The Education and Skills Funding Agency is preparing to move towards a “single Funding Operations Centre of Excellence” as it appoints its first overall director of funding.
The agency is expected to announce who has been given the coveted position in the coming days. The successful candidate will be responsible for the “development, implementation and maintenance of a truly 21st-century funding system”.
The funding director, who will control more than £63 billion of government money, will take charge of delivering the national post-16 funding agenda, including apprenticeships as well as the national funding formula for pre-16 schools.
The job description for the role, which went live at the end of last year, said the ESFA is “moving towards a single Funding Operations Centre of Excellence, bringing together and improving existing functions”.
However, the Department for Education would not comment on what the centre of excellence was.
The term “centres of excellence” has become fairly common in business. A company sets up a centre of excellence department and, rather than being purely operational, the centre also has a role to improve expertise and discover best practice in a certain area in order to share this knowledge with other departments.
This approach has been taken by other government departments. For example, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs runs an earth observations centre of excellence, alongside other external partners, to focus on how data from satellites complements existing datasets to deliver policy and services, and a best-practice centre to improve the management of existing private finance initiative deals is being piloted in the Department of Health and Social Care.
The Department for International Development has provided a five year grant to the Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning, which develops and tests methods for evaluation and evidence synthesis, while the Government Communication Service has brought together digital experts across Whitehall in its Digital Centre of Expertise to offer support and insight to other departments.
The new ESFA funding director will report directly to the chief executive, Eileen Milner, alongside fellow ESFA directors Mike Pettifer (academies and maintained schools group), Peter Mucklow (further education) and Keith Smith (apprenticeships).
The director takes the post at a time of change for the ESFA. In 2019/20 the government will devolve the adult education budget to the Greater London Authority and six other combined authorities around England, but concerns have been raised that the rushed time frame could cause “market instability” in the sector.
And the long-awaited national funding formula for schools is set to be rolled out fully by 2021 after ministers delayed its implementation by a year to support a “smooth transition”.
After this week’s IPPR report revealed that two-thirds of schools are still flouting the Baker clause, Tony Breslin argues that enforced compliance can only be a short-term fix – colleges and schools should look for new models of collaboration
For some the Baker clause – and its requirement that schools must allow colleges and training providers to access every child in Years 8 to 13 so that they might explore their “non-academic” options – heralds a new era of openness in the relationship between schools, colleges and the wider FE sector. For others, this legally binding amendment to the 2017 Technical and Vocational Education Act confirms the reality of a broken system clutching at the straws of compliance to ensure that different types of institution pull in the same direction. There is truth in both views.
Baker acknowledges the reality that the FE sector has difficulty accessing students during their secondary education, and that young people often make their decisions with incomplete information supplied from a source with very particular “skin in the game”. Too many schools still view FE as a largely vocational (or “technical”) menu that young people have fallen on to rather than opted for. Here, the failure to introduce the language of professional education and training alongside that of “technical” and “vocational” learning in the framing of the 2017 Act was a missed opportunity that will contribute to an enduring status crisis in the vocational domain.
School leaders would mount a spirited defence to the charge of supplying biased information. They know their pupils well, have usually developed their sixth-form offer with most of these young people in mind, and know little of the FE terrain. Further, a school’s funding – and, therefore, its wider staffing and curriculum model – is often bound up with sustainable sixth-form numbers. I should know: I cut my teeth as the head of a school sixth form and then a local authority 14-19 adviser and college governor in the late Nineties. Asking schools to promote what is on offer “down the road” (at a college or another school), without having strong pre-existing consortia arrangements in place, is akin to asking Sainsbury’s staff to hand out Amazon leaflets at store entrances.
