SMEs must be brought centre stage on apprenticeships

The apprenticeship levy needs to be rebadged as a skills levy and utilised for a broader range of training, says Mark Farrar

The news that some training providers are having to turn away individuals interested in taking apprenticeships (as reported in FE Week, 8 February 2019) is, to put it mildly, awkward for the Education and Skills Funding Agency. If the number of apprenticeship starts is to have any hope of returning to where it was prior to the levy’s introduction, let alone of showing significant growth, the funding system speedily needs fixing to ensure that it doesn’t result in non-levy-paying firms being left out in the cold.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make up over 99% of all businesses and are, as such, the engine room of the British economy – a fact that won’t change whatever the outcome of the current Brexit negotiations. Indeed, in a post-Brexit world it’s vitally important they are not adversely impacted by shifts in funding, given they’ll have plenty of other issues to deal with.

The government appeared to recognise this when they cut small employers’ co-investment rates for apprenticeship training to 5% as part of the most recent Budget. However, this has yet to be implemented and will achieve little if such businesses find themselves being turned away when they do seek help for the training of their prospective apprentices.

Within the accountancy sector there has been a steady increase in the number of training providers offering AAT qualifications over the past few years, in response to ongoing demand from employers.

It has also been great to see a year-on-year rise in accounting apprenticeship starts, which were up 12% during 2017/18 – one of the few sectors to show any increase. However, looking at wider data we can see that the increase in new student numbers across the whole sector is more muted, suggesting, perhaps not unsurprisingly, a trend to badge existing levels of training under the apprenticeship banner as employers seek to recoup value from their levy payments.

If we then look to the SME sector, there are worrying signs that numbers there may be starting to dip. I sincerely hope that after several years of significant change across new standards, end-point assessments, quality control and several funding mechanisms, the result isn’t a decline in the overall numbers of those being trained.

The funding system speedily needs fixin

For sectors such as accountancy, where significant amounts (or even too much!) of training have always been undertaken, we need to be on our guard and act quickly.

The provision of current apprenticeship funding is, of course, to be welcomed. However, we have a cautionary message for policymakers and the ESFA. While they may wish to place their eggs in the levy-paying basket, the SME community really does need to be brought centre stage.

And it’s not all just about apprenticeships. In terms of up-skilling or re-skilling people as economic changes or new technology take hold over the next decade, we have to recognise that most of the workforce that will be impacted is already gainfully employed and has been for some time.

At AAT we have been calling for some time for the levy to be rebadged as a skills levy and utilised for such broader training. It is good to see the first signs of the government enabling some flexibility in this regime but there also needs to be real focus on the SME community covering both adult education and apprenticeship needs.

Accountants tend to talk numbers and finance. There is real power and success to be found in getting such matters right. There are also some pretty hefty negative impacts to be endured if the wrong call is made.

Right now some careful thinking is required on skills funding, as the upcoming fiscal year for the business community both large and small seems likely to be a very changed landscape.

Intervention in struggling colleges is painful but necessary

Government interventions can be tough, but they’re necessary if we want to create successful and sustainable colleges, says Anne Milton

I wanted to use this month’s column to share with you the work that the FE Commissioner, Richard Atkins, and his team of deputies are doing to champion and support the sector.

Almost eight out of ten colleges are now graded good or outstanding by Ofsted, which is a fantastic achievement. This couldn’t be achieved without the hard work and dedication of the many talented teachers, leaders and governors, for which I am extremely grateful.

A college is a multi-million-pound business and leading a college is a big and important challenge.

We set up the FE Commissioner’s office in 2013 because we wanted to make sure learners that are getting the high-quality education and training they deserve, and that colleges have the support they need.

The commissioner and his team are doing vital work with colleges right across the country, helping to strengthen leadership and governance, which is vital for a resilient FE sector.

I’m very pleased to see the number of colleges needing formal intervention has fallen and problems are being tackled far earlier. However, where a college is experiencing severe challenges it is only right that the commissioner intervenes. Thankfully, this is now only in a small number of cases.

