The truth behind plans to cull 300 staff at England’s largest college group

England’s largest college group this week announced plans to slash up to 300 jobs across its two training providers to “strengthen” its “already robust provision”, but FE Week has since learnt the truth behind the move.

The redundancies consultation at Intraining and Rathbone Training, part of NCG, comes off the back of a slamming Ofsted inspection as well as an Education and Skills Funding Agency mystery audit that found major data manipulation.

FE Week understands the education watchdog recently conducted a monitoring visit of Intraining following its ‘requires improvement’ report published in June last year, which downgraded it from ‘good’.

The unfortunate effect of these proposals would be substantial redundancies

The inspectorate found no signs of improvement at the provider, and is expected to hit it with ‘insufficient’ ratings across the board when the report surfaces.

The visit was only for Intraining and not NCG as a whole, although the group is anticipating its own monitoring inspection soon as it also got downgraded to ‘requires improvement’ in June last year.

Meanwhile, Intraining was one of a number of providers to receive a short-notice audit from the ESFA. It is understood the agency is not only demanding a significant clawback from the NCG division after finding evidence of achievement rate fiddling, but contract termination is also likely.

The confusing picture of NCG’s and Intraining’s latest official data (see tables below), for 2016/17, shows their overall achievement rate for nearly 7,000 apprentices was under 60 per cent.

NCG declined to comment on Ofsted’s and the ESFA’s findings.

The college group ran itself into financial trouble in 2017/18, generating a deficit of £7 million, according to its latest accounts. This was largely because a substantial drop in apprenticeship provision.

According to the ESFA’s official data, total of 9,470 apprentices started across the whole group in 2016/17, but this declined to just 3,820 in 2017/18 – a 60 per cent drop.

The group has also seen a huge decline in subcontractors. It had 50 of these partners in 2016/17 with contracts totalling £12.3 million. NCG retained a 20 per cent top-slice to gain £2.4 million in management fees, according to figures published by the ESFA.

NCG’s divisions

But as of May 1, 2017, NCG was working with just 10 subcontractors according to their published self-declaration, with the combined total of contracts totalling just £1.3 million. If the group took a 20 per cent top-slice on average from the deals its management fee income would only be £264,997.

Intraining and Rathbone Training currently train 4,500 learners between them, of which two-thirds are apprentices. Some could be forced to find alternative providers if their 19 centres end up shutting, as NCG is proposing.

Last year, FE Week reported that staff numbers were being cut by up to a fifth, from 500 to around 400, at the providers in an effort to save £3 million and NCG Group accounts show they injected cash totalling £1 million into Intraining and £2.55 million into Rathbone Training.

“We have opened consultation with Intraining and Rathbone staff on some fundamental changes to the way in which we operate in England, including the closure of our network of training centres and a radical refocussing of our apprenticeship proposition,” a statement on the NCG website said this week.

“Intraining and Rathbone accounted for less than 20 per cent of group revenue in 2017/18. The changes we are proposing will strengthen NCG’s already robust position, supporting our ambition to invest in teaching, learning and facilities.

“The unfortunate effect of these proposals would be substantial redundancies.”

A spokesperson confirmed the providers between them currently employ 425 people and 300 jobs are now at risk.

He said that moving forward, NCG will “put the interests of learners first and support them to finish their programmes wherever possible”.

“If we proceed as currently proposed following consultation, we will in future operate a single, smaller, digitally-enabled business focussed on delivery of high-quality apprenticeships for the tech, management and professional occupations,” the spokesperson added.

NCG, which is chaired by former Education and Skills Funding Agency chief executive Peter Lauener, has experienced a turbulent couple of years.

Peter Lauener

Aside from the Ofsted visits and falling achievement rates, staff at its colleges in London have gone on strike in a row over pay, and a free school that the group sponsored, the Discovery School, was forced to close down by the government.

NCG is currently subject to intervention from the FE Commissioner owing to the Ofsted grade three, and is expecting a “diagnostic visit” before the end of the academic year.

As well as this, it is expected that the group will be dropped from the government’s final bidding round for Institutes of Technology as a result of its ‘requires improvement’ rating.

NCG’s former boss Joe Docherty resigned in October.

As revealed by FE Week earlier this month, the college group has paused recruitment for a new chief executive until the Spring, after its initial hunt proved fruitless and it turned its focus to “improving standards”.