Baker’s clause is an eighties fix
And, of course, none of this is helped by the marginalising of careers education and guidance over the past 20 years – a period during which choice has become a byword in education decision-making. To work for all (and not simply for the advantaged and pre-informed), choice-based systems have two key requirements: universal access to dependable, non-biased information about a range of options and sufficient spare provision so that all first choices can be met. Here is the perfect storm in which Baker’s clause finds its rationale – trying to fix an imperfect market in which the “academic” offer enjoys a higher status against the background of tightening budgets and growing demand, and in which the internal institution-specific dynamics of the system work against rather than in favour of collaboration.
If the sanctions are sufficiently punitive (especially if tinged with the threat of impacting on an Ofsted rating, as the IPPR report recommends), Baker’s fix might work for now, but enforced compliance is no way to build a bridge that should never have been necessary in the first place, and certainly no way to build a positive relationship between practitioners in schools, colleges and training organisations.
Rather, we need a rethink of where schools sit in the broader learning landscape and what their role is in preparing young people for lifelong and life-wide learning. Alongside this, we need a radical reconceptualisation of the in which FE and HE might build on schools’ efforts and work alongside them. And, across both phases, we need to build-in incentives to collaborate and share knowledge.
Baker’s clause is an Eighties fix to a problem that dates from the (Baker-led) school reforms of that decade and the subsequent incorporation of colleges; it may be necessary in the short term. But it is models of partnership and shared learning across and within the school, FE and HE that will point us towards the solutions to the 21st-century challenges that the youngest learners now entering the system will encounter less than a generation from now.
Employers are reducing their training effort. But how can the government talk to them about it, says Ewart Keep, when it has abolished the organisations that would have provided a structured way to engage on skills policy
Employers’ attitudes towards skills present huge challenges for the government’s ambitions on skills. Since 2010 policy has encouraged employers and individuals to invest more within a marketplace for education and training, with the government regulating these markets and funding provision where the market fails for very specific reasons.
Sir Charlie Mayfield, when chair of the UK Commission on Education and Skills (UKCES), talked about the “inconvenient truth” that employers were simply going to have to spend more on training as the state cut back. Things haven’t gone to plan.
The harsh reality is that there has been a steady and cumulatively massive fall in the volume of employer-provided training. Latest estimates by Greater London Authority Economics suggest a total decline of training hours per person employed between 1997 and 2017 of 65 per cent outside London and 72 per cent in London. Employer spending on skills is also declining, with estimates of the reduction for the past decade ranging from 15-30 per cent. Far from stepping up to the plate, many (although not all) employers are retreating from skills investment.
Against this backdrop, the approach of companies to apprenticeship has continued to leave much to be desired. Besides problems with how the levy is being spent, even large employers are often unable or unwilling to deliver apprenticeships themselves, with the result that everything is contracted out. This is in marked contrast to countries such as Germany, where large and medium-sized employers (and even many SMEs) have sufficient in-house training capacity and expertise to design and deliver high-quality apprenticeships. The only aspect delivered externally is the theoretical off-the-job component.
Brexit is certain to exacerbate some of the changes
Current practice in England, where external providers essentially drive and deliver apprenticeship, speaks to the overall weakness of internal training capacity, which also impacts on the volume and quality of skill acquisition by the adult workforce.
The government has two primary problems. First, it is unwilling, at least for the present, to confront the reality that employers are reducing their training effort.
Second, even if it wanted to engage with employers, it lacks the capacity and institutional infrastructure to do so. Its decision to cease funding the sector skills councils (SSCs) and to abolish UKCES mean that, unlike almost every other developed country, England no longer has collective mechanisms for the government and employers to engage in a structured way on skills policy. The SSCs and UKCES may have had their faults, but they were almost certainly better than nothing, which is what we now have!
A symptom of this dysfunctional situation was the Department for Education’s (DfE) recent decision to commission research into the large fall in level 2 apprenticeship starts. This betokens the desperately weak linkages between government and employers. In any other country, the equivalent of the DfE would simply have asked the bodies that represent employers, and the collective organisations that deliver apprenticeship, what was happening. We have none, so we can’t.