When there are issues, though, they must take account of a wide range of views, including those of college staff and learners, before deciding what action to take to bring about rapid and sustainable improvements.

Colleges are an engine of social mobility and change lives

At the start of the last academic year, the FE Commissioner’s role was expanded with the introduction of “diagnostic assessments”, allowing the team to focus on early diagnosis and prevention rather than waiting until more serious problems have emerged.

They now have a stronger set of tools to speed up improvements. This includes our Strategic College Improvement Fund, which is driving up standards across the sector, and our National Leaders of Further Education and National Leaders of Governance programmes, which draw on the expertise and experience of some of the best FE leaders, governors and clerks to help other colleges to improve.

We are also seeing further progress in strengthening the long-term position of colleges through structural change, with several college mergers going ahead and more in the pipeline. This work has been supported by funding from the restructuring facility, with £470m of this funding approved at the end of January 2019.

I recognise mergers and interventions can be tough for all involved, but these changes are necessary if we want to create successful and sustainable colleges where staff want to work and students receive high quality education.

While the vast majority of colleges are run well, there will still be some colleges having difficulties. There will be a strengthened college intervention regime in place for FE and sixth-form colleges in April, which will make sure we can respond effectively to early signals of poor financial health and quality.

The commissioner and his team will continue to help with early diagnostic assessments, which enable them to broker support for colleges that are at risk from a quality and/or financial perspective. If a college is facing difficulty, please do talk to your ESFA territorial team contact as soon as possible to ensure that a robust assessment of the college’s position is made.

We understand there has been a lot of change and more is on the horizon. Colleges will need to keep adapting, but it is also an exciting time and a great opportunity for colleges to be part of this technical education transformation.

Since I became Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills I have been continually struck by the significant role colleges play. They are an engine of social mobility and change lives. They give people hope and the chance of a rewarding job, career and life ahead often when there was no hope before. Thank you for all you do.

Markets aren’t the panacea for public services

The failure of the provider should prompt us to reflect seriously on the role of the marketplace in learning and skills, says Stephen Evans

Working Links’ fall into administration is bad news for the people they support and their employees. Its case is different to that of learndirect and other providers. But together, they should give pause for thought about the nature of markets in learning and skills and their limits.

Firstly, commissioners need to be realistic. A large part of Working Links’ problems came from its struggling probation contracts. Its management and staff bear responsibility for bad practice, such as assessing probation users as lower risk to avoid putting sufficient resources into helping them. But the government should have heeded the warnings at the time of procurement that you couldn’t cut huge amounts of money out of the system without affecting the service. Added to a focus on price, rather than value, this leads to a vicious circle where providers either put in unrealistic bids or face going out of business.

Ultimately, good public services cost money. We should always strive for greater efficiency, but procurement isn’t a sort of inverse magic money tree – sometimes you get what you pay for.

Secondly, this looks like the end of what was meant to be a new type of provider. Working Links started as a large, national partnership between the private, public and voluntary sectors in the New Labour years, intended to be the best of all worlds. It was sold off in 2016 to a private equity firm. Inevitably this leads to a push for higher profits at the risk of its social mission. The same can be said of learndirect, whose worst excesses (such as spending taxpayers’ money sponsoring a Formula One team) were rightly exposed by FE Week.

Procurement isn’t a sort of inverse magic money tree

Perhaps the future is more local? We’re already seeing that shift in the employment sector, where a greater proportion of opportunities are now locally commissioned. Does the contraction of the large outsourcers mean the rise of the local specialists? The devolution of the Adult Education Budget in parts of England could hasten this.

Thirdly, markets need managing and have their limits. Contracts and targets drive behaviour, whether set out through a procurement or managing an in-house public service.

That’s why we need effective monitoring of quality, including through Ofsted, and service standards. But you can’t write everything in a contract and you can’t monitor everything. The same is true of a service delivered in-house by the public sector of course.