 

Intraining hit hard by ESFA mystery audit

In early March, FE Week reported that the ESFA had undertaken mysterious funding audits at many large apprenticeship providers.

It is understood that Intraining was one of the providers visited in an effort to uncover data manipulation that would inflate achievement rates and funding levels.

At the time of the audit the ESFA refused to say what they were looking into, but have in recent days written to providers outlining their findings.

Sources close to the audit told FE Week that the ESFA found significant issues with the way Intraining apprentices had been reclassified as NCG’s and generally moved around the providers that make-up the NCG Group.

The audits also focussed on whether withdrawals and ‘breaks in learning’ were recorded in a way that would inflate both funding and achievement rates.

NCG would not comment on the audit or what is believed to be a significant sum of funding the ESFA is looking to clawback.

It is believed Intraining is one of several dozen providers hit with the mystery audits that face not only a clawback, but also being removed from the official achievement rate tables, due for publication next Thursday.

As previously reported by FE Week, this major review of apprenticeship data is expected to result in the sector being officially warned about unacceptable data practices, as was the case nearly a decade ago when the then chief executive of the funding agency published a letter to the sector.

Something similar is likely to be in the pipeline from the current top brass at the ESFA.

 

Huge decline in apprenticeship business and subcontractors

NCG Group saw a huge 5,650 (60 per cent) fall in the number of apprenticeship starts in 2017/18, according to figures published by the government.

As shown in the table below (click to enlarge), the seven of the eight providers that form the current NCG Group all suffered huge reductions. It remains unclear why apprentices were shifted onto the NCG provider, rising from 30 to 830 starts.

Intraining and to some extent Rathbone Training were heavily reliant on apprenticeship subcontracting, as shown in the table below. They had 50 subcontractors in 2016/17 generating over £12 million of which NCG Group retained £2.4 million. Since then this has sharply declined to as few as 10 subcontractors generating less than £2 million.

 

Quality concerns and lack of clarity over data

The latest published qualification achievement rate (QAR) data shows just what a complicated mess the NCG Group has got themselves into.

As the table below shows (click to enlarge), official data says the NCG provider had more than 3,000 apprentices with a very low achievement rate of 55.6 per cent.

Unofficial data also published by the government suggests the figure is 48.2 per cent for less than 2,000 starts. And if that was not strange enough, the official starts figure in 2016/17 for this provider was only 30.

FE Week understands that the ESFA is now investigating why apprentices were moved around the various provider UKPRNs, often many times.

The green paper that should be required reading for Labour’s NES commission

National Education Service? Labour would do better to develop a new national education entitlement for those aged 18 to 74, says Tom Bewick

Twenty years ago, the Labour government published a seminal green paper, The Learning Age. It was responsible for a lifelong learning strategy that many in the sector still talk about. Two central policy tenets – individual learning accounts and the university for industry – were a recognition that society had moved on from the statist, monolithic provision of public services.

The learning age “will be built on a renewed commitment to self-improvement… learning supports active citizenship and democracy”, wrote David Blunkett, then education secretary, in a foreword to the paper. Blunkett came from a social democratic tradition within the Labour movement. As a council leader in the 1980s he had seen the limitations of central diktat from Whitehall. He also had no time for municipal Marxism, preferring instead to follow the pioneering efforts of the early trade unions who had set up their own workers’ educational institutes and correspondence courses.

Of course, the individual learning accounts and university for industry policies ultimately failed. Not because they were wrongly conceived, but the result of extremely poor implementation. The learning accounts, hugely popular with adult returning learners, closed because of fraud.

And the so-called university for industry never really engaged with enough companies, making the whole proposition null and void.

The recent history of lifelong learning policy is important because, it seems, Labour – now in opposition – has no intention of drawing any lessons from it. The Learning Age should be compulsory reading for every member of the commission it has tasked with putting flesh on the bones of its rather nebulous National Education Service (NES). What they’d soon discover is that the goal of achieving a widespread learning culture where everyone is empowered to take part has little to do with tinkering about with institutional structures – central or local.

You would expect a serious consultation like this to focus on what barriers to learning need to be addressed to equip citizens with the skills to succeed in the fourth Industrial Revolution. Instead, the focus is about “local accountability” structures. It’s a throwback to the 1970s and the glory days of the Inner London Education Authority, no doubt a period fondly remembered by those around the current Labour leader.

