The principal of a college group 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.

The “emolument” to John Connolly, who led the RNN Group until his resignation in mid-October, was “in lieu of notice, entitled holiday pay and early access to pension funds,” according to the group’s recently published 2017/18 accounts.

However, the group denied that this amounted to a payoff.

“The RNN Group in reaching amutual agreement to accept John Connolly’s request to step down, fulfilled its contractual obligation in respect of his terms of employment,” a spokesperson said.

The payment represented around a year’s salary for Mr Connolly, who received a pay package worth £161,000 in 2017/18, including pension costs of £19,000, according to the accounts.

The group has yet to recruit a permanent replacement for him, with Jason Austin, the group’s vice principal, currently filling the role on an interim basis.

A spokesperson said at the time that Mr Connolly had “considered for sometime whether he is the right person to take the RNN Group on to the next stage of the group’s journey”.

The decision to step down with immediate effect followed “discussion with the board” and was “by mutual agreement”.

The group was formed through the merger of Rotherham and North Nottinghamshire colleges in 2016, with Dearne Valley College joining in 2017.

As a merged college it doesn’t have an Ofsted grade yet, but the most recent inspection of Rotherham College in 2013 resulted in a ‘good’ rating.

However, an early monitoring visit carried out last February warned it was making ‘insufficient progress’ in managing subcontracted provision effectively.

According to its accounts, the group was assessed as having ‘good’ financial health for 2017/18 by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and is predicting an improvement to ‘outstanding’ by 2020/21.

It made an operating deficit of almost £2.5 million, which it said was “exacerbated by merger activities and costs”, on an income of £45.5 million.

However its borrowing levels were “low” and its balance sheet was “also a strong financial measure for the group”, according to the accounts.

Mr Connolly led North Nottinghamshire College until the merger in 2016, when he took over leadership of the group.

Over eight college leaders, including Mr Connolly, stepped down with little or no notice in the last few months of 2018.

Ten large academy trusts flouting the Baker clause will soon be issued letters from the skills minister to “remind them of their legal duty”.

The announcement comes just a day after secretary of state Damian Hinds said writing to schools who prevent FE providers from talking to students about technical education wouldn’t be “done lightly” and said the sending of letters was a “rare thing to do”.

Anne Milton, the skills minister, has been warning since August that the government would directly intervene where schools were flouting rules, but it is believed that no intervention has yet taken place.

Despite the announcement she will write to the 10 largest multi-academy trusts who are not complying with the clause to remind them of their duties, the Department for Education said her letters are being classed as a “reminder” rather than an intervention.

The press release accompanying the announcement said the government will “take appropriate action” if there is further evidence of a school failing to provide their students with a full range of information.

Just yesterday, secretary of state Damian Hinds used his appearance before the education select committee to insist he would not be “heavy handed” with schools with regards to the clause.

He told the committee: “Ultimately, if there’s total intransigence – and this isn’t something we wouldn’t do lightly – there’s the option for the minister to write to the school to remind them of their duties to ensure compliance. But the intention of this is not that we’re going to be getting into sending direction letters to schools, that’s not the idea at all.”

Asked by Ben Bradley if the way to ensure compliance was really just a “strongly worded letter”, Mr Hinds said: “In this line of work that is quite a rare thing to do”.

The controversial Baker clause requires schools to publish a policy statement online to show how they ensure education and training providers can access pupils to talk about technical education and apprenticeships.

Schools must also publish details about the careers programmes they offer, how the success of these programmes are measured and when the published information will be reviewed.

However, a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research last week found that two thirds of secondary schools were failing to follow the rules, with providers voicing concerns about a “lack of any real consequences”.

An FE Week investigation in September found that the 10 biggest multi-academy trusts in England had failed to comply fully with the requirements.

The government has launched the ‘Fire it Up’ campaign today, Thursday, to promote the huge variety of apprenticeship options available.

The campaign, which you can read more about here, will include national TV and social media adverts, as well as a new website providing advice, information and access to thousands of apprenticeship opportunities across the country.

A petition to increase college funding will get its day in the sun with a debate in the House of Commons.

On January 21, MPs, led by Daniel Zeichner, will debate the topic after a student petition reached 69,000 signatures.

It reads: “Funding for colleges has been cut by almost 30 per cent from 2009 to 2019.

“A decade of almost continuous cuts and constant reforms have led to a significant reduction in the resources available for teaching and support for sixth formers in schools and colleges; potentially restricted course choice; fewer adults in learning; pressures on staff pay and workload, a growing population that is not able to acquire the skills the UK needs to secure prosperity post-Brexit.

“We call on the Government to urgently increase college funding to sustainable levels, including immediate parity with recent increases to schools funding.”