Empowering employers and individuals can help in this. What are the minimum levels of service standards people can expect and what do they do if these aren’t met? The Apprenticeship Levy has the potential to shift the dial for employers – putting them in greater control through their levy accounts. Learning and Work Institute has argued that Personal Learning Accounts could empower individuals, and I’m pleased that the Welsh government has committed to trialling them. Bottom-up accountability to customers can complement top-down regulation.

The NHS ten-year plan for England argued that regulations requiring services to be tendered were holding back the integration of services that patients, often with complex conditions and needs, required. I wonder if we should start to make the same argument for learning and skills?

The lack of an overall vision and principles guiding decisions doesn’t help. Nor does seeing each service or contract in isolation. Learning and Work Institute will shortly be launching a project exploring how we balance a focus on integrated services with ensuring that we don’t lock out people with fresh ideas.

The decline and fall of Working Links and other providers is sad for all involved. It also raises big questions about how to build learning and skills systems that work for people and employers. We need a diverse range of high-quality providers. But we also need to recognise that markets have limits.

ESFA apprenticeship assessment register needs to be ‘purged’

The government has been told to “purge” its official register of end-point assessment organisations (RoEPAO) after FE Week found a sole trader and a new company with no trading history had successfully applied.

Sixteen companies were added to the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s register last month, taking the total on there to 215.

FE Week did a background check on the newbies and found that one of the companies was only incorporated in August and that its owner has no track record in apprenticeships.

This exposes a major concern and clearly demonstrates the blind panic the government must be in

Another is not an organisation at all, it is a sole trader, who FE Week has attempted to contact for two weeks and who has yet to issue a response.

Two further companies got on to the register despite their accounts submission to Companies House being overdue.

The findings are ringing alarm bells with sector leaders, who have raised concerns at the lack of robustness of the approvals process and who fear a repeat of what happened with the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP), which took on many firms with little to no trading history.

“Companies are being admitted that wouldn’t pass even the most basic of due diligence checks,” Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, said after seeing FE Week’s findings.

“A dash for growth of the EPAO register is being made at the expense of quality. It is time the authorities got a stronger grip, purged the register and took steps to ensure public confidence in the EPAO model is restored.”

The backlash against RoATP when it was first launched led to the government closing the register for nearly a year while it came up with a new and more robust approvals process.

The ESFA finally relaunched the register in December but now, applicants must have traded for 12 months at least in order to be eligible and must provide a full set of accounts. But these rule appear to not cross over to the RoEPAO.

“This exposes a major concern and clearly demonstrates the blind panic the government must be in about the need for assessment organisations for some apprenticeship standards,” Association of Employment and Learning Providers boss Mark Dawe said after being shown FE Week’s findings.

“Providers and employers will need to be very careful when selecting end-point assessment organisations as it seems this register is as flawed as the original register of apprenticeship training providers.”

In April last year FE Week was first to expose the end-point assessment crisis after finding that nine would-be dental practice managers who should have completed the programme in May 2017 still could n0t be tested because there was no organisation to assess them.

Last month FE Week revealed that there are currently 17 apprenticeship standards ready for delivery with no end-point assessment organisation in place, nine of which have starts.

Dawe said the pass rate to get on the RoEPAO was “only about 20 per cent” when it first opened and “yet now in order to fill the big gaps in EPA provision, there’s a danger of the agency letting foxes into the chicken coup”.

Graham Hasting-Evans, group managing director of NOCN, an end-point assessment organisation, said his company was “subject, quite rightly, to stringent checks, including those on our financial position”.

“We would be extremely disappointed to find that organisations are being allowed on the register without going through the same robust checks,” he added.

A Department for Education spokesperson said the application process for end-point assessment organisations “is robust” and “at the time of application all 16 organisations referred to were fully evaluated and able to meet the criteria for entry to the register”.

There is no suggestion of wrongdoing by any of the EPAOs.

 

The EPAO incorporated just 6 months ago

Quantum Awards Ltd got on to the RoEPAO in February despite being incorporated only six months ago. It can now do end-point assessments for apprentices on the level three improvement technician and level four improvement practitioner standards.