The paper drips with anti-market rhetoric. Education has been treated like a “commodity”, it says, “with the needs of the private sector prioritised instead”. Absolutely no recognition that the only reason apprenticeship opportunities quadrupled under the last Labour government was because the independent training providers stepped in.

Private providers still deliver 76 per cent of all apprenticeships. Or that our qualifications are envied and exported the world over because they have always operated in a mixed-market economy, constitutionally independent from the state.

If Labour really wants to look forward, not back, it needs to change the rhetoric. Post-compulsory education has always been a collaborative partnership between the state, private companies and individuals. The model of the National Health Service is not the one we should be basing a 21st-century lifelong learning policy on.

Sure, the NHS concept has provided a catchy slogan for politicians to talk about how learning should be “free at the point of use” and available “from cradle to grave”. But the public is not stupid. The NHS has gatekeepers at every level rationing the medicines and treatments patients can receive. And while the NHS is close to a national religion, people also understand the limitations of how much taxation can be increased to fund it.

Labour would do better to develop a new national education entitlement for those aged 18 to 74. It should resurrect individual learning accounts and empower citizens through those to seek out the skills and retraining that is required. Ultimately, education is a public and a private good.

What people care about most is not which democratic structures oversee them, but the real purchasing power in their pockets that allows them to find the courses they need.

The C-word that means much more than ‘could do better’

Labour’s new commission is a chance to establish truly integrated lifelong learning, says Joyce Black

The first three months of 2019 have shown us that C can mean celebration, centenary and, of course, commission. Lifelong learning is the thread that brings them all together.

Three important adult education organisations are celebrating this year: the Open University and Aontas, the national adult learning organisation in Ireland, have both reached their 50th birthday, while the iconic London adult education centre, City Lit, is marking its centenary. These organisations are all very different and were set up with different purposes, but they have all transformed the lives of adult learners who might have otherwise missed out.

Another centenary being commemorated this year is the Ministry of Reconstruction’s 1919 report on adult learning, which described adult education as “a permanent national necessity” that should be “both universal and lifelong”. One hundred years on and we’re still having to make the case, even though there is so much more research and evidence, including from the Learning and Work Institute (L&W), which clearly demonstrates the impact adult learning has on the individual, communities, economies and society.

For the past 26 years, L&W’s Festival of Learning – the biggest celebration of lifelong learning in England – has highlighted the many and varied opportunities learning can bring to individuals, their families, communities and employers. It has been my privilege and pleasure to read the nominations for the past 17 years, to read first-hand the transformative examples of lifelong learning and retraining.

And so on to the C for commission. It seems that a new commission is either announced, launched or has published a report every week, but I have a particular interest in Labour’s new Commission on Lifelong Learning. Its task will be to develop proposals that will create a system of lifelong learning that is genuinely integrated across all types and providers of education; proposals that give individuals access to the education and training they need throughout their lives, not just to serve the economic need, but to improve their own life chances.

While this can sound like so much familiar rhetoric, one question that is also included is, “can and should lifelong learning support other government policy priorities – health being one such example?”

This for me is the key question and if the answer is “yes”, then not only for health. If a future Labour government is serious about this, then those cross-departmental discussions need to take place now. Government departments need to be embrace the demonstrable value of adult learning and education in addressing more of their strategic priorities and policies in health and social care, social integration and community cohesion, social mobility – and not forgetting industry, in the context of the fourth Industrial Revolution.

While we know that there is much international evidence of the impact of adult learning across other public policy agendas, three recent L&W reports (Healthy Wealth and Wise; Learning Work and Health; Time for Action) bring together the evidence and the arguments as to why and how lifelong learning should support other government policy priorities.

Some of the suggestions I will be making to the commission include: taking a more co-ordinated and integrated and longer-term focused approach to health and associated services, including adult learning and employment programmes; supporting learning linked to health, work and communities (social prescribing) much more strategically across the UK; linking social prescribing with entitlements to a personal learning account to help give individuals greater choice and ownership over their learning, as well as more flexible help with the cost. I could go on.

I have joined with other colleagues on the commission, bringing more than 40 years’ experience in FE, and am looking forward to developing a genuinely integrated lifelong learning system that meets the ever-changing needs of individuals and our country. This is the time not to just be bold and radical, but to also be creative and credible.