We face mounting challenges around skills – on apprenticeships, traineeships, adult re- and upskilling, the impact of new technologies on work and skills, and the delivery of T-levels (to name but a few) – and Brexit is certain to exacerbate some of them. None can be addressed, still less solved, if employers cannot or will not play their part.
Sooner or later policy will have to engage with employers in a new way, and construct a genuine conversation about what is needed and who will pay for and deliver it. One-off summits with a small group of “usual suspect” large firms and small clubs of employers forming “trailblazer groups” are not a robust enough infrastructure to support the level and depth of dialogue that will be needed to make this conversation deliver what is needed.
Previous job: Head of corporate affairs and communications, Association British Ports (he remains in post)
Interesting fact: Dafydd once wrote an academic paper on medieval monastic sanitation
John Yarham, deputy chief executive, Careers and Enterprise Company
Start date: March 2019
Previous job: Chief executive, The Futures Group
Interesting fact: John had a very gourmet start to his career – he was an ice cream salesperson while at university, after which he worked in wine rack manufacturing
Nigel Hollett, director of corporate affairs, WorldSkills UK
Start date: January 2019
Previous job: Independent consultant in the skills sector
Interesting fact: Nigel built his own family home a few years ago using sustainable methods of construction and future proofing his energy requirements through the use of low carbon technologies.
Shelagh Legrave, chair, Collab Group
Start date: January 2019
Previous job: Principal and chief executive, Chichester College Group (she remains in post)
Interesting fact: Shelagh is a keen runner and took part in the Berlin marathon for her 60th birthday to raise money for the charity Stonepillow
A college has called in the lawyers to recover a long-running £1.4 million debt held up in Nigeria, after a secretive technical education project in the country went pear-shaped.
Highbury College, which recently sold one of its prime learning centres in Portsmouth for a hugely reduced price to balance the books, has launched a number of ventures in Nigeria since 2012.
Millions of pounds of the college’s funding was pumped into the projects in an effort to upskill the country’s young people, but it appears the schemes were short-lived and one in particular came at a huge expense.
Institutions really do need to think twice before taking on the extra risks that overseas ventures entail
Numerous minutes from meetings dating back to 2016 discuss Highbury College’s troubles in retrieving a £1.4 million debt that is owed to it by the Cross River State Government – a coastal state in southern Nigeria.
In 2013, the college partnered with the state to design a “demand-driven curriculum” and run a polytechnic training provider, called the Institute of Technology and Management (pictured).
But Highbury, which has remained tight-lipped about the project, pulled out of the partnership following a change in political parties in Nigeria in 2015.
It isn’t clear exactly what the college’s funds were spent on.
Since then, the college has managed to recoup £400,000 owed to it, but hasn’t managed to get hold of the remaining £1.4 million.
Legal action has now been launched to recover the funds.
“The college accountant confirmed there been no progress with the CRSG [Cross River State Government] debt (c£1.4 million) and that the college had begun legal proceedings to recover the funds,” said recently published minutes from a July 2018 audit committee meeting at Highbury.
“He confirmed that work was underway to transfer the money in the college’s Nigerian bank account (c£400k) as the official and black-market exchange rates were now aligned.”
The college has been evasive about the project, the debt owed to it and the legal challenge.
“Due to the commercially sensitive nature of your enquiry, the college is not in a position to comment,” a spokesperson said.
FE Week contacted the Cross River State Government, the British High Commission for Nigeria, and the Institute of Technology and Management in Ugep, which appears to still be operational, but did not receive a response at the time of going to press.
Mick Fletcher, an FE expert at the Policy Consortium, said it is “sad but perhaps not surprising” that Highbury College’s operation in Nigeria has run into difficulties.
“I have worked with Nigerian polytechnics and know first-hand the difficulties of doing business in that country,” he told FE Week.
“Given the great pressures on college managers in England at the moment institutions really do need to think twice before taking on the extra risks and increased demands on senior staff attention that overseas ventures entail.”