Quantum’s website is a single page with a mobile number and email address for its majority shareholder, Mark Smith, who is currently serving his notice period at Jaguar Land Rover.

He told FE Week that he and his business partner, who is currently serving his notice period at another company, set up Quantum after looking for a “career change that puts something back into developing the problem-solvers of the future” after working in the automotive industry for “many years”.

Smith admitted he doesn’t himself have any experience in apprenticeships, but said his partner does.

He told FE Week Quantum expects to conduct around 150 end-point assessments every year.

 

The sole trader

The sole trader on the EPAO register is Julie Maycock, who trades as Mighty Oak Training and can assess apprentices on the level four revenues and welfare benefits practitioner standard.

Her LinkedIn page states that she is a training and policy officer at Cambridge City Council, as well as a self-employed training consultant.

Maycock is registered on the government’s Find Apprenticeship Training website and describes herself as an “individual training provider specialising in working with apprentices advising customers in welfare benefits, housing, council tax, business rates and housing benefit”.

“I hold a role in local government which ensures that I am fully up to date with day-to-day processes and legislative requirements,” it adds.

“I have worked in the public sector for over 25 years, which I feel is invaluable when working with public services apprentices.”

Maycock doesn’t, however, have any reviews from employers.

FE Week has been attempting to contact her (via her contact details on the Find Apprenticeship Training website) since February 12, but she has not responded at time of going to press.

The ESFA said that sole traders are allowed on to the EPAO register but that they need to demonstrate suitable expertise and resources to be able to develop and conduct the end-point assessment.

So much about the ESFA’s register of end-point assessment organisations makes no sense

In October 2016 the then-chief executive of the ESFA boasted about how hard it was for organisations to get onto their apprenticeship register of end-point assessment organisations.

As we reported at the time, Peter Lauener told the education select committee that just 21 applications out of 161 had been successful, explaining: “The quality of the end-point assessment is absolutely critical to the quality of the apprenticeship.”

So it should come as a surprise to find that since Lauener’s retirement, the ESFA appear to have dramatically changed their approach.

In what appears to be a deliberate attempt to expand the pool of assessors in the wake of concern there are not enough, the most recent round of successful applicants takes the list to over 200 and includes a council employee that applied as a sole trader as well as two guys that incorporated a limited company last August and have yet to trade or even leave their day jobs.

Our findings, ahead of the National Audit Office report on apprenticeship oversight due out next week, should raise serious questions, including:

  1. Why is a funding agency responsible for determining the suitability of assessment organisations? It makes no sense.
  2. Why is it acceptable that someone can join the register without any trading history given the ESFA no longer allows for this on their provider register? It makes no sense.
  3. Why is it called a register of organisations when they let on sole traders? It makes no sense.
  4. Why do end-point assessment organisations answer to dozens of different external quality assurance bodies approved not by the ESFA or Ofqual, but by the Institute for Apprenticeships. It makes no sense.
  5. Why is Institute for Apprenticeships, not Ofqual, the regulatory body for end-point-assessment? It makes no sense.
  6. Why is the Institute for Apprenticeships the regulator and for many standards also responsible for external quality assurance of assessment organisations?

Regulating yourself makes no sense.

It will be interesting to see how many of these assessment related issues get picked apart next week in the NAO report.

Either way, with the pipeline of end-point assessments now starting to swell, if this does not start making more sense there is a real risk that the whole system could be undermined and come crashing down.

Hadlow board inexperienced and in meltdown

Serious governance failings and financial inexperience are in the spotlight at The Hadlow Group as the board goes into meltdown.

As previously revealed by FE Week the Department for Education has launched several investigations into the finances of the group – consisting of a board for Hadlow College and a separate one for West Kent and Ashford College.

Both principal Paul Hannan and deputy principal Mark Lumsdon-Taylor have been suspended.

FE Week has now found that the joint finance committee for the group, which reports to both college boards, currently has no chair, consists of just two board members from Hadlow College, has no representation at all from West Kent and Ashford College and for several years has had no board member that was a qualified accountant.