Ofsted watch: Private provider straight in with grade one

It’s been a week of mainly highs for FE as one provider was rated ‘outstanding’ in its first ever inspection, while another was found making ‘significant progress’ across the board in an early monitoring visit.

The week wasn’t without its lows, however, as several providers scored ‘insufficient progress’ ratings in their own monitoring reports.

White Rose School of Beauty and Complementary Therapies Limited went straight in with a grade one after winning an adult learning and apprenticeships contract in 2016.

The provider has trained more than 700 learners over the last year, and its report recognised how the principal has “successfully implemented an ambitious strategic vision to provide outstanding training in beauty and complementary therapies that meets the needs of local and national industries”.

“Well-qualified tutors have extensive industry experience,” inspectors found.

Learners make “very rapid progress in the development of their vocational skills; the very large majority go on to achieve their qualifications”.

Another private provider, Development Manager Limited, which has 171 apprentices training in computer software development, technical support and engineering, or digital marketing, made ‘significant progress’ in all three areas of an early monitoring visit.

“Senior managers and governors, led by the chief executive, have a very distinct and positive approach to the delivery of apprenticeships,” inspectors wrote.

“They are clear that the development of positive behaviours and attitudes is as important as the development of new knowledge and skills.”

Two providers that were rated ‘requires improvement’ last year – Newcastle upon Tyne City Council and Learn Plus Us – were also found to be making ‘significant progress’ in at least one field judged.

Things are not so rosy at Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, which made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of a monitoring visit.

“Most trust employees who become apprentices already have the practical skills, knowledge and behaviours needed for the apprenticeship,” inspectors wrote.

“Consequently, the apprenticeship is of little benefit and does not develop or extend the apprentices’ knowledge, skills and behaviours.”

WDR Limited was found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ across the board after inspectors found staff at an employer were being forced onto their apprenticeship programme. You can read FE Week’s full story about this report here.

Meanwhile, the Paddington Development Trust, a private provider, was hit with a grade three in its first Ofsted inspection.

Inspectors found that trustees and senior leaders “do not have a secure enough oversight of the quality of provision and do not use the data available to them well enough to bring about improvement where needed”.

Chadsgrove Educational Trust Learning Centre, an independent specialist college, also received a grade three in its first inspection.

Ofsted said directors, managers and staff are “not suitably experienced in working with students in further education settings”.

The centre opened to provide provision for young people aged 19 to 25 with a physical disability and/or complex medical need in 2016.

Senior leaders were criticised for focussing too much on securing funding and seeking off-site accommodation away from the main site, and not having “sufficient focus on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment”.

Greater Peterborough UTC also received a grade three from its first inspection.

In the first year of the UTC accepting students, “too much emphasis was placed on maximising pupil numbers and too little attention was given to matching pupils’ interests and aspirations to the UTC’s curriculum,” according to Ofsted.

“This contributed to the first set of results last summer being very poor.”

Meanwhile six providers – Central Training Academy Limited, JGW Training Limited, Trainingplatform Ltd, Linden Management (UK) Limited, Complete Lean Solutions, and Herefordshire, Ludlow and North Shropshire College – all made ‘reasonable progress’ across the board in their various monitoring visits.

Babington Business College Limited retained its grade two in a short Ofsted inspection.

GFE Colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
Herefordshire, Ludlow and North Shropshire College 06/03/2019 22/03/2019 M M RRRRRR

 

Independent Learning Providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
Central Training Academy Limited 30/01/2019 18/03/2019 M 3 RRRR
Learn Plus Us 27/02/2019 20/03/2019 M 3 SRRR
The White Rose School of Beauty and Complementary Therapies Limited 12/02/2019 22/03/2019 1 N/A  
The Development Manager Limited 20/02/2019 21/03/2019 M M SSS
JGW Training Limited 13/02/2019 20/02/2019 M M RRR
Trainingplatform Ltd 12/01/2019 21/03/2019 M M RRR
Linden Management (UK) Limited 20/02/2019 18/03/2019 M M RRR
WDR Limited 19/02/2019 18/03/2019 M M III
Complete Lean Solutions Limited 27/02/2019 18/03/2019 M M RRR
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust 29/01/2019 21/01/2019 M M IIR
Paddington Development Trust 06/02/2019 20/03/2019 3 N/A  

