Dame Asha quits West Notts college amid financial crisis

The principal of a high-profile college in financial crisis has resigned with immediate effect, FE Week can reveal.

Dame Asha Khemka (pictured), who is one of the highest paid FE leaders in the country, stepped down from the top post at West Nottinghamshire College following a “special meeting of the board of governors”.

It was held “in light of the current challenges faced by the college”.

The board thanks Dame Asha for her service and for the difference she has made to the college

WNC received a £2.1 million bailout from the Education and Skills Funding Agency in July – which FE Week last month revealed was requested just 48 hours before it would have run out of cash.

The ESFA then hit it with a financial health notice to improve, which triggers a formal review from the intervention team and the FE Commissioner.

Despite the large cash injection, the WNC today admitted it “can’t rule out having to approach the ESFA for further funding”.

“Following a special meeting of the board of governors and in light of the current challenges faced by the college, the principal and chief executive has announced she has stepped down from her position with immediate effect,” said Nevil Croston, chair of governors at West Nottinghamshire College.

“The board thanks Dame Asha for her service and for the difference she has made to the college and the local community during her tenure.

“We are now working with the ESFA and the FE Commissioner’s office to appoint an interim principal until a national search for a permanent replacement can be implemented.”

He added: “Although we are not the only college to experience financial difficulty at this present time, the board and senior leadership team deeply regrets that the organisation has found itself in this position.

“We have every confidence in our ability to successfully implement our recovery plan and ensure our provision for students and employers remains first-class.

“Although we can’t rule out having to approach the ESFA for further funding, we are committed to correcting the college’s finances in a way that minimises disruption to staff, students and the communities we serve while maintaining an excellent experience for our students.”

Dame Asha received a £262,000 remuneration package in 2016/17. WNC’s website says she has received “many awards and accolades since being in post – including a Damehood in 2014”.

She was also “named ‘Woman of the Year’ at the GG2 Leadership Awards”.

The college has hit financial troubles in the past year.

Earlier this year WNC blamed changes in apprenticeship subcontracting rules, which reduced their income from management fees, for having to cut more than 100 jobs in an effort to make £2.7 million in savings.

Board minutes from April say the college was running low on reserves which were below the £9 million set in its banking covenants. The college has a £15 million loan outstanding with Lloyds Bank, which was negotiated in 2012 to pay for redevelopment and has another 20 years to run.

We can’t rule out having to approach the ESFA for further funding

The minutes also reveal the college’s worryingly low cash days – the number of days an organisation can continue to pay its operating expenses given the amount of cash available.

For colleges these are benchmarked by the FE Commissioner at 25 but they sat at just 11 for WNC, according to the minutes.

The college’s accounts for 2016/17 have yet to be published.

“The college’s strength has always been in providing high-quality education and training that makes a real difference, and the current challenges will not change that,” Mr Croston said today.

“We have already made significant progress in achieving this year’s enrolment targets, and across-the-board we are seeing our students achieve their qualification and move on to their next steps, whether that be further study or employment.

“The focus now is on building on this positive start to the year, working closely with colleagues and their representatives, and with the local community, to ensure our continued success for the future.

“We are very much open for business.”

The chancellor’s levy transfer increase – a ‘package of reforms’, or mere tinkering?

Selling the increase in the amount levy-paying employers can transfer to small companies as a “package of reforms” is a huge overstatement, says former SFA deputy director Tony Allen

I am sure that I was not alone in having a sense of anticipation on Monday morning, when I found out (via FE Week), that Phillip Hammond was going to make an announcement at the Conservative Party conference regarding the apprenticeship levy. Would it be simply about increasing the transfer percentage, or would there be more?

Well, frankly I am glad that I did not get too excited!

The chancellor has described the change and a couple of other minor initiatives as a “package of reforms” to the apprenticeship levy. Now, the Institute for Apprenticeships press team have ‘form’ in the art of overstatement (claiming a 986 per cent increase in the year-on-year growth in standards last month – technically true…. but really?!!!) but to echo the chancellor’s words in describing this as a ‘’package of reforms” is, once again, in my view, well short of reality.

Will this make a material difference to the number of employers training apprentices?