In recent days, George Jessel, Harvey Guntrip, Chris Hearn and Paul Dubrow have all stepped down from their governor roles at the group’s two colleges and the FE Commissioner, Richard Atkins, has loaned one of his deputies, Anna Fitch, to be the group’s chief financial officer – a post that has been vacant for several years – and to pay her costs.

The lack of financial experience on the committee was troubling their own professional advisors last year.

According to June 2018 meeting minutes, ‘professional advisors’ told the finance committee it needed to be “strengthened” by recruiting a chartered accountant and a chief financial officer.

The college has since confirmed that the advisors were in fact Hearn’s consultancy firm Edscencio and despite the obvious potential for a conflict of interest in being a paid adviser, Hearn only stepped down as a governor and as a member of the finance committee in recent weeks.

In any event, no accountant was found.

A spokesperson told FE Week: “We conducted a search for a chartered accountant over the summer and autumn terms, but were not impressed with the two CVs we received and did not progress them to an interview stage.

“We are in the process of conducting a further search, which is a key priority.”

Board minutes for The Hadlow Group show it first started searching for a chartered accountant in February 2017 after its finance committee agreed it needed a qualified accountant with relevant sector experience.

In an interview with FE Week last November, Atkins stressed the need for colleges to have at least two financially qualified governors on their board to both challenge and support the principal and finance director – the post Lumsdon-Taylor held.

DfE guidance also states college boards require a mix of skills, knowledge and experience, “such as accountants or other qualified finance practitioners”.

The FE Commissioner visit was triggered by a request for restructuring funds to the Department for Education’s Transactions Unit, which raised questions about a series of land purchases by Hadlow College.

The ESFA is said to be looking to reclaim significant sums of funding from the Hadlow Group after concluding its own investigation.

It is understood the group was claiming funding they were not permitted to.

Lumsdon-Taylor said they had permission to claim the funding, as part of Hadlow’s adoption of the West Kent and Ashford campuses of K College (which became West Kent and Ashford College).

But the ESFA disputes whether Hadlow had this permission.

Another out-of-the-ordinary practice at The Hadlow Group is the one finance committee for two, unmerged colleges.

Although West Kent and Ashford College and Hadlow College belong to the same group and share a principal, they have not been merged.

A planned merger is currently on hold.

Other colleges which share a principal, as Kingston and Carshalton colleges did before they merged, had two separate finance committees.

This has all taken place in the shadow of the new insolvency regime: if the college has to give funding back to the government, it may need a short-term bailout and to quickly dispose of property to avoid going into administration.

Insolvency guidance for college governors, published on January 29, states that colleges would be “advised” to “recruit a qualified accountant on to their board”.

Paul Dubrow

Dubrow was the only member of the finance committee who served as a governor at West Kent and Ashford College. 

The former chair of WKAC’s governing board, before stepping down in February, he attached a laurel to the final beam when builders finished constructing a WKAC centre in Ashford in 2016. He is a director for Global Driving Ranges Ltd.

Chris Hearn (also a paid advisor)

Hearn was the UK head of the education sectors for Barclays Corporate Bank between 2009 and 2015.

Since then, he has co-run a consultancy that provides financial advice to colleges, such as East Berkshire and Strode and Havering College of Further and Higher Education; as well as advising organisations that want to do business with colleges.
John Dinnis

Dinnis runs his family’s farm, Filston Farm, in Shoreham in Kent, which houses a number of businesses and has arable farming, livestock, competition horses and sweat lodges.
He is a director of The Shambles Property Holding, an estate management company based in Sevenoaks.

Dinnis also served as a governor of Shoreham School for three terms.

Mike Weed

Professor Weed is pro-vice chancellor for research and enterprise at Canterbury Christ Church University, which has a partnership with Hadlow Group to run courses at its colleges.

He is also the head of the university’s human and life sciences school and has worked for various banks, government departments and local authorities on public health initiatives.

Up to 50 jobs at risk at college group following £30m merger bailout

Up to 50 jobs are on the line at a college group which last year received a £30 million government bailout to help with its merger, a union has said.