 

Adult and Community Learning Inspected Published Grade Previous grade  
Newcastle upon Tyne City Council 13/02/2019 19/03/2019 M 3 SRRRR

 

Specialist colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Chadsgrove Educational Trust Learning Centre 27/02/2019 22/03/2019 3 N/A

 

Other (including UTCs) Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Greater Peterborough UTC 12/02/2019 18/03/2019 3 N/A

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2) Inspected Published
Babington Business College Limited 06/02/2019 19/02/2019

‘Urgent actions’ needed at two cash-strapped colleges, FE Commissioner warns

Two colleges in severe financial trouble have been told by the FE Commssioner and skills minister that “urgent actions” are needed to secure their long-term futures.

North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College, which has experienced historical cash issues since its merger in 2016, and Macclesfield College, which had its financial health rated ‘inadequate’ earlier this year, each had a report from the FE Commssioner Richard Atkins published today.

North Warwickshire’s said it “should be able to avoid insolvency for the time being” but only if it improves  the  way  its “costed curriculum plan is monitored in year and adjustments made accordingly”.

It warned there is “much to do” at the college if the “significant risks” it currently faces are to be managed. Skills minister Anne Milton agreed with the report in a letter also published today, saying it is clear “urgent actions are now required”.

According to North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College’s 2017/18 accounts, it generated an operating deficit of £2.9 million, up from a deficit of £612,000 the year before.

Its total comprehensive income fell from £6.3 million to £2.7 million.

The FE Commissioner said the college, which five months ago received a financial health notice to improve after the government assessed its monetary situation as “inadequate”, is at risk of a “cash crisis” this year. However, it stressed it is “not currently in crisis”.

The current financial situation was driven by poor forecasting, an overall decline in apprenticeship contract and provision, failure to attract enough students to deliver the adult education budget contract, an “over dependence” on a late increase in distance subcontracting and the requirement to accommodate in excess of 100 unfunded 16-18 year olds, which cost £1 million.

The college was accused of being over optimistic in its forecasting and of having “overly complex, expensive” staffing costs to income ratio.

The chair and vice chairs of the board as well the principal will now need to act quickly to “avert a cash crisis in 2019 and to secure the college’s long-term future”.

The report said the college now needs to review its organisational structure, which Milton says it appears to be “unnecessarily complex”, as well as develop an accommodation strategy. An extensive review of its management information also needs to be carried out in order to enable the college to quickly identify and manage risks.

Principal Marion Plant said: “We welcome the findings of the FE Commissioner’s report from their visit last November and have made rapid and significant progress against all the recommendations.

“This was confirmed by the FE Commissioner’s team at their follow-up visit earlier this month.”

At Macclesfield, the FE Commissioner found “ambitious” income growth targets were the main cause of the college generating a “very significant deficit” of £2 million in 2017/18.

Another cause was the college’s decision in October 2017 to subcontract up to 225 16-18-year-old learners, at a considerable distance from the college, in order to increase 16-18 funding in the 2018/19 financial year.

This decision was made because of a shortfall in the college’s learner number allocation target and subcontracting meant the funding allocation could not only be met, but exceeded.

After the ESFA slapped the college with a financial health rating of ‘inadequate’, the college appealed and self-assessed its financial health as ‘satisfactory’.

“The main thrust of the judgment from the college is that 2017/18 was a one-off occurrence and that the budget plan for the current year will rapidly improve financial health,” the commissioner wrote, adding that this assessment was not accepted by the funding agency.

More board members with financial expertise are being sought by the college, something the commissioner called a “priority”.

But following the appointment of two new vice principals, Macclesfield College has a “well-balanced and appropriately skilled and experienced” senior leadership team, the commissioner added.

The FE Commssioner also reported that the quality of provision at Macclesfield College is ‘good’ as judged by Ofsted in 2017, and the Qualification Achievement Rates in 2017/18 “continue to improve and be strong”.

He recommended his team carry out a monitoring visit within six months to check all the recommendations have been fully implemented.

A spokesperson from Macclesfield college said: “We welcome the recognition of our hard work and continuous improvements over the past three and half years.

“We  have seen the quality of teaching and learning improve significantly and were delighted that Ofsted and the commissioners team recognised this during their visits.

“Macclesfield College financial health is forecast to return to good at the end of this academic year.”

