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The new boss of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is “excited to step out of the confines” of the Department for Education and have “more of an independent voice”.

Civil servant veteran Jennifer Coupland made the admission during her first sit down interview with FE Week today.

She pledged to instil “collaboration” into the institute’s operation, after she replaced Sir Gerry Berragan at the helm of government quango in November.

“In terms of my leadership style I have a track record in apprenticeship and technical education policy and working with the sector, colleges, the Association of Colleges, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and others in a really collaboratively way.

“I think I recognise that you need to have people on board to deliver significant change and if you don’t do that then that change doesn’t get routed into the system. I will be looking at how we embed that more into the way the institute works in a collaborative way going forward.”

Coupland made headlines this week after she called for an additional £750 million of government funding a year to prop-up small businesses’ apprenticeships.

This was a big step-change to what she has been allowed to say in public in her roles at the Department for Education.

Asked if she felt liberated by leaving the department, she said: “One of the reasons I was interested in the job was I thought it would be an exciting move for me to step out of the confines of the department if you like and have a more independent voice in the system.”

Reflecting on her predecessor’s time at the institute, Coupland said Berragan “did a fantastic job in his two years here”.

“We doubled in size and he brought a degree of order and systematised the whole operation in terms of standard approvals,” she added.

“Looking ahead over the next five years my priorities are really going to be around making sure that we are operating as efficiently as we can, making sure we are as collaborative as we possibly can be, but also using the fact that we have this unique suite of employers.

“We’re working with 6,000 employers on an annual basis, it gives us a degree of authority I think in the system to speak on behalf of employers about the things they’re telling us that matter for apprenticeships and technical education going forward.”

She said the IfATE has an “exciting year ahead” and revealed they will launch two consultations in the spring: one of funding and the other on external quality assurance.

“Of course we are launching the new T-levels in September so I think it is going to be a really exciting time for the institute and I’m really looking forward to 2020,” she added.

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

Prior to that Coupland spent three years as the deputy director of the Apprenticeships Unit.

Bonuses paid to men working at the Department for Education were on average 3.8 per cent larger than those paid to women last year.

Although the overall gender pay gap at the department continues to decrease, new figures show that in 2019, men received larger bonuses than women for the first time since records began.

The bonus gap was previously 2 per cent in favour of women in 2018, and there was no gap at all in 2017, the first year public bodies had to report on gender pay.

The median gender pay gap at the department has gone from 5.9 per cent in favour of men in 2017 to 5.3 per cent in 2019.

The latest figures also show that the proportion of highest-paid employees who are women has fallen, from 53 per cent in 2017 and 2018 to 50 per cent in 2019.

This is despite women making up 53.4 per cent of the department’s workforce, down from 57 per cent in 2018.

The DfE said it had undertaken “a number of activities to focus on closing the gender pay gap” and continues to “review and refresh all activites on an annual basis”.

Ofsted has also revealed it no longer has a median gender pay gap. The gap was previously 19.8 per cent in favour of men in 2018 and 2.3 per cent in 2017.

The bonus gap at Ofsted also fell from 25 per cent in 2018 to 7.7 per cent in 2019.

Nerd note: Although organisations report on both their mean and median pay gap, we report on the median as this is less likely to be distorted by outliers.

More than 2,500 apprentices and adult learners have been left in the lurch after their provider immediately exited the training market following a grade four Ofsted report.

Progress to Excellence Limited (PtE), an independent learning provider established in 1997, today dropped from ‘good’ to ‘inadequate’.

The education watchdog reported that leaders’ and governors’ growth strategy to expand the curriculum “has had a negative impact on the quality of education and training that apprentices and learners receive”.

Leaders “failed” to recruit enough high-quality staff to meet the increased range of vocational programmes on offer.

“Too many” apprentices and learners have experienced “disruption to their learning because of staffing issues”, who told inspectors that they “are having a poor experience”.

Following publication of the report today, Katy Lennon, acting chief executive officer of PtE, said: “Progress to Excellence Ltd will be exiting the apprenticeship market, with immediate effect. We will also stop offering funding for courses via advanced learner loans.

“All employers and learners are being notified of this situation, and where necessary, they will be supported by ourselves and the Education and Skills Funding Agency to find suitable alternative training to support their professional development.”

It is not known if the ESFA terminated PtE’s contracts, which is typical when a private provider is rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted.

The firm declined to comment on whether it would shut down completely or if there would be any job losses. Its financial accounts showed there were 140 employees for the year ended 31 March 2018.

At the time of inspection in December, there were 2,008 apprentices, 609 adult learners and “a very small number of learners on traineeship programmes” at the Wirral-based provider.

PtE subcontracted out around 250 apprentices to four subcontractors.