News of the debate has been welcomed by many across the FE sector this morning.

 

Excellent news – great to hear that fair funding for FE will be discussed in Parliament next week. About time! Well done Brockenhurst students for making it happen. https://t.co/C3jfwrZzua

— Peter Mayhew-Smith (@Pmayhewsmith) January 17, 2019

 

Well done @brockcollege students for making this very important parliamentary FE funding debate happen #LoveOurColleges @AoC_info #UKfechat @AoCDavidH https://t.co/Namkr1oUS2

— Paul McKean (@EdtechMcKean) January 17, 2019

 

The petition was started in October last year by students at Brockenhurst College, in line with the Love Our Colleges campaign.

One of those students, Charlotte Jones, told FE Week: “Our teacher has talked to us previously about the way in which we are funded as students, and we decided as a group we wanted to do something about the inequality.

“All we want is equality, and I think that’s fair to ask.

“If we all had equal funding it would be a fair playing field, and everyone would be on the same level.”

The announcement of a debate follows a formal response by the government on the topic of the petition in November.

The response read: “We are funding priorities in further education including new T-Levels, and looking at the needs of colleges ahead of the Spending Review.

“However, colleges are not in scope for school pay arrangements.

“Therefore, we are considering the needs of FE providers separately.”

To see the petition, visit petition.parliament.uk/petitions/229744

Kensington and Chelsea College is considering a fresh merger attempt as it runs down its reserves created by the controversial sale of a campus after years of being in deficit.

The latest set of accounts for the embattled institution, which received its fifth consecutive grade three report from Ofsted this week, reveal more than £10 million deficit in the past three years, having accumulated “significant” reserves of £34.6 million.

The cash, which is quickly shrinking, was built up mostly by the sale of KCC’s Wornington Road campus, sold to the local council for £25.3 million in 2016 despite local opposition.

A spokesperson said that while it does have healthy reserves, the college has been running operational deficits for several years, “which in the long term are unsustainable”.

In 2015/16, KCC had an operating deficit of £1.2 million; in 2016/17 it was £5.2 million; and in 2017/18 it was £3.9 million.

To tackle its financial difficulties the college attempted to merge with Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College last year.

The proposal was however canned by the FE commissioner Richard Atkins following a backlash from a local campaign group.

But it appears a different merger may now be on the cards.

KCC told FE Week it is considering two options as part of its structure and prospects appraisal with Mr Atkins’ team. One is a merger with Morley College.

The second option is to remain a stand-alone college, a route which is being developed with the help of the Save Wornington College campaign, which opposed the selling of KCC’s Wornington Road campus.

Campaign member Sam Batra said: “The Save Wornington College campaign has been influential in driving the standalone bid for KCC.

“Thanks to community activism there is a committed team in place currently working on the stand-alone vision for this venerable college.

“It’s probably the first time that a campaign group has been so involved in recruiting the right people to steer the course of such a project.

“Grassroots action is vital and nowhere less so than in North Kensington.”

A KCC spokesperson said the college had experienced operating losses and resulting financial pressures for “a number of years” prior to the proposed merger with EHWLC.

“These pressures were behind the sale and lease-back agreement of the Wornington Road campus,” he explained.

“After the merger proposal was provisionally agreed in 2017, EHWLC took over some of KCC’s services.

“The merger was then put on hold two weeks before the proposed completion date in January 2018 and then cancelled shortly afterwards.

“As a result, KCC then had to incur the costs of recruiting a new senior management team and restoring capacity in some key back-office functions.”

He continued: “At the recommendation of the FE commissioner, the college then re-entered the structure and prospects appraisal process which has associated costs.

“KCC also commissioned the Kroll report into the aforementioned campus sale.

“It is therefore the case that KCC’s financial problems were not caused by the failed merger, but some additional costs were incurred as a result.”

The Kroll report was published last October and found the sale of the Wornington Road campus was “plainly wrong” and was not in the interests of the community.

The chair of KCC’s board, Ian Valvona, who replaced Mary Curnock Cook last year, apologised on the college’s behalf for the “shameful” behaviour of the previous management team.

The sale of the Wornington site was led by former principal Mark Brickley in the face of falling income.

In 2012 the college’s income sat at £27.5 million but had fallen to just £9.25 million by 2016.

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea bought the site and outlined proposals to demolish the building and replace it with housing, which became controversial when the fire at nearby Grenfell Tower in June 2017 killed 72 people.

A new government campaign that aims to “shift deeply held views” on apprenticeships has been launched today.

The ‘Fire It Up’ campaign will promote the benefits of apprenticeships to young people, parents and employers through a series of adverts on national TV and social media, featuring real-life apprentices.

A new website will provide advice and guidance, as well as access to a wide variety of apprenticeships options for all ages and backgrounds.

