification are not expected to be on an entry level or level one core aim” from 2019/20.

The change, included as an advance notification of a planned change to funding guidance, would still apply “even if they have no previous experience in the vocational area”.

But it sparked warnings from the AoC that it would “create the wrong incentives for students”.

How to transfer our success in skills competitions into productivity

The training methods behind the UK’s international success in skills competitions can be transferred to the wider economy, says Neil Bentley-Gockmann

This week London plays host to a global ministerial audience for the annual Education World Forum. In welcoming his fellow ministers to the UK capital, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, rightly paid tribute to the world-class nature of British education. As he said in a recent article: “From our nurseries to our universities, in many ways UK education is already a world leader”. To the examples of schools and higher education institutions that the minister cites, I would like to add another: our proud track record of world-class success in skills.

Thanks to the talent and hard work of young people and expert professionals from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the UK has consistently placed in the top 10 of nations in each of the European and global skills competitions in which we have participated over recent years. Most recently, UK performance at WorldSkills Abu Dhabi 2017 and EuroSkills Budapest 2018 were hallmarked by high calibre medal hauls. This year, the bar will be raised even higher as we prepare to compete at the Skills Olympics in Kazan, Russia across the full range of skills: mechanical engineering, web design, cooking, beauty therapy and many, many more.

Why is our participation in Kazan this summer so important? Because our international rivals are increasingly using events like the Skills Olympics as a key benchmark measure of the quality of their technical education systems.

We are right to celebrate the world-leading status that UK education enjoys

If the UK nations want to continue to hold their heads high in the company of China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, France and Switzerland, we must continue to invest in our young people. At WorldSkills UK, our mission, working with governments, business and the education sectors from across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is to do exactly that. And the value of our international success transcends the medals that our young role models bring home: it is success that touches the wider UK economy in terms of productivity and inward investment.

That’s why this year we are launching the WorldSkills UK Productivity Lab. The Lab is built on the principle that the training methodology behind the UK’s international success at the Skills Olympics and EuroSkills can be transferred into the wider economy to boost productivity. We believe the insights from our success has a positive contribution to make to drive up training standards in the UK to world-class levels, which is why we are currently working with Oxford University and the think-tank RSA on research to unlock our medal-winning formula. We are also developing new products to help businesses with the know-how to become world-class when it comes to training standards and productivity. 

On inward investment, being a world-leading nation at events like the Skills Olympics showcases the high quality of the skills base across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That’s why we welcome the education secretary’s reference to the forthcoming new international education strategy, which he is developing alongside the international trade secretary. I see a great potential for WorldSkills UK playing a full role in meeting the strategy’s goals in terms of showcasing our world-class credentials in Kazan this year and in Austria (for EuroSkills Graz 2020) and Shanghai (for the Skills Olympics in 2021), providing a ready-made platform for governments across the UK to promote our technical education systems as being able to meet inward investors’ vital skills needs.

We are right to celebrate the world-leading status that UK education enjoys.  To their number we can add our status as a world-class nation for skills. As governments across the world increasingly prioritise their success in skills competitions, so we in the UK must make renewed investment in our world-leading position and harness this prowess to enhance the UK nations’ reputations as competitive destinations in which to invest for jobs growth.

College claims Institute of Technology bid ‘not in jeopardy’ despite Ofsted grade three

A college that has plummeted two Ofsted grades from its previous ‘outstanding’ has insisted its bid to open an Institute of Technology is “not in jeopardy”.

Swindon College was rated ‘requires improvement’ overall and in five out of eight headline fields, in a report published today and based on an inspection in December.

It was shortlisted by the Department for Education last May to open an IoT, but today’s verdict means it no longer meets the original application criteria – which stated that colleges must be rated at least ‘good’ overall by Ofsted.

However, a spokesperson for the college said that it had met “all of the quality criteria set” when it submitted its bid in time for the stage two deadline in November – the guidance for which is not in the public domain.

“The IoT bid criteria is quite clear and therefore this is not in jeopardy”, she added.

The college’s new Ofsted grade “does not affect the evaluation” but “may be discussed at interview stage”.

The spokesperson also pointed out that the college’s apprenticeships and adult learning provision – which she said the IoT provision would be “predominantly focused on” – had both been rated ‘good’.