Apprenticeship programmes included health and care, business and engineering and manufacturing at levels 2 to 5 while adult learners, who all used advanced learner loans to pay for their courses, studied hairdressing, beauty and fitness at level 3 and 4.

According to Ofsted, apprentices and learners were “frustrated” by how poor PtE staff “keep them informed”, and they complained that they have had “many different training and assessment officers”.

Students did “not benefit from a challenging and broad curriculum”.

While adult learners, most of whom are non-working parents, unemployed or ex-offenders, were reported as being “proud of the improvements they make and the skills they develop”, apprentices were found to be making “slow progress”.

Inspectors said apprentices and learners “are not prepared well enough for their next steps” because the advice on offer is “not impartial”. Careers advice was not “aspirational enough”.

Despite action being taken by the new chief executive after she identified a decline in quality, “too many apprentices” told Ofsted they were having “a poor experience” and about one fifth of current apprentices were beyond their planned end dates.

In 2017/18, over one third of apprentices did not achieve their apprenticeship.

The inspectorate said governors failed to hold previous senior leaders to account, apprentices were routinely not placed on the right apprenticeship and training and assessment officers do not ensure that all learners are on the correct programme.

The latter did offer developmental feedback to most learners but it was reported that they did “not support apprentices who have additional learning needs well enough.”

However, safeguarding arrangements at the provider were praised for being effective.

Apprenticeships at a major airline have been heavily criticised by Ofsted, which found “disorganisation” and “inconsistency” meant too many employees “did not see the value of being an apprentice”.

British Airways, an employer provider which is drawing down government apprenticeship funding for over 500 of its own staff, was found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in one area and ‘reasonable progress’ in two others in an early monitoring report.

Apprenticeship providers that make ‘insufficient progress’ are typically suspended from taking on and training their own new apprentices by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

A BA spokesperson said they do not believe the report was a “fair” assessment of its provision and claimed that inspectors only spoke to three per cent of apprentices.

They also pointed out that Ofsted’s inspection only looked at the apprenticeship programme that BA delivers itself – the level 3 cabin crew standard.

The airline also has apprentices in a number of other areas, such as engineering, customer service, head office, and cargo, which were not subject to the inspection as they are delivered by other providers.

While apprentices on the level 3 cabin crew standard are “proud” to work for the employer provider, Ofsted found they are “frustrated by the disorganisation and inconsistent approach they experience in their apprenticeship”.

As a result, many of the ones inspectors spoke to “do not see the value of being an apprentice”.

Inspectors said they are not “sufficiently aware” they are even on an apprenticeship when they are recruited.

The arrangements that have been put in place with a subcontractor to ensure apprentices gain English and maths qualifications are not effective, the report reads, and too many learners failed their maths exams.

Leaders and managers do not ensure staff are giving apprentices clear information about what to expect in their end-point assessment.

This has meant apprentices do not know enough about what the assessment will involve when they come to that point in their programme.

Trainers are also not granted sufficient time before they start their sessions to take prior knowledge into account, so they cannot alter the delivery to meet apprentices’ needs sufficiently.

And while BA was found to have made ‘reasonable progress’ in safeguarding, managers have recognised an issue around apprentices feeling “patronised” and instances of “intimidating behaviour while flying”.

Inspectors reported actions taken in response to this “have not had sufficient impact in improving the experience for a few apprentices”.

A spokesperson for the airline said they “do not believe the report offers a fair assessment” of their cabin crew scheme and Ofsted’s findings are “at odds with the positive feedback we receive from the vast majority of our apprentices”.

They added that BA “remains committed to investing in our people” and will continue to work closely with Ofsted following the monitoring visit.

Apprentices do receive appropriate training, inspectors found, and thanks to the training they become “competent and compliant” cabin crew members who can work safely, in a short period of time.

This is because they benefit from learning in “high-quality” training facilities which reflect their on-board experience “exactly” and trainers utilise their expert knowledge to teach legislative requirements and health and safety regulations.

For example, they teach apprentices to understand the ‘ditching’ process – where a plane has to land in water in an emergency – and practical activities are used to check learners know how to open and close doors securely.

The new boss of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has called for an additional £750 million of government money to prop-up small businesses’ apprenticeships.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Jennifer Coupland said the apprenticeship levy has meant small businesses have cut their training by ten per cent, while levy-payers have increased theirs by 20 per cent.

“It is time for the government to lean in more to support small and medium-sized businesses, to plug that gap,” Coupland said.

The institute’s chief executive, who started late last year, wants an extra £750 million, which she says would cover the cost for about 85,000 apprenticeships which non-levy payers cannot fund, in order to reach parity in the number of apprenticeships started by large and small employers.

FE Week was first to report, in 2018, the IfATE’s predictions that the levy would be overspent.

Coupland’s comments follow repeated warnings from organisations like the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) that the levy shortages meant small to medium enterprises were being cut out of apprenticeship funding.