Let us look at the change he announced. Levy-paying employers will be able to transfer up to 25 per cent of their levy to other businesses. Currently they are able to transfer 10 per cent. The question is, will this make a material difference to the number of employers training apprentices, and therefore the take-up of apprenticeships overall?

My view is that it will make very little difference, and represents nothing more than tinkering – likely in response to criticism from some quarters of business who have been opposed to the levy from the beginning. The government itself admits that the 10 per cent transfer rate has had a low take-up. On what basis does it believe that increasing it to 25 per cent will change anything?

In the course of my work I talk frequently to many employers, both those who have apprentices and those who do not. When I ask them what changes would they like to see most, the transfer rate is seldom, if ever, mentioned.

Of far more importance to employers are issues such as the requirement for 20 per cent of an apprentice’s time to be spent on off-the-job training – which many see as a blunt tool – and the 10 per cent contribution that SMEs must make towards the cost of training their apprentices.

Like it or not, both of these things are a real barrier to the recruitment of apprentices. These are the areas that need reform, along with a serious look at how we incentivise the creation of real apprenticeship jobs for young people up to 24 years old, and not just year-long ‘jobs’ while the apprenticeship programme is in place.

We need an element of off-the-job training in every apprenticeship, but it does not need to be 20 per cent for every standard. That is what I mean by calling it a blunt tool. Smaller employers should make a contribution to the cost of the apprenticeship, but that does not always need to be a cash contribution. 

Increasingly too, I am finding employers who are concerned about the quality and availability of end-point assessment resources. 

Looking more at the chancellor’s announcement, we find that the IfA is to receive an additional £5 million to introduce new standards. Quite how this money will be spent is not yet clear: more staff perhaps? However, it is claimed to be needed in order for them to achieve their target of 500 apprenticeship standards by the end of 2019.

Does it matter if there are 500, or 450, or 476 standards?

I always worry about round numbers, arbitrary targets, that become the focus of often futile achievement activity. I remember three million apprenticeship starts, and how much civil service effort went into trying to make that happen! Does it matter if there are 500, or 450, or 476 standards? What matters more is that the standards and their end-point assessment plans are truly fit for purpose, and meet the needs of real employers. That is where the focus should be.

Finally, we now hear that all frameworks will be gone by August 2020. Anyone prepared to make a small wager that we will still have frameworks beyond this date?

So, does what we heard from Phillip Hammond constitute a “package of reforms” as claimed by the Department for Education and IfA? In my view, no! Minor tinkering, maybe. Real reform, certainly not! We must wait longer for that.

Tony Allen is CEO of AAS and former deputy director of large companies for the Skills Funding Agency

Greater London Authority to launch adult education budget tender next week

The Greater London Authority is set to become the first devolved area to launch a tender for its adult education budget later next week.

Contracts worth around £130 million will be up for grabs from October 12, according to a prior information notice published by the GLA last week.

“It is intended that successful providers will enter into individual contracts to deliver a range of education and training services to both in-work and out of work London residents aged 19 or above, to help them gain qualifications, progress into further education and ultimately access and sustain employment,” the notice said.

The contracts will be split into two lots: adult education provision to out-of-work Londoners, which is expected to “constitute approximately 75 per cent of the total procurement value”, and adult education provision for in-work Londoners, which will be worth around 25 per cent of the total.

For each of the two lots, successful providers will be “expected to offer education and training services to equip Londoners with the skills and knowledge they need to gain qualifications, progress into further education” and either access work, or “achieve career progression”.

Providers can bid for one or both lots, with contracts to be awarded in April ahead of delivery beginning August 1 next year.

The GLA is one of seven areas that will gain control of its AEB from 2019/20, through devolution deals.

Its total devolved AEB budget is around £311 million per year, of which only the share available to independent training providers will go out to tender.

The remainder will be awarded in the form of grants to colleges and other institutions that currently receive adult education funding via a grant from the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

They will “receive a similar allocation for London residents to their allocation from the ESFA in 2017-18, based on the ability to spend their allocation in previous years”, according to the GLA’s draft Skills for Londoners Framework, published in July.

Earlier this year, the GLA revealed that it planned to move away from paying providers to deliver qualifications, to paying for wider outcomes such as progression into work.