“We are seeing the apprenticeship system in this country come of age, with leading employers waking up to the benefits apprenticeships can bring,” said education secretary Damian Hinds.

“Outdated and snobby attitudes” were are “still putting people off apprenticeships” – meaning they’re “missing out on great jobs and higher salaries.

“It’s vital that we challenge people’s thinking about apprenticeships which is why the government’s new ‘Fire It Up’ campaign will aim to shift deeply held views and drive more people towards an apprenticeship.”

“Young people like me are thinking about their options,” said Alim Jalloh, a former social media apprentice with Channel 4, and one of the stars of the campaign.

University “wasn’t for me” because “I didn’t feel it was preparing me for the job I really wanted”, he added.

“My apprenticeship was an amazing combination of world-class on-the-job learning, hyper relevant qualifications, with a clear potential career ahead of me. All while earning a salary.”

Today’s announcement cited a number of benefits to doing an apprenticeship, including access to “high-quality training” and the “range of exciting career options” on offer – including aerospace engineering, nuclear science, teaching, nursing, digital marketing, fashion and law.

It quoted figures, first published by the Department for Education in December, that showed the amount of time that apprentices are spending in off-the-job training has increased – from an average of 560 in 2016/17, to 700 in 2017/18.

The announcement also highlighted a range of evidence that it said was “proof” that employers and young people were starting to see the benefits of apprenticeships.

These included DfE outcomes data, learner and apprentice surveys, employer evaluations, and reports by the Sutton Trust.

The campaign is also focusing on ensuring that young people are made aware of apprenticeships.

Mr Hinds wants “parents, schools and colleges to make sure apprenticeships are being promoted alongside more traditional academic routes”, it said.

The DfE also said today that skills minister Anne Milton will soon write to 10 large multi academy trusts who are flouting the Baker clause to “remind them of their legal duty”.

A college that was subject to an FE Week investigation has blocked this newspaper’s website from its internet servers – an action which has “absolutely shocked” the skills minister and “astonished” Ofsted’s chief inspector.

FE Week revealed on Friday that Highbury College was locked in a £1.4 million legal battle with the Nigerian state. The story was fact-checked against the college’s own board minutes, accounts and evidence from whistleblowers.

Highbury was provided with five working days to respond to our enquiries, but chose not to respond and provide their side of the story.

That is terrible, absolutely shocking

It has since claimed to its staff through internal emails, seen by FE Week, that “much of” the story is “untrue” and “paints a picture of Highbury that we simply do not recognise”.

The college has however been unable to tell FE Week specifically how the content of the story was inaccurate, even though they’ve had ample opportunity to do so.

But in an unprecedented move, the college has attempted to suppress the investigation from its staff and students by blocking FE Week on its internal computer servers.

“That is terrible, absolutely shocking,” said skills minister Anne Milton when she learnt about the action.

“In an organisation that is dealing with young people specifically, restricting access to staff or students or anybody is terrible.

“I am shocked. The press has to be very careful because they leave themselves open to challenge so there are rules around ensuring the report is accurate.

“The DfE doesn’t like what FE Week writes sometimes but we do not block information.”

Ofsted’s chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, added that the move by Highbury “sounds astonishing and concerning”.

Dominic Ponsford, the editor-in-chief at the Press Gazette, said he has “never heard of any organisation reacting in this way to negative press coverage, it may be a first”.

“It seems like a staggeringly incompetent way to deal with negative press,” he added.

“Highbury College has obviously 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.”

 

A spokesperson for Highbury defended the decision.

“It is college policy to block access to inappropriate websites,” she said.

“In view of this we have blocked FE Week from the college’s internet servers because we do not think students and staff while in college, should be distracted by inaccurate and untrue stories about Highbury which may cause them concern or distress.

“We have a duty of care.”

This comes at the same time as 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 62 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.

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

The spokesperson for Highbury 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.

The Institute for Apprenticeships has finally released a presentation given to employers that warned of an imminent apprenticeship overspend, following pressure from the shadow skills minister.

On November 30 during an employer engagement event at Exeter College the IfA’s chief operating officer Robert Nitsch included a forecast of a £500 million overspend on the apprenticeship budget in 2018/19 – rising to £1.5 billion by 2020/21.

The figures, exclusively reported by FE Week three days later, prompted wide-spread concerns and demands for an open debate on how the levy operates, and for the IfA to share the full presentation.

The institute finally released it last night but only to Gordon Marsden, the shadow skills minister, after he wrote to the IfA’s chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan about the issue in early December.

The presentation has, however, had a couple of slides redacted while more information has been added to them since their original appearance.