FE Week has asked the DfE to confirm if Swindon College would remain in the list of 16 IoT finalists, but has yet to receive a response.

IoTs were first mooted back in 2015, and it’s expected that 10 and 15 of the institutes will be created.

They’re intended to bring FE and HE providers together, along with employers, to deliver technical skills training with a particular focus on levels four and five, and will be backed by £170 million of capital funding between them.

Swindon isn’t the first shortlisted college to have slipped below the IoT minimum criteria after submitting its bid.

College group giant NCG has remained in the list of finalists, despite being downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted in June.

However, a DfE spokesperson said in July last year that colleges would need to be rated at least ‘good’ by the deadline for stage two applications – meaning it’s unlikely to have progressed further.

The fate of North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College’s bid is also up in the air, after it was assessed as having ‘inadequate’ financial health by the Education and Skills Funding Agency in September – another key criteria for an IoT bid.

Inspectors noted in today’s report that Swindon had been through “challenging times” since its previous inspection in 2013, and leaders had “failed to maintain standards”.

This was attributed in part to the “many changes in staff and leadership”: a “large number” of teachers and managers had left the college in that time, and a middle-management reorganisation in 2015/16 was “unsuccessful”.

“The current leadership team is making well-considered changes but has much to do,” the report said.

The proportion of apprentices and learners on study programmes to have achieved their qualifications had “declined over the last four years” – with the latter now “too low”.

However, both adult learning programmes and apprenticeships were rated ‘good’.

A college spokesperson said it had “identified our key areas for development and we are fully committed to implementing plans based on the report recommendations”.

The successful IoT bidders are set to be announced in March, and the aim was for the first institutes to open in 2019 – although it’s not clear if that’s still the case.

Fully fund level 3 to 5 training in ‘skills shortage areas’, AoC proposes

The adult education budget should be used to fully fund training at levels three to five in skills shortage areas once the UK has left the EU, the Association of Colleges has urged.

It’s one of a number of recommendations put forward in a new report, ‘Developing a Four Nations Colleges Blueprint for a post-Brexit economy’, produced by the AoC along with its counterparts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

It calls for a “radical re-think” of skills policy and investment, based on two priorities: raising the skills “baseline” to level three, which it says is “commensurate with the needs for the future labour market”, and tackling intermediate and higher level technical skills shortages at “local and regional level through college-employer partnerships”.

To do this, it calls for a national retraining programme which would offer “fully-funded training in skills shortage occupations or retraining for skilled employees in jobs at risk at levels three to five”.

The “programme would form a relatively short-term investment to improve productivity, fill significant emerging skills gaps in priority areas”, it said, and would be funded “through a ringfence of the adult education budget.”

However, an AoC spokesperson was unable to say how much the policy would cost to introduce, or whether the association was calling for the AEB to be increased to cover it.

Instead, he said the paper was intended to “provoke debate and discussion”.

Other recommendations include a “lifelong learning entitlement”, which would be a “statutory entitlement to accredited education and training, relevant to identified labour market opportunities, to at least level three” for adults who don’t already have a qualification at that level.

Like the national retraining programme, this would be funded through ringfencing the AEB, with individuals “able to access cash, allowing them to engage with education and training at the right time for them”.

This recommendation was first put forward last September in the AoC’s policy paper on an upgraded post-18 education system, at which time AoC boss David Hughes said it would cost an estimated £1 billion a year.

“This would involve the Department for Education reversing the 17.5 per cent cut to funding at age 18 and increasing the adult education budget to replace learner loans,” the AoC said at the time.

Today’s report also calls for a “new social contract” to better fund all full- and part-time FE and HE students, and provide an “entitlement to maintenance grants up to the equivalent of the Living Wage”, as well as incentives to employers to encourage them to release employees to retrain and upskill to level three.

“The challenges posed by a post-Brexit economy mean we’re looking at a major slowdown in skilled migration,” said David Hughes, the AoC’s chief executive.

“Furthermore, the increasing skills gap in areas like STEM and other key sectors mean we need to focus our efforts more than ever on having a technical education system which meets the needs of all – allowing them to train and retrain throughout their careers, with colleges being central to this.”

Gordon Marsden, shadow skills minister, said the report “vindicates what we have been saying about how critical it is to use our world-class FE sector given skills challenges in the UK post Brexit”.