City Hall won’t “rush” to introduce an outcomes-based funding model, however, and will only do so once “there is confidence that there is sufficient data to allow robust payment models to be developed”, according to the draft framework.

It is expecting providers to collect destinations data “more completely”, and is considering introducing an “outcomes development fund” to provide extra resources for providers to help them develop new data collection systems.

FE Week reported last month that unlimited management fees are set to end under the GLA’s plans for devolution.

It will set a 20 per cent limit on subcontracting fees, according to a briefing document published ahead of a meeting about the AEB.

FE Week revealed earlier this year that the GLA is having to recruit a huge team of new bureaucrats to hand out the budget to London’s training providers from 2019, with most of their wages paid every year by topslicing £3 million from the AEB.

The team is currently 72-strong, but this may need to increase to avoid the risk that the number of contracts and grants to be dished out will be “greater than can be reasonably managed by the current team”, according to briefing documents published last month.

Employers hit back at apprenticeship transfer fund policy

Plans to reform the apprenticeship levy have been criticised by some  large employers, who have voiced concerns that changes to the transfer facility will have “little impact”.

Speaking to delegates at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham earlier today, the Chancellor Philip Hammond hailed the “flexibility” of increasing the annual apprenticeship levy transfer facility from 10 to 25 per cent.

This means large levy-paying employers will be allowed to share more of their annual funds with smaller organisations from April 2019.

Mr Hammond said the government had “heard the concerns about how the apprenticeship levy is working” and will “engage with business on our plans for the long-term operation of the levy” after 2020.

However, employers have hit back at the plans and voiced concerns that changing the amount available to be transferred will have little difference overall.

Mark Corden, head of apprenticeships at Specsavers, said: “It’s not flexibility in who we transfer funds to which is the flexibility that is most sought. Any employer can access apprenticeships in the system, there is a difference in how much they contribute.

“The 10 per cent transfer flexibility is probably only attractive to a small number of the largest public sector levy payers (I’m guessing). Moving to 25 per cent will have little impact across the wider employer base.”

Tony Allen, formerly the Skills Funding Agency’s deputy director of large companies, described the announcement as “just tinkering”.

“From my conversations with employers, even if you made the transfer level 100 per cent, it would not make that much difference.

“Employers are much more concerned about 10 per cent, 20 per cent off-the-job training, and increasingly inherent problems with end point assessment.”

Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, said Mr Hammond had “in part” listened to the concerns of business, but said he “needs to go much further”.

“If the Chancellor is serious about ensuring the levy has the desired effect, and increases meaningful training across all sectors, it should go further and make 100 per cent of the vouchers transferable from large to small companies,” he said.

Helen Webb, chief people officer at the Co-Op, said the increase to 25 per cent is a “step in the right direction” but it would better if changes could be brought in “sooner”, including a review of the current arrangements on how funds can be spent from the levy.

She added: “As a business that has around 1,000 apprentices working with us at any one time, we’ve found the controls can be restrictive.

“If the government is serious about making apprenticeships work as a means of equipping our workforce with the skills they need, the remit of what the levy can be spent on needs to be broadened.”

Mark Hawthorne, chair of the Local Government Association’s people and places board, said the announcement was a “positive sign” that the government was listening to concerns from councils about the efficacy of the levy, but said the next step should be to allow local areas to pool levy contributions across local economies.

 Mike Berry, national chair of the Federation of Small Businesses, welcomed Mr Hammond’s announcement which he said has been “a key ask of FSB to stop the decline in the number of people taking up apprenticeships.”

However Labour’s shadow skills minister, Gordon Marsden, criticised the Chancellor’s plans, calling them “too little, too late”.

“It’s not action this day, only a consultation – and will do little to address the shambles of Department for Education ministers missing their target of three million apprenticeships by 2020 or the continuing plummeting start levels for them,” he said.

“Labour by contrast would turbocharge the traineeships programme, essential to get young people onto the apprenticeship ladder and abysmally neglected by this government, and listen to calls for more control over levy funding at local level.”

Angela Rayner, shadow education secretary, wrote on Twitter that the Chancellor had “finally accepted” one of Labour’s proposals in increasing the levy transfer facility, but warned: “With numbers of people starting apprenticeships falling now, a review and no action until after 2020 is just tinkering at the edges.”