Most recently at the beginning of this month, when an AELP survey found more than half of non-levy providers said their funding allocation was not sufficient to cover both the cost of existing apprentices and of new starts from an SME.

The Department for Education’s permanent secretary Jonathan Slater told the Public Accounts Committee last March that “hard choices” would have to be made in the face of the imminent overspend

And today Coupland admitted: “There is not sufficient money available for these small and medium-sized businesses and that’s what we need to improve upon.”

But the former director of professional and technical education in the Education and Skills Funding Agency appears to oppose attempts to stop levy-payers spending the cash on higher-level apprenticeships, which the AELP wants taken out of the scope of levy funding.

This is because she believes they fill skill gaps that have been identified by employers and IfATE is an “employer-led organisation” which wants to give employers “what they need out of the apprenticeship programme”.

And she said it would be “wrong” to broaden the scope of the levy to smaller businesses, or increase the percentage businesses pay.

The government has already put forward its own solution to the problem of SME apprenticeships by allowing small employers on to the digital apprenticeship service to access funding; until now, this had been open only to levy-payers.

Ofsted’s chief inspector is still “not happy” that some colleges steer too many of their students towards “superficially attractive” arts and media courses where there are limited job opportunities.

Amanda Spielman reiterated this concern, which she first raised at the 2018 Association of Colleges’ conference, during her speech at the watchdog’s annual report launch this morning.

She said the minority of colleges simply try to “fill their rolls and attract funding”, whether or not the programmes they offer “open doors for the students that take them”.

“This doesn’t mean that the courses the young people are taking are completely worthless, but flooding a local job market with young people with say low-level arts and media qualifications when the big growth in demand is for green energy workers, will result in too many under-employed and dissatisfied young people and wind turbines left idle,” Spielman told the audience.

“So we need a clearer focus on matching skills to opportunities not just for Brexit. Many FE providers operate in places the government says it wants to level up, what better way to level up than to radically improve the quality of vocational and skills education in our towns.

“But it does also mean tackling the small minority of our colleges that have under-performed or been stuck for years.”

She added that the government must think “strategically” about skills and how the FE sector is funded and “encouraged to provide the right courses of the right quality”.

When Spielman first spoke out about the “mismatch” between the numbers of students taking arts and media courses and their “future employment in the industry” in November 2018, she said the qualifications give learners “false hope”.

Her controversial comments made headlines in The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mail.

In Ofsted’s annual report, the watchdog said high levels of management and health apprenticeships are a “mismatch” compared to the government’s industrial strategy and needs to be addressed “urgently” (full story here).

After today’s speech, she told FE Week: “There is always a balance in the system.

“It is very important to have a level of local autonomy in decision making but the funding of post-16 education is, there is a strategic and tactical alignment to it.

“I am encouraging government to make use of the powers that it has to decide where and how to channel money to help make sure that overall we do the best job we can for young people.”

High levels of management and health apprenticeships are a “mismatch” compared to the government’s industrial strategy and needs to be addressed “urgently”, Amanda Spielman has said.

In Ofsted’s annual stock take of education, the chief inspector revealed that performance in the FE sector has “remained static this year”, but the “rapid growth” of apprenticeships is a concern.

Out of every 100 apprenticeships started in 2018/19, the watchdog found that 15 are health apprenticeships, 12 are business management, only six are in construction, five in ICT and five in engineering.

Business management and health accounted for almost half of all higher-level apprenticeships started last year.

“This does not appear to align well with our grand challenges as a country,” Spielman said.

She explained that the latest update to the industrial strategy highlighted four “grand challenges” that need to be met for the country’s future economic prosperity: artificial intelligence and data, ageing society, clean growth and future of mobility.

However, the industrial strategy “fails to recognise that the skills our nation needs may depend on the scale of apprenticeship delivery, particularly at higher levels”.

The FE sector needs to work “much more in tandem with the government’s industrial strategy”.

The chief inspector added that too many training providers are “not clear on the purpose of an apprenticeship” and as a result, their provision can “lack adequate sequencing or attention to education outside the workplace”.

“The gap between knowledge and skills required for our country and future and current provision remains, in particular in relation to a lack of training for low-skilled workers.”

Spielman concluded: “The apprenticeship funding system needs to target levy money more directly to skills shortages.”

Today’s annual report also confirmed what FE Week had revealed in October: 78 per cent of all general FE colleges were rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ as of August 31, 2019, up from 76 per cent in 2017/18.

It went on to show that the proportion of private providers placed in the top two grades has fallen from 78 per cent to 76 per cent.

Meanwhile, the proportion of ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ community learning providers increased from 88 per cent to 91 per cent.

Overall, 81 per cent of inspected FE and skills providers are in the top two grades.