Milton has written to the college’s chair of governors Mark Sharples, saying she has accepted all the commissioner’s recommendations.

 

 

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 275

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

Lorraine Hill, Chief finance officer, City College Plymouth

Start date: March 2019

Previous job: Director of business and finance, Treviglas Academy

Interesting fact: She loves to watch cookery programmes, but her husband is in charge of cooking at home.

Koen Lamberts, Chair of the board of trustees, UCAS

Start date: September 2019

Concurrent job: President and vice chancellor, University of Sheffield

Interesting fact: He enjoys mountain biking in remote places.

Stephanie Bridgeman, Board member, Nelson and Colne College.

Start date: December 2018

Concurrent job: Founder, Experienced Media Analysts

Interesting fact: She loves aerial yoga and can often be found hanging upside down in classes on a Tuesday afternoon.

Neil Bates, Chair, Edge Foundation

Start date: March 2019

Concurrent job: Managing director, Technical Professional Education Limited

Interesting fact: He used his inheritance to build a school in Burma.

Employers having control over UK skills policy is ‘rhetoric, not reality’

The government should move away from its “unhelpful” mantra of “employers in the driving seat” in UK skills policy because this is “more rhetoric than reality”, new research has suggested.

The phrase was coined with regard to further education in the latter years of the Coalition government – 2010-2015. However, the study has found that instead, the state remains “stubbornly” in the driving seat, particularly as far as apprenticeships are concerned. It adds that the key players – government, employers and providers – are out of balance with one another.

The research, exclusively shared with FE Week, was conducted by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and the Further Education Trust for Leadership via a series of nine roundtable discussions with 81 sector leaders across the country.

It explored what effect the “employers in the driving seat” mantra has had on their business and decision-making, but found that it has “not had much of an impact at all”.

“It is not clear what employers are supposed to be in the driving seat of, as policy is set by the state, funding is held and released by the state, and the quality of delivery is monitored by the state,” the report said.

“Certainly not a driving seat – [it’s] lucky if it is passenger seat, possibly rear seat or a backwards-facing baby seat.”

It added: “Only the content of delivery is in any way led by employers, but even this is heavily bounded by the state.”

The report said the “emphasis” in the skills system is “too heavily on the state imposing a top-down structure than on the relationships between them that could result in the outputs that are aimed for”.

While employers “in general do not want so much involvement”, providers feel that their expertise and achievements are “under-recognised”.

“There is certainly no desire to sideline the state or to deny its influence and importance in the provision of a skills strategy suitable for the economy as a whole, but there is a strong feeling that if the state viewed the system less as a hierarchy and more as a process of relationships, a wider range of objectives could be simultaneously successfully addressed,” the report added.

Mark Dawe (pictured), chief executive of AELP, explained that, in particular, employers are not in control of the development of apprenticeship standards and of the funding band reviews – which have seen some of the most popular apprenticeships, including the chartered manager degree standard, have their funding slashed despite strong appeals from the employer groups who develop them.

“Some employers have told me they have been working on a standard for four years, they know what they want, they submit it to the Department for Education and then [government] comes back and says ‘no, you cannot have it’,” he told this publication.

 “They are not listening. It’s almost ‘keep asking employers and when they ask for the right thing we will let them have it. And the right thing is what we define, not what [the employers] define’.”

Dawe added that the frustration of the providers and colleges present at the roundtables was that they knew how they should be working with employers, but government red-tape, restrictions and a lack of funding are not allowing them the “flexibility” to do it.

“It’s almost as though, if we got rid of the government, then people could just get on with it,” he continued.

“Government saying that employers are in the driving seat is simply not the case, and it annoys employers because they keep getting sold that they are in control and they don’t feel in control.”

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Employers have been at the heart of our reforms to the apprenticeship programme right from the start.

“We will continue to work with employers to help them take advantage of the levy and wider funding changes, so they can invest in the long-term skills needs of their business.”

The numbers expose the truth – level 6 and 7 is mostly ‘dead weight’ and unaffordable

This week the Association of Employment and Learning Providers called on the government to stop subsidising all level 6 and 7 apprenticeships.

Their proposal is radical because big employers have lapped up the opportunity to develop and have subsidised many expensive professional level apprenticeships to replace existing training schemes.