 

Failing colleges that merge ‘can expect’ Ofsted monitoring visit

Grade three or four colleges that merge can expect to receive a monitoring visit before their first full inspection, Ofsted has confirmed today.

The clarification, which applies to mergers from January 2018 onwards, follows criticism that poor-performing colleges had been able to get away without any Ofsted scrutiny following a merger.

According to the FE and skills inspection handbook, updated today, a “newly merged college will normally receive a monitoring visit before the first full inspection if the overall effectiveness grade of one or more of the predecessor colleges was requires improvement or inadequate”.

The exceptions to this are where “the merged college has already received a support and challenge visit” or the merger “took place before January 2018”.

The move follows criticism from education select committee chair Robert Halfon, who accused Ofsted in August of allowing mergers to be an excuse for turning a blind eye to failure.

He demanded the inspectorate “monitor all failing providers” regardless of their merger status, after an FE Week investigation uncovered an example of an institution formed through the merger of a double grade four and a grade three college that had yet to receive a monitoring visit a year post-merger.

Following the area reviews of post-16 education and training, which ended in March last year, newly-merged colleges are now given up to three years before they receive a full inspection.

A monitoring visit could be carried out at “any reasonable time” to a college post-merger, according to the handbook – but in practice this hasn’t happened.

FE Week’s investigation found that just two colleges had received a monitoring visit following a merger. One of these involved two colleges previously rated ‘requires improvement’, which the other involved a grade four and a grade two college.

Colleges that could expect to receive a monitoring visit under the new policy include Trafford College, which merged with Stockport College in April – just a month after Stockport was rated ‘inadequate’ for the third time in five years.

Likewise, New City College, which merged with grade three Epping Forest College in August, will fall under the scope of the new policy, as will Stockton Riverside College, which joined forces with grade four Redcar and Cleveland College in the same month.

In an expert piece for FE Week in July, the education watchdog’s deputy director for FE, Paul Joyce, insisted that “merging with another college is certainly not a route to avoiding inspection” and that “we are monitoring colleges that merge very closely”.

All new apprenticeship standards to be introduced by August 2020

The government has committed to introducing all new apprenticeship standards in time for August 2020, rather than “by 2020” as previously stated.

Plans to stop funding old apprenticeship frameworks and ensure providers were only delivering new Trailblazer standards were first announced in October 2013, with the frameworks initially planned to end in 2017/18.

However, the government’s ‘2020 vision’ apprenticeship document, released in December 2015, pushed this deadline back and planned instead for “a migration from apprenticeship frameworks to standards over the course of the parliament, with as much of this to take place by 2017/18 as possible.”

Three waves of frameworks have so far been switched off, but earlier this year the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced it would not be closing any further frameworks until 2020.

“By 2020, we expect that employers and providers will have completed the transition, and that all starts will be on standards, so all frameworks will be withdrawn to new starts at that point,” the guidance said.

However, “by 2020” has now morphed into August 2020 at the earliest, after the Treasury released a press release today on changes to apprenticeships.

This included £5 million for the Institute for Apprenticeships to introduce new standards and update existing ones.

“The government will discontinue the old frameworks so that all new apprenticeships will be on the same higher-quality standards by the start of the 2020/21 academic year,” it said.

According to the most recent apprenticeship framework delivery list, published on September 12, 86 frameworks have been withdrawn so far. Two more have withdrawal dates listed – level four public relations (January 1, 2019) and level five care leadership and management (December 31, 2018).

To date, 124 frameworks remain without a withdrawal date.

EuroSkills 2018: Russia tops medal table

The Russian Federation reigned supreme at EuroSkills 2018 after their team claimed nine golds, eight silvers, two bronzes and 10 medallions of excellence in Budapest.

Following up in second place was Austria while France finished third (full table below).

Russia, which is hosting next year’s WorldSkills competition in Kazan, took 37 young people to compete in Hungary – the largest team out of any competing nation.

They won top podium spots in mobile robotics, welding, mechanical engineering design CAD, graphic design, visual merchandising, web development, ICT specialists and hotel receptioning.