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.
While Highbury has not been forthcoming about its debt in Nigeria, minutes from various college board meetings have shed some light on the fiasco.
“The 2015 general election in Nigeria, resulting in a new political party taking over the government, and the drop in oil prices had slowed down the economy in Nigeria and these developments had affected the college’s Cross River State Government contract,” according to corporation minutes from July 2016.
“The college was being supported by the UKTI [UK Trade & Investment] and the British High Commissioner to Nigeria to recover the outstanding invoices and the principal assured members that all diplomatic channels were being explored.”
Highbury College principal Stella Mbubaegbu
November 2016 audit committee minutes then said: “The main [financial] issue was the recovery of a significant Nigerian debt which was long overdue with no clear timeframe for being cleared.”
Highbury, which dropped two Ofsted grades from ‘outstanding’ last year, stopped work in Nigeria in 2015/16, according to its accounts.
The £1.4 million debt isn’t the college’s only financial woe.
Its accounts for 2017/18 were published this week and show a deficit of £2.48 million, a quick sale in August of their City of Portsmouth Centre for £4 million less than it had been valued at, a £200,000 ESFA clawback for under-delivery and a £400,000 battle with the tax office over VAT.
Meanwhile, one of its subsidiaries which it invested in less than three years ago has had to cease trading and write off £300,000 debts (see box outs).
On top of this, the college has failed to release its corporate expense claims for the past five years, which should have been shared with FE Week under the Freedom of Information act.
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.
What was Highbury’s project in Nigeria?
The Cross River State Government entered into a partnership with Highbury College to design a “demand-driven curriculum” and run a new polytechnic training provider in October 2013.
According to a press release frow the state at the time, Highbury’s principal Stella Mbubaegbu described the project as a “new dawn that will make the difference in the education sector”.
The college has refused to reveal any details about the project, but from what FE Week has been able to gather through its own research, it essentially headed up the Institute of Technology and Management.
This included supplying a rector (a principal). William Pedley held this role at the institute from July 2014 to August 2016, according to his LinkedIn page.
He then returned to the UK to work as Highbury’s sector lead for university access and A-levels when the Nigeria project stopped.
William Pedley
According to the Institute of Technology and Management’s own LinkedIn page, the centre was designed to be an “entrepreneurial Polytechnic Institute, the first of its kind in Nigeria”.
Ms Mbubaegbu said the curriculum of the polytechnic was designed to “intertwine technical and vocational education training to boast entrepreneurship development”.
The aim was to enable young people to set up their own businesses.
The college’s board minutes suggest they pulled out of the project in 2015, citing a change in Nigerian government and a drop in oil prices which slowed down the country’s economy as the reason.
It is unclear exactly what the college was being paid for, but to date £400,000 has been paid and the college has launched legal action to recoup the remaining £1.4 million.
Highbury has signed up to other projects in Nigeria in the past.
In 2012, the college was selected to partner the federal government of Nigeria to establish ten new vocational skills centres that were expected to provide training and employment opportunities to out-of-work Nigerian youths, according to a news story by About My Area at the time.
Principal Stella Mbubaegbu said the centres would be a “beacon of aspiration and excellence throughout the country”.
The college declined to comment on whether it continued as a partner for the project when it launched.
Apprenticeship promotion company closes
A subsidiary company of Highbury College that was supposed to deliver an apprenticeship jobs board platform has ceased trading due to “difficult conditions”.
The college bought 70 per cent of the shares in New Work Training Limited, a company established by Tom Bewick in 2015, for £200,000 in April 2016.
Its business was meant to create the “world’s first premium jobs board service, exclusively for promoting high-quality apprenticeships” called www.loveapprenticeship.com, according to a press release written by Mr Bewick in 2017.
But Highbury’s 2017/18 accounts revealed that “difficult trading conditions and the need for investment have led to the company ceasing operations at this current time”.