Take the level six accountancy / taxation professional standard with a £21,000 funding cap for example, developed by firms including KPMG, Ernst and Young and PWC. 

In less than two years since being introduced there had been 5,790 starts on this standard (2,080 of them coming in just the first four months of 2018/19), representing two thirds of all the starts on non-degree level 6 and 7 standards with a maximum cost coming in at over £120 million.

Take the level 6 Chartered Manager standard with a £22,000 funding cap for example, developed by firms including Barclays Bank, Santander and Virgin Media.

There had been 4,250 starts on this standard up until the end of November 2018 (1,300 of them coming in just the first four months of 2018/19), representing nearly half of all the starts on non-integrated degree level 6 and 7 standards with a maximum cost coming in at over £100 million.

Take the level 6 Digital and Technology Solutions Professional standard with a £21,000 funding cap for example, developed by firms including Accenture, GSK and Fuijitsu and assessed by over 20 universities.

There had been 3,020 starts on this standard up until the end of November 2018 (840 of them coming in just the first four months of 2018/19), representing three quarters of all the starts on integrated degree level 6 and 7 standards with a maximum cost coming in at over £50 million.

And overall, up to the end of November 2018 the 41 standards at level 6 and 7 have already secured up to half a billion of funding.

In addition, there are 38 standards at level 6 and 7 approved for delivery but with no starts as at the end of November 2018 and a whopping 87 more in development.

So a total of 168 standards at level 6 and 7 that the AELP says should no longer be funded by the levy, but instead by the employer or apprentice with a loan.

In light of the fall in participation at the lower levels, it is not hard to agree with the AELP, even if such a radical idea simply serves to push for a more honest debate about what the levy should be spent on.

The levy should not be ‘dead weight’, defined as public subsidy replacing employer spend on ongoing staff development at degree and graduate level.

The levy should be spent on supporting people that would not otherwise be assisted, primarily young people entering trades and professions at level 2 and 3.

Simples.

Brooklands principal resigns amid investigation into mysterious £16m subcontractor

The principal and chief executive of a college that gave £16.5 million over the last three years to a mysterious subcontracting partner currently subject to a government investigation has resigned.

Gail Walker (pictured), who has worked her way up to the top job at Brooklands College since 2011, has stepped down “as part of her long term personal plan”, according to the college.

The college has not revealed the date for when the 55-year-old will leave, but said role will be split between two people when she does: deputy principal Christine Ricketts will take over as principal and vice principal Shereen Sameresinghe has been appointed chief executive.

A spokesperson for Brooklands did not deny that Walker’s abrupt decision to resign was related to an Education and Skills Funding Agency investigation into SCL Security Ltd, which has turned its head to Brooklands in recent weeks.

As revealed by FE Week in November, the college has given substantial amounts of public funding to the provider, which is run by Andrew Merritt, to deliver hundreds of level-three IT apprenticeships every year, for mostly 16-to-18-year-olds.

This was despite the provider employing fewer than 10 staff. It is also not known exactly where the provider trains its apprentices, as Merritt has repeatedly refused to share his delivery addresses.

The ESFA acted following our exposé, and starts were suspended at the provider last month while it carries out an investigation into is operation. A subsequent Ofsted visit found SCL Security making ‘insufficient progress’ in a monitoring visit.

It is understood that the ESFA commissioned three external auditor firms to conduct an investigation into the subcontracting arrangements with SCL Security – and one of these firms focussed on the role of Brooklands College.

FE Week understand the auditors have in recent days fed back their findings.

Brooklands has remained tight-lipped on its relationship with SCL Security ever since FE Week started making enquiries last year.

According to the college’s latest self-declaration subcontracting data, the private training provider has cashed in over £16.5 million between 2014/15 to 2016/17 from deals with Brooklands, with £3.4 million top-sliced and retained by the college.

Commenting further on Walker’s resignation, the Brooklands spokesperson said: “Gail joined the college in 2011 and has overseen extensive developments during that time including; building a new campus in Ashford and major refurbishment works on the Weybridge Campus.

“Inspected in 2013 and 2017 by Ofsted, the College has maintained its rating of a ‘good’ provider of education and training for all.”

Terry Lazenby, chair of governors at Brooklands, said: “We are delighted that the current deputy and vice principals have agreed to take on the leadership of the college. This will ensure consistency for all staff and students as we enter the new academic year.”