Austria took 32 competitors and won four golds, 12 silvers, two bronzes and nine medallions of excellence. Their gold medals were achieved in automobile technology, plumbing and heating, painting and decorating, and concrete construction.

France’s 25 competitors won three golds, three silvers, six bronzes and 10 medallions of excellence. They were announced Europe’s best skilled nation in wall and floor tiling, heavy truck maintenance and hairdressing.

EuroSkills 2018 came to a close on Saturday night after three days of brutal competition.

Twenty eight European countries competed in 35 official skills. Over 100,000 spectators were said to have visited the competition, being held at the Hungexpo arena, over its duration.

Flying the flag for Team UK was 22 individuals. WorldSkills UK boss Dr Neil Bentley had given the team a target of a top 10 finish in the overall medal table.

And they achieved just that.

They finished joint ninth with Sweden. Beauty therapist Holly-Mae Cotterell claimed gold, while bronze medals went to mechatronics duo Danny Slater and Jack Dakin, mechanical engineering CAD competitor Ross Megahy, and hairdresser Gavin Jon Kyte.

Team UK also claimed seven medallions of excellence.

“This is a fantastic result for Team UK and the country as a whole,” said Dr Bentley.

“We were gunning for a top ten position and we got it.

“These brilliant young people – training and preparing them to be among the very best across Europe – are the UK’s new generation of high flyers.”

An FE Week souvenir supplement about EuroSkills Budapest will be published this week, in partnership with Pearson.

FE Week is proud media partner of WorldSkills UK and Team UK.

Chancellor set to announce apprenticeship levy changes

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, is set to announce that the annual apprenticeship levy transfer facility will rise from 10 to 25 percent.

In a speech at the Conservative Party Conference later this morning, Mr Hammond will also say that he will consult with businesses about further changes to the levy from 2020, following the slow take up and employer criticisms.

As reported in FE Week, large employers used just 10 percent of their levy funds in its first year since launching in May 2017, and monthly starts figures continue to be well below pre-levy levels.

The Conservative Party Manifesto in 2017 committed to “allow large firms to pass levy funds to small firms in their supply chain”, a policy which was introduced in May 2018.

The online Apprenticeship System for levy paying employers when launched allowed for up to 10 percent of annual funds to be shared with up to one employer and has since been expanded to unlimited receiving employers.

FE Week understands that since the policy was introduced six months ago, the take-up has been very low, despite employer groups lobbying heavily for the flexibility.

A spokesperson for the Conservative Party said the increase from 10 to 25 percent available for levy transfer from April 2019 comes alongside a commitment to “expanding the apprenticeships available”, as well as “kick-off the first stage of the Government’s engagement process seeking views on the flexibility and development of the Apprenticeship Levy.”

Mr Hammond will say the changes form part of a “new” £125 million package to support learning and and fuel productivity.

Mr Hammond’s speech will take place during the 10:00 to 12:30 session at the Conference at Birmingham’s NEC. Follow @FEWeek for live updates of the speech.

Six ways technology can boost productivity in FE

The further education sector plays an important role in England’s education system. In 2017/18, the country’s 266 colleges provided education and training to 300,000 apprentices, 600,000 young people aged 16 to 18, and 1.4 million adults.

However, it has also received an average 30 per cent funding cut from 2009 to 2019 and staffing levels which have slumped by 20,000 since 2010. What’s more, across the UK, the FE estate structure is changing, with a shift towards regional colleges which have strong links with each other, independent providers and industry.

Simply put, colleges are under immense pressure to deliver high-quality education with dwindling resources – they suffer more than any other stage of education. So how can our FE establishments reshape to be more productive and financially stable, while also providing an excellent learning experience that produces a workforce with the skills required to help the UK economy thrive post-Brexit and beyond? The answer lies in digital transformation.

The tools are out there to not only reimagine productivity from automating processes but also by enabling educators to rethink the way they work. For example, by choosing an integrated learner Management Information System (MIS) such as Advanced’s ProSolution, FE providers can quickly and responsively manage applications and enquiries, learner enrolment, registers, timetables, examinations, reporting and oversee the production of Individualised Learner Records (ILRs). These tools can unleash a new era of collaboration – as well as competition – between FE providers, where the most successful organisations will be those that use technology to facilitate smooth and successful partnerships between themselves, students and employers.