The www.loveapprenticeship.com website is no longer operational.
The accounts also reveal that the college has “impaired” £300,000 of debt owing to the college from NWT, and a “corresponding and equal sum has been written off-the debt from NWT”.
Mr Bewick continued as a minority shareholder and director of the company from April 2016 to August 2018 and worked on the jobs board following the Highbury takeover, but stood down as managing director in September 2017.
In May 2018 he took up the post of chief executive at the Federation of Awarding Bodies.
Mr Bewick told FE Week: “For legal reasons I’m not in a position to comment on the detail about the business relationship between New Work Training Limited and Highbury College.
“However, I think it is in the public interest to state that as a minority shareholder and director of the firm my role was unpaid and nor did I receive any dividends or make money out of the venture once it became apparent the college was in financial difficulties elsewhere. In fact I lost money.”
This isn’t the first start-up company that Highbury has invested in.
It was one of five founding members of the Gazelle College Group. An FE Week investigation in 2014 revealed the founding members each invested £500,000 to establish the company.
In January 2017, FE Week reported that the group was on its last legs following a precipitous drop in membership, months of inactivity and the departure of its executive director.
College building sold for cut price
A prime Portsmouth city centre building (pictured below) was sold by Highbury College in August for £5.7 million, which was more than £4 million less than it was previously valued.
From reports at the time it appears it was a quick sale, and the college’s accounts reveal the cash was used to pay off an outstanding bank loan.
The premises cost the college £12.5 million to build in 2006, according to reports at the time.
The college previously recognised the value of the property to be at around £10 million, according to its 2017/18 accounts.
However, at the point of sale in August 2018, the building was sold for £5.7 million, which was “market value”, according to a college spokesperson.
“The disposal of the asset was identified as an action arising from the college’s strategic review of college property,” she added.
“From September 2018, courses in travel, tourism, EFL and culinary arts were relocated to Highbury Campus on Tudor Crescent.
“The move, which was welcomed by students, has enhanced the student experience and provided easier access to the extensive cross-college opportunities for enrichment.”
The University of Portsmouth was the buyer.
Highbury’s financial position
Highbury College’s recently published accounts for 2017/18 state that its financial position has “deteriorated over the three years”.
But despite recording a deficit of £2.48 million, they also say that performance in 2017/18 and the projected performance for this financial year “shows a much improved position with the expectation that the college will be graded as ‘outstanding’ using the ESFA criteria by the end of 2018/19”.
The improvements are due to “significant cost reduction including the disposal of surplus buildings and growth from international and ESFA-funded provision,” according to the accounts.
As at July 31, 2018, the college had £5.4 million of loans outstanding with bankers on terms negotiated in 2008, which cost £293,000 in interest payments in the year to July 2017. But this was fully repaid in August 2018 from the proceeds of the sale of its City of Portsmouth Centre.
Despite the claims of a “good” financial health, the financial statements show that cash flow for the college during the next year will “at times be tight, particularly around the February to March period”.
But, they add, the college has “£0.4 million of funds held in Nigeria that could be repatriated and is planning to acquire a short term loan facility with a bank for around £0.25 million”.
The accounts also reveal that the college did not make use of all of its ESFA adult education budget allocation and will be required to pay back around £200,000 of unspent funds to the agency.
Highbury also has a “£0.4 million liability due to HM Revenue and Customs for VAT claimed back against capital expenditure under the Lennartz ruling”.
The college “continues to dispute the validity of this liability and remains in discussions with the HMRC to achieve an agreed position”.
Meanwhile, a new loan of £1 million repayable over three years and “secured against the existing assets of the college” was arranged in August 2018.
It’s not going to be an easy year for the AoC, but Julie Nerney, its new chair, is looking forward to the challenge
This feels like a truly transformational moment for the Association of Colleges. The incredible energy and commitment to the #LoveOurColleges campaign is a great foundation to build on in the year ahead as we seek to influence the comprehensive spending review to put right the disparity between funding in FE and other parts of education.