“Unfortunately, as we heard in parliament yesterday, successive Tory-led Governments have slashed FE budgets to the severe detriment of both students and staff. We’ve always said we need post-Brexit a UK wide skills strategy, that’s even more crucial now.”

A government-led national retraining scheme has been in development for the past 18 months, after it was promised in the Conservative party election manifesto in 2017.

However, information on the scheme – including how it will operate, who will be eligible and how much it will cost – has so far been thin on the ground.

Representatives from its two partners on the scheme, the CBI and the TUC, told MPs on the education select committee earlier this month that they were “pushing” the government to share more details.

So far £100 million has been committed to the scheme, but Iain Murray, senior policy officer at the TUC, said the actual cost of delivering it could be “billions”.

MPs from all sides call for an end to six years of real-term FE funding rate cuts

There was cross-party and unanimous condemnation from dozens of MPs over real-terms cuts to FE funding during a Parliamentary debate, but campaigners want the government to now act.

As many as 50 MPs attended Westminster Hall on Monday to debate a petition which has so far attracted over 69,000 signatures by calling for college funding to be increased to parity with schools funding.

Despite cross-party support for greater funding for FE, debate convener Daniel Zeichner MP was sceptical: “The way we get results is endless pressure and noise, so the debate was helpful.

“But a debate is not a decision. What colleges need is cash.

“Ultimately, we know the economy is going to be shrinking with Brexit, so we have to ask ourselves where in the education system is likely to have the biggest hit.

“The Secretary of State is going to be more interested in schools, so it’s not an optimistic outlook.”

The debate was attended by some of the petition’s creators, including Brockenhurst College students Charlotte Jones and Hannah Powis.

Top row: Di Roberts (Brockenhurst College Principal), Steve Frampton (Association of Colleges president) Bottom row: A-level Brockenhurst students Laura Whitcher, Charlotte Jones and Hannah Powis in Parliament.

The learners came up with the idea of a petition on Parliament’s website during the Love Our Colleges campaign in October after finding out about the gap in funding between schools and FE colleges, which have seen cuts of nearly 30 per cent from 2009 to 2019.

Speaking the day after the debate, Hannah told FE Week: “We thought it was really important for sustainability to make sure we are able to continue providing the services we get from the college for future generations.

“Things like mental health support, which the college is really good at; we want to ensure that’s stable for future students.”

Since the petition began, other students at the college have found issues they are passionate about and started campaigning on them, following the petitioners’ lead.

“I think it’s really important for students to know they are able to effect change,” Charlotte said.

The pair will carry on putting pressure on politicians and make sure they are still listening to the complaints about FE funding.

They would like to see meetings being held with Treasury officials to discuss this and to get that additional funding for colleges.

How FE has constantly lost out on funding was raised by several MPs during yesterday’s debate, with education select committee chair Robert Halfon saying: “The chasm in funding for education either side of a student’s 16th birthday has now widened to 24 per cent.”

He related how the schools minister had told his committee the government decided to prioritise spending on five to 16-year-olds as it would have a more demonstrable impact on life chances.

“FE has been called the Cinderella of education, but we should remember that Cinderella became a member of the royal family, and she did not crash the carriage,” Mr Halfon said, making reference to the Duke of Edinburgh.

“We need to banish the ugly sisters of snobbery and underfunding.”

At the end of the debate, skills minister Anne Milton told MPs she would continue to champion FE in the run-up to the spending review – the Treasury’s audit of expenditure by every government department.

“In the run-up to the spending review, it is time to articulate the case for FE,” she said.

“We talk about it not being school or university, but we need a clear vision that everyone can get behind.

“The 16 to 18-year-old population has been declining for several years, but we will see an increase after 2020.

“By 2028, there will be a quarter more 16-year-olds than there are today, so the problem is coming up behind us.”

New Learndirect owner wins £20m in ESFA contracts

Learndirect has started to win government funding to deliver skills training again, after its new owner secured more than £20 million worth of European Social Fund contracts.

FE Week understands that the nation’s former largest FE provider won the funding, which is used to deliver employment and skills support to disadvantaged people, in four different areas across England following a recent tender.

It now has contracts worth more than £10 million to deliver programmes in the Marches Local Enterprise Partnership, while £3 million is to be used across Derby and Nottingham, £4 million in the West of England, and nearly £3.5 million in North East London.