Easing the burden of Ofsted  

While accurate and ongoing self-assessment is crucial for continued improvement in teaching and training delivery, Ofsted Inspection is one area that continues to cause FE establishments a big headache.

Ofsted’s latest Annual Report revealed that more than 80 per cent of teachers say inspections create ‘unacceptable burden’, with four fifths of teachers stating that Ofsted inspections create additional work. So how can productivity be improved in this area?

Alongside automating dozens of previously manual processes, feedback from colleges indicate that our ProSuite helps to support compliance, providing a very reliable audit trail. For example, this proved invaluable when, in September 2016, just five months after rolling out the software, Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education started preparing the data for its next Ofsted inspection.

The Institute uses ProAchieve to gain the vital information that all FE colleges and all types of private training providers need to improve learner and organisation performance, whilst at the same time ensuring they remain compliant and prepared for Ofsted with the ever-changing and demanding government and inspection standards.

Ricky Coxon, Executive Director of Information Services at Grimsby Institute, said: “We knew we were doing an outstanding job with regards to learner progress, attainment and attendance – and Advanced’s solution helped us showcase this. Teachers and support staff could focus on any areas of weakness and put in place improvement plans to instigate change for positive outcomes. When we pulled it all together, our data looked very strong. We found we were six per cent above the national average for 16-18 year olds, and above in almost all other areas, too.”

By combining technology solutions, staff were able to access higher quality student data and work more efficiently – all of which helped the college to gather important evidence required for the inspection. Impressively, Grimsby Institute won the highly coveted ‘outstanding’ rating from Ofsted – held by less than one per cent of the general FE colleges in England.

This shows first hand how data can help bring together hundreds of staff to deliver positive outcomes. Over 95 per cent of all further education colleges in England use Advanced ProSuite, with 25 per cent of customers reporting that they feel “well prepared” for Ofsted Inspections after implementing the software. Imagine the impact on British teaching and learning if all educational institutions embraced technology and put data at the heart of their insight.

Six key areas where technology could boost productivity in FE

Increasing efficiency when it comes to managing data for Ofsted inspections is just one area that technology can help increase productivity in FE. It can also reshape and personalise learning, boost productivity in the staff room, and improve strategic and operational decision making, particularly around teaching, learning support, and curriculum design. It can:

  1. Speed up administration and reporting, freeing up staff to focus on boosting student outcomes

Standard procedures such as student enrolment, completion, transfer or withdrawal can now be done in minutes. As a result, 70 per cent of institutions benefit from time-savings through acquiring the ProSuite, with 43 per cent of customers saving two or more hours per day after implementing one of Advanced’s solutions. Grimsby Institute saved time on approximately 240,000 enrolments, completions, transfers and withdrawals during 2016/2017 and became nearly 200 per cent more efficient on these tasks – the equivalent of freeing up 11 people – allowing staff to focus on improving student outcomes and boosting college operations.

  1. Boost learner outcomes

Integrated software like Advanced’s ProMonitor is key for teaching staff to track learners. It has modules designed for a range of users to access individual learner data, to write reports and to ease the administrative burden of marking. Holding a centralised collection of key learner details, the system makes it easier to raise, track and follow up on comments and understand your learners. The email integration can notify those who need to know, keeping everyone in the loop. Each learner can also have their induction and meetings recorded, building a detailed picture of them. This is especially useful in cases where learners need additional support, or become at risk, allowing teachers/FE institutions to create actions plans to reduce learners risk status. It can also be customised to design multiple individual learner plans.

  1. Improve transparency

Alongside the ability to automate dozens of previously manual processes, technology solutions can also support compliance, providing a reliable audit trail. If the data is questioned, the processes are so transparent that it’s easy for colleges to see exactly who entered the data, find the source of that data and quickly rectify it.

  1. Reveal trends and highlights areas of weakness

By integrating systems, such as finance and HR, student information can be kept up-to-date centrally, providing a single real-time view of student data across the college, and delivering increased confidence in the analysis and trends that are revealed. Tools such as ProObserve help staff streamline lesson observations so they can focus efforts where needed, resulting in greater learner progress across the board.