Speaking to FE week about the situation, Sir Gerry (pictured) said: “It [the presentation] was about apprenticeships, what’s going on with apprenticeships, and it was designed to bring them up to date as to how the reforms are going.

“The particular slide in question was based on some speculative planning, scenarios, what if planning. It was there to really make two points.

“One is that the levy isn’t massively underspent – it’s being used. And secondly that it’s a finite resource and therefore when people say why are you being tight about funding and funding bands you’ve got to see it in the context that there’s a finite resource and therefore we need to make sure we get every bit of value for money out of every apprenticeship.”

He added the reason why it wasn’t released to the wider public was because from “misinterpretation, it would generate all sorts of concerns over whether the levy was being overspent”.

Keith Smith, the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of apprenticeships, told FE Week in December that he was “not expecting any pressures” on the budget this year.

This point was then reiterated by skills minister Anne Milton last week.

“I think the department is being pretty clear the levy isn’t overspent, but the point is that particular model took in certain assumptions and therefore showed how it could be,” Sir Gerry said.

When quizzed on why it took so long for the IfA to release the slides, despite multiple requests from FE week and parliamentary questions including from chair of the education select committee Robert Halfon, the institute’s boss claimed that the only request he knew about was from Mr Marsden.

He confirmed that the Department for Education had not told the IfA to not release the slides.

“It [the delay] was us looking at the slides and making sure that everything in those slides was on the official statistical release. That’s what we were doing,” Sir Gerry said.

“They were not going to be released until I released them today to Gordon, because at that stage we were clear on what the information underpinning them…in fact, what we’ve done is redacted two of the slides and produced slides that do reflect official statistics, the starts and the training slides.”

You can view the full slide pack here.

A private provider is appealing an ‘inadequate’ report after Ofsted criticised it for not moving enough of its arts and media students onto jobs at the end of their training.

The judgement comes after the chief inspector caused a media storm when she told the Association of Colleges conference in November that there is a “mismatch” between the numbers of students taking such courses and their “future employment in the industry”.

Amanda Spielman said that Ofsted’s research on level two qualifications found that these courses were giving learners “false hope” and questioned whether some providers are chasing income over students’ best interests.

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

Dv8 Training (Brighton) Limited, which received two consecutive ‘requires improvement’ grades prior to a fresh inspection in November, received the worst possible rating from the education watchdog in a report published today.

Ofsted found that the study programmes on offer to nearly 200 young people, mostly aged 16 to 19, in art and design, media, fashion, events management and games development are “not well managed” and learners “do not have access to impartial careers guidance early enough in their programmes to help them make informed choices”.

Ofsted said that while most learners move on to further education at the end of their courses, “only a few learners enter employment, an apprenticeship or higher education”.

However, Dv8 Training has disputed Ofsted’s findings.

Its managing director, Dan Wallman, said his provider is “obviously hugely disappointed”, especially as it has “just achieved our best ever year of qualification achievement and outcomes”.

“We have a longstanding track record, recognised by local authorities, of working positively with a vulnerable client group and succeeding with young people who often have not achieved previously,” he added.

“We have appealed the overall grading and this is in process, however we have to focus on moving forward positively.”

Mr Wallman also said that progression at Dv8 Training is not high into employment, apprenticeships or FE currently as “many learners choose to remain in learning to further develop skills and work readiness”.

A total of 86 per cent of learners progressed “positively overall” with 67 per cent into further learning, he claimed.

The Ofsted report did recognise Dv8 Training’s improvement in achievement rates.

“Managers took effective action that raised the proportion of learners who achieved vocational and functional skills qualifications in 2017/18; achievement is now high in many subjects,” it said.

But there are numerous other issues at the provider, according to Ofsted.

We have appealed the overall grading and this is in process

“Managers did not identify what tutors need to improve until very recently. As a result, the quality of teaching and learning has not improved sufficiently,” inspectors said.

“Tutors do not have high enough expectations for their learners. As a result, learners do not develop independent learning skills or behaviours for employment, or improve their attendance and punctuality.”

Mr Wallman said “immediate action” has been taken to “address key areas identified in the report such as poor attendance and punctuality and forming a high level advisory board to provide support and challenge”.

Ofsted recognised the provider has some strengths.

“Staff focus relentlessly on eliminating barriers to participation for young people who have previously not succeeded in education,” inspectors said.

“Tutors draw on their good industry experience to set vocationally relevant activities that enable learners to acquire good practical skills.”

Following Dv8 Training’s grade four Ofsted report, the Education and Skills Funding Agency will decide if it will axe the providers training contracts.

The agency typically gives providers a three month termination warning notice following a grade four.

Mr Wallman said: “We are in discussion with local authorities and the ESFA around ensuring that our specialist provision can move forward positively and continue support young people to be successful in work and life.”