When I reflect on how the world of work has changed since I started my first job, just under 30 years ago, it strikes me that there has been a shift from an occasional requirement to lead change to change being the new normal. The evolution of the way we work feels like more of a revolution, and the circumstances that colleges operate in are incredibly challenging.
Once in a century events such as Brexit; once in a generation shifts in the skills required for the new economic paradigm; continual and rapid technological change. When you couple these with the reality of insolvency and the marketisation of education, which creates choice for learners, we see an increasingly competitive landscape for colleges as we fight for market share while remaining underfunded.
But at the heart of all this are our students – individuals accessing education, whatever the subject, level or learning style. Students who need a high-quality teaching and learning experience every day. And that is what motivates me to be part of a college and the association: that sense of purpose that unlocks potential, celebrates ambition and transforms lives.
With the right investment, we could provide life-enhancing opportunities for hundreds of thousands more
It has never been more important for colleges to have a clear, credible, representative voice, to draw together solutions to these connected challenges and to be an authority whose relevance is driven from the experience and support of its members. The insight that AoC gets from our members allows us to illustrate the tangible impact of the issues and how they manifest themselves in communities, economies and for learners. We can speak to universal issues that transcend geography and those specific to regions.
Leading when things are straightforward is easy, but leading when things are hard requires courage, vision, ambition and dynamism. And the power of a membership organisation is unique – harnessing that power gives us credibility, and that only happens when we are all engaged.
The #LoveOurColleges campaign was striking in how powerful we are as a body when we speak with one voice. Principals and chief executives in every college are better connected to the needs of our economy and our workforce than those in many walks of life. They understand labour market dynamics, the technological drivers of change – and the challenges. Working with our members, we can speak confidently to those in the Treasury and the Department for Education about the difference that colleges make to social mobility and the prosperity of our country, building the case for fair funding.
Because every day, in hundreds of colleges, students turn up to learn. For some, it’s about rediscovering learning. For others, building confidence.
Some will be starting out in life, working towards a chosen career. Some are learning for pleasure. Some are reinventing themselves as they switch careers. And every one of them needs a college sector that is flourishing.
With the right investment, we could provide liberating and life-enhancing opportunities for hundreds of thousands more. This is so important given the dislocation felt by so many communities, shown by the Brexit vote, and for employers who need skills relevant to their needs.
I’m passionate about this. I’m looking forward to playing my part in providing support and leadership from AoC in championing the vital role that colleges make in driving social mobility and economic prosperity for the country.
2019 is set to be a big year for the FE and skills sector.
While it’s still not clear what impact the biggest event of the year – Brexit – will have (on anything!), we’ve taken a look ahead at some of the other key developments expected over the coming 12 months – including the introduction of the college insolvency regime, devolution of the adult education budget and the upcoming government spending review.
Apprenticeship policy tweaks
Large employers will be able to transfer a greater proportion of their levy funds from April this year, but small employers are still waiting to hear when the amount they must pay towards apprenticeship training will be cut.
The next set of statistics, due to be published later this month, will reveal whether there has been any change in this pattern over the first quarter of 2018/19.
Tender results due as T-level development picks up pace
With just 20 months to go until the first T-levels are set to be launched, the pace of their development is set to pick up in 2019.
The names of the awarding organisations to have won the contracts to develop the first of the new technical qualifications are due to be announced in February, around the same time that a tender for the next six T-levels will open.
The controversial tender process for the first three pathways ran from early September to late October 2018, in which AOs were invited to bid for an “exclusive license” to develop and deliver the new qualifications.
Three contracts were on offer, worth £17.5 million – one for each of the first pathways to be delivered in 2020, in digital (digital production, design and development); childcare and education; and construction (design, surveying and planning).
The contracts begin on March 4, meaning the winning bidders will have 18 months to develop the qualifications before they begin to be taught.