  1. Show real-time information in one place

Improving outcomes, measuring progression and retaining learners are the main goals for FE organisations. Having the right information available is key to keeping learners on track and ensuring they meet their potential. With most college data tied up in multiple systems, the process of pulling it all together is manual and laborious, using up time that could be better spent teaching. A dashboard solution, such as Advanced’s ProMetrix, can help provide valuable insight to guide a retention strategy, monitor students’ progress, assess course effectiveness, direct decisions and resource allocations. Some 83 per cent of customers believe the ProSuite allows them to effectively analyse the success of courses and departments for continuous improvement.

  1. Increase successful interactions with employers and prospective students

FE colleges and training providers face significant challenges in terms of maximising access to employers and stakeholders whilst contributing to the government’s target of achieving three million apprenticeships by 2020. ProEngage is a specialist CRM solution, designed for the FE market that can manage and help to increase successful interactions with employers and prospective students.

Apprenticeships: training providers need to get a handle on data

The Government recently announced that training providers will be asked to log apprentices’ off-the-job training hours to prove that the minimum funding requirement is being met. A new data field for Individual Learner Records (ILR) has been designed to help providers demonstrate compliance. Data must be recorded monthly and contribute to each learner’s full ILR.

Further guidance on the new field explains that it should record the “cumulative total of actual off-the-job training delivered to date, to the individual apprentice, in the academic year by the training provider”.

While having the right information available is key to keeping learners on track and ensuring they meet their potential, training providers argue that such processes are heavily labour intensive, taking up hours of admin. There is a smarter way. Advanced’s solution, ProAchieve, gives training providers easier access to the vital information they need around learner achievement.

By replicating a variety of ESFA and Ofsted reports, ProAchieve enables training providers to see clearly how well they are performing across year groups and whether they are on track. They can view learning aims and learner data from the ILR, as well as funding data from the Funding Information Suite (FIS) and Provider Financial Report (PFR) files. Using ProAchieve means they can also easily look up values such as demographics and learner details, plus use the extensive data filtering functionality to highlight key information to facilitate the drive to improve performance.

Implementing integrated systems from one supplier like this is a simple way to deliver the efficiencies that all training providers are seeking.

 

How technology made Aylesbury College more productive

Aylesbury College, part of Buckinghamshire College Group, needed to simplify its student administration, making it more efficient, so that staff could spend more time focusing on learners and their education.

The college was already using ProAchieve to analyse student retention and achievement, and ensure it was meeting targets. On the back of this success, it implemented Advanced’s MIS solution to make it easier to centralise, maintain and report on data. This would enable student enrolment, registration, timetables and examinations to be managed more productively.

Using the software suite meant all the college’s systems could work immediately as one cohesive whole. This meant teachers could take registration on different devices, including mobile, with the data immediately available online. With lesson attendance a key indicator of student success, the college could immediately take appropriate action for any students who are absent. It also afforded them the time to give greater care to their ‘looked after’ and ‘safeguarded’ students.

The system has also reshaped the college’s ability to take a holistic view of all the components in its study programme, linking the data and giving a single view of each student. For the first time, the college can tie attendance figures together with learning, student programmes and target grades, and has seen a marked improvement in student achievement as a direct result.

Fiona Morey, Deputy Principal of Buckinghamshire College Group, commented: “We wanted to integrate all our systems, and the solutions within the suite now communicate seamlessly with each other.”

Following Aylesbury’s merger with Amersham and Wycombe College, the amalgamated systems can maximise the benefits and efficiencies that the college was looking to achieve. With all information in one place, the college can easily analyse vital data so that it is making informed decisions to ensure its learners get the best possible outcomes. Staff across all sites have streamlined access to crucial data, with dashboards showing a real-time view of learner attendance and progress. As a result, the college is now agile enough to respond to student information with speed and accuracy. Implementing ProMonitor, to further help gauge student success, will be the last piece of the jigsaw.

“ProSolution is simple, powerful and has a huge impact on the efficiency of our organisation, helping us to monitor and analyse our students’ activity, retention and achievement so that we can continue to evolve and deliver an outstanding academic experience.”

Reimagine your goals from a new perspective, and gain the time to rethink, recharge and reshape your college. Find out more today

If you want to find out more about how we support 95% of FE colleges in England each year, click here.