The win comes six months after Learndirect had its various Education and Skills Funding Agency contracts, which totalled nearly £100 million, wound down following a damning grade four Ofsted report which surfaced in August 2017.

The training provider came under new ownership in June following a sale to Wayne Janse van Rensburg (pictured) for his firm Dimensions Training Solution to take the reins.

The £20 million ESF contracts will be run by run by ‘Dimensions Training Solution – Learndirect’.

Mr Janse van Rensburg was approached but declined to comment as the results were in a 10-day standstill period, which ends on January 28.

Dimensions Training Solution – Learndirect is nowhere near the size that it used to be, after Mr Janse van Rensburg sold its apprenticeships business in July and the government banned the company from being able to gain funding from the adult education budget following failures by its old leadership team.

It can however bid and win ESF cash, which is not inspected by Ofsted because much of it does not fall under “education or training”.

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

The current funding round is worth about €3 billion (£2.3 billion) across England over the period from 2014 to 2020.

ESF funding for this country is administered through the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Big Lottery Fund, which each provide match funding.

Many projects co-funded by ESFA, delivered with the involvement of local enterprise partnerships, focused on young people not in education, employment or training.

Although Learndirect’s £20 million contracts sound like a large win on the face of it, it is actually less than half what the provider won during a previous ESF tender.

In 2017, Learndirect secured 26 deals worth almost £49.5 million.

 

Top-performing college owed £500k pulls out of Saudi Arabia programme

A college has terminated its contract with the controversial Saudi Arabian Colleges of Excellence programme due to “on-going delays” in receiving payments resulting in an alleged £500,000 debt.

Dudley College, rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, began work with the Saudi government in 2011 and has taken part in various ventures in the country over the last eight years.

Most recently the college has delivered Capacity Building Contracts in Hafr Al-Batin Girls College from September 2017, which was due to conclude in 2020, as part of its work with Saudi’s Colleges of Excellence scheme.

But Dudley felt it had “no choice but to terminate this contract” after repeated failures by the programme to pay the college.

Speaking candidly about the decision, principal Lowell Williams said: “Despite the invaluable support provided by the UK’s Ambassador to the Kingdom and the Department for Trade and Industry, contractual payments remain in arrears to the value of £0.5 million.

“The position we find ourselves in is very frustrating. We believe we have been making a real difference to the lives of young women in the Kingdom.

“Whilst we understand that governmental issues in Saudi might have contributed to delays in payments, unfortunately as a result CoE have breached their contract with us.”

He added that it would “not be appropriate” for Dudley to use UK public funds to “sustain the cash flow of the project in Hafr Al-Batin Girls College”.

Colleges of Excellence was founded in 2013 to boost technical and vocational education and training in Saudi Arabia through partnerships with international providers.

But a number of providers dropped out of the programme early on as challenges with operating in the region became apparent.

An FE Week investigation in 2016 uncovered grave financial problems at some of the colleges taking part.

Lincoln College and the Hertfordshire Vocational Education Consortium won huge contracts from the CoE programme of around £250 million each in 2014. But both experienced significant losses associated with these contract in their accounts for the following year.

Mr Williams said today that Dudley’s “primary concern in reaching this decision is to protect the interests of our UK learners and to ensure they are not disadvantaged in any way”.

“We have always made it clear our international activity must be self-sustaining,” he explained.

“We would not continue to trade at risk with any other partner if there were significant contractual arrears.

“Since we began our work in Saudi Arabia we have generated an income of just over £3 million which has delivered a surplus in the region of £0.5 million.

“In the unlikely event that we are unable to recover the outstanding contracted sums, the college’s overall Saudi operations will have delivered a break even performance.”

Mr Williams said his college remains “fully committed” to its “other flagship international projects, particularly our work in India with the UK India Education Research Initiative and our British Council funded projects in South Africa and Pakistan”.

Dudley’s decision to terminate its Saudi contract because of unpaid debts comes a week after FE Week revealed that Highbury College called in the lawyers to recover a long-running £1.4 million debt held up in Nigeria, after a technical education project in the country went pear-shaped.

Colleges were warned off overseas ventures in 2016 following the collapse of AoC India, which fell just four years after launching when 25 UK college members quit.