A second tender process for the six pathways that are due to be introduced for teaching from 2021 will kick off in spring, with the winning bidders expected to be announced in the autumn.
Meanwhile, providers interested in delivering the new qualifications in 2021/22 will be invited to submit an expression of interest later this month, with the successful providers expected to be announced in June.
High hopes for spending review
The government’s comprehensive spending review is due on a yet-to-be-confirmed date in 2019 – and many are hoping that it will lead to increased funding for the sector.
This is the process, first announced by chancellor Philip Hammond in March last year, by which government departments will be given their funding allocations for the coming years.
High on the sector wish list for the review is an increase in the unweighted base rate for 16- and 17-year-olds, which has remained unchanged at £4,000 since 2013.
Skills minister Anne Milton has spoken on multiple occasions about her efforts to lobby the Treasury for more cash for the sector.
And in a letter to AoC boss David Hughes last August she wrote: “We want to make sure that there is an effective funding system for FE which can support sustainable, high-quality education.
“We are considering this as part of the upcoming spending review, scheduled to take place in 2019.”
The letter ended with a hand-written note that said: “My lobbying for FE continues!”
College insolvency regime to kick in
Described as a “game changer” by the FE commissioner, the incoming insolvency regime – which will allow colleges to go bust for the first time – is due to take effect from January 31.
However, it’s unlikely to lead to a raft of colleges immediately closing their doors – if ever.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency has yet to publish its new approach to intervention, so it’s not yet clear how the regime will operate in practice.
But the information that is available indicates that the focus will be on continuity of provision – as stated by the government when it first announced proposals to introduce the regime back in 2016.
At the time, it said that exceptional financial support would also be withdrawn, but it has since become clear that colleges in difficulty will still be able to access some form of bailout funding, albeit not in the kind of amounts on offer now.
Both the skills minister and the FE commissioner have indicated that the number of colleges subject to the new regime will be small – with the latter telling FE Week in November that he did not “necessarily see the insolvency regime leading to closures”.
However, Peter Mucklow, the ESFA’s FE director, said in December that the new regime was a “significant” change for colleges, and warned those that “are evidently deteriorating” to expect greater challenges from the agency.
AEB devolution to take effect from August
Seven devolved areas are set to get their hands on a combined total of around £600 million in adult education budget funding from August.
They are Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City, London, Tees Valley, West Midlands and the West of England.
The process has been many years in the making, with the first devolution deal – for Greater Manchester – agreed back in 2014.
It is likely to lead to a fundamental change to the way that adult education is funded and delivered in the devolved areas.
Post-18 education and funding is likely to face a major shake-up following the conclusion of a government review expected in early 2019.
The review, launched to great fanfare by the prime minister, Theresa May, at Derby College in February last year, focused on four areas: choice, value for money, access, and skills provision.
An interim report, published last August, said it expected to publish its proposals alongside those from the post-18 review in early 2019.
Mr Augar is due to submit his report to the government by February, although it’s not yet known when it will be published.
Institutes of Technology to be named – finally!
The names of the providers who will set up the first Institutes of Technology are set to be announced in March, almost four years after the institutes were first mooted.
Between 10 and 15 IoTs are set to be created.
They are 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.
It subsequently emerged that the change in focus had been driven by a desire from Number 10 and the Treasury to “confer prestige” on IoTs by borrowing from the status of universities.
New Ofsted common inspection framework coming in September
A move away from outcomes and a greater focus on curriculum will be among the changes coming to Ofsted inspections, with the introduction of its new education inspection framework from September.
These included scrapping outcomes as a standalone judgment, introducing a new quality-of-education judgment to cover curriculum alongside teaching, learning and assessment, and a reduction in the number of types of provision from six to three.
One change that won’t be coming this year is the introduction of campus-level inspections.
A new campus-level identifier came into use in individual learner records at the start of 2018/19, which potentially paves the way for inspections at this level.
However, Ms Spielman told FE Week in November that this data wouldn’t be ready in time for the 2019 framework – but campus-level inspections were “still very much on the list of things we’d like to do”.
1. Apprenticeship reform and funding: still no date yet for implementing the small employer contribution reduction to 5 per cent and the conflicting messages from the ESFA and IfA over budget forecasts is concerning
2. T-level tender: is implementation still on track for contracts to go to the single awarding organisations in March? Look out for any tension here between the secretary of state Damian Hinds and the permanent secretary Jonathan Slater when they go before the education select committee on Wednesday
3. College insolvency regime: could a community really lose their local college this year? Sadly, without ongoing bailouts and a rise in the funding base rates, this seems likely
4. Adult education budget devolution: sounds great but from August it is likely to be an unfair postcode lottery and expensive bureaucratic nightmare in practice
5. Post-18 funding review: a real opportunity to put FE funding on more of an equal footing with HE at the higher qualification levels, but I fear the government’s response to the interim report will disappoint
6. Institutes of Technology: first announced in 2015 and we wait with great anticipation to find out where they will be. Whilst wanting to welcome the £170 million capital investment, will they, like National Colleges, have little impact?
7. Ofsted’s new common inspection framework: just how will the single framework interact with mega-colleges alongside thousands of microproviders? All to be revealed next week
8. Treasury spending review: all to play for and plenty of lobbying energy still needed to secure a rise in the 16-18 funding rate, unchanged since 2013
The skills minister has vowed to “dig deeper” into the drop in level two apprenticeships, and whether it might be linked to the rise in management courses.
Anne Milton was speaking exclusively to FE Week following a parliamentary debate on apprenticeships and skills at which the issue was raised.
“We need to understand exactly what’s going on,” she said.
“What’s happening at the top and what’s happening at the bottom, and critically are the two related? Is there any correlation between the two?”
Questions that needed to be answered around the drop in level two included whether young people were “becoming NEETs” instead, or if they were working and “aren’t prepared to take the lower salary they would get doing a level two apprenticeship”, Ms Milton said.
Her remarks followed a Westminster Hall debate on apprenticeship and skills policy on Tuesday, called by Bradford South MP Judith Cummins, at which the minister said she would “dig deeper” into the drop in level two starts.
The proportion of overall starts at level two had also fallen to its lowest yet – from a high of 65 per cent in 2013/15 down to 43 per cent in 2017/18.
At the same time, the number of apprenticeships at level four and above rose by almost a third, from 36,600 in 2016/17 to 48,200.
“We are not absolutely sure what is behind the figures,” Ms Milton told MPs.
The drop in level two starts was raised earlier in the debate by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, while education select committee member, and MP for Hull West, Emma Hardy also spoke about the importance of level two in terms of progression.
“Level two apprenticeships have fallen, but we have seen a huge rise in management apprenticeships. I do not know what the real story is here – does the minister?” Mr Marsden asked.
“Has the government’s failure on level two been a market consequence of the way that they sold the levy? I do not know; perhaps the minister can enlighten us,” he continued.
Ms Hardy said that level two apprenticeships were often dismissed as a “nothing qualification, or a qualification that is not viewed very highly” – unlike GCSEs which were seen as a “a tool for going through and getting A-levels, which are a tool for going through and getting a degree”.
“We do not see level two apprenticeships as the tool that gets someone to a level three apprenticeship, which is the tool to get to level four,” she said.
Other issues raised during the debate included the administrative burden of the apprenticeship system, which Ms Cummins said many smaller employers in Bradford found “extremely difficult to manage”, and the regional imbalances in the skills system.
John Howell, MP for Henley, spoke about the importance of work placements in giving young people transferable skills to prepare them for an apprenticeship, while Lee Rowley, MP for North East Derbyshire, raised the topic of equipping people with softer skills, such as persistence and flexibility, to enable them to navigate the workplace of the future.