The University and College Union reacted angrily to the news at Stockport College and Trafford College, which merged in April 2018 and are planning to axe 26 teaching jobs in areas such as English, maths, gas and plumbing as part of a restructure.

UCU regional official Martyn Moss said: “Less than a year on from a merger the college said would bring stability and allow it to better serve students, businesses and the local community it is announcing plans to scrap jobs.

“There is no rationale for axing jobs in areas like English, maths, gas and plumbing and the move appears to be directly at odds with what the students, businesses and the local community actually need.

“UCU will resist any compulsory redundancies amongst our members and we will be meeting in the coming days to discuss this news and how best to respond to it.”

Trafford College Group (TCG), which runs both colleges, said following a review, it has “seen that there are some areas that need to be addressed in terms of staffing levels and how we operate some of our services”.

“We are also consulting with our trade unions on a proposal to, unfortunately, reduce approximately 27 full-time equivalent posts from the staff body representing a little under five per cent of the college group,” a spokesperson said.

Despite receiving at least £30 million from the government, TCG still made a loss of £31 million in 2017/18 owing to the historical problems at Stockport, which was rated ‘inadequate’ three times by Ofsted in just five years.

The 2017/18 accounts also showed TCG had an outstanding debt £6.72 million with Barclays Bank, as of July 31, 2018, and expects to repay £671,000 annually until 2036.

Stockport College has had a notice of concern for financial health since December 2010, longer than any other college.

It was placed in administered status by former FE commissioner David Collins in 2013.

Trafford College was last rated grade two.

TCG principal Lesley Davies told FE Week in February that the merger was “the right thing to do”, despite the challenges.

NCG temporarily abandons search for new chief executive

England’s largest college group has paused recruitment for a new chief executive after its initial hunt proved fruitless.

NCG was left without a permanent boss in October after Joe Docherty left. Docherty was one of eight high-profile principals to step down in a spate of resignations last term.

He was replaced by Chris Payne, the group’s executive director partnerships and assurance, immediately on an interim basis and a recruitment round was then launched.

But after five months of searching NCG, which comprises seven colleges and two private training providers, has failed to find a talented enough permanent leader.

Joe Docherty

In a highly unusual move, NCG is now not actively recruiting a replacement. Instead, they will focus efforts on “improving standards” as it awaits a follow-up visit from Ofsted following the grade three rating in June.

“We have experienced and committed leadership in place at NCG – dedicated to improving standards at our divisions,” a spokesperson for the group said.

“We have paused recruitment for a permanent chief executive while we focus on these priorities and intend to return to the search in spring.

“Chris Payne will continue as interim chief executive in the meantime.”

Rumours had been circulating that NCG was looking to demerge part of its group – a move that Birmingham Metropolitan College is consulting on (see page 4) – after experiencing a fall in training standards when it expanded rapidly in recent years. However, the group denied this when quizzed by FE Week.

Trouble at NCG, which is chaired by former Education and Skills Funding Agency chief executive Peter Lauener, started brewing last year.

Achievement rates across the group fell way below the national average, it had to make mass redundancies across its private training providers Intraining and Rathbone Training to make savings, and staff at its colleges in London went on strike in a row over pay.

On top of this, a free school that the group sponsored, the Discovery School, was forced to close down by the government.

All this happened before Ofsted downgraded the group from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’, which triggered intervention from the FE Commissioner.

The NCG spokesperson said it expects the commissioner’s team to carry out a “diagnostic visit” as a result of the grade three, and while he has “not yet visited”, the group expects this to happen “before the end of the academic year”.

As well as FE Commissioner intervention, it is expected that NCG will be dropped from the government’s final bidding round for Institutes of Technology as a result of its grade three Ofsted rating.

We have paused recruitment for a permanent chief executive while we focus on improving standards

Following the turbulent year, Docherty decided it was time for him to resign. But because he left in October, after the start of a new academic year, he would have been paid a contractual entitlement.

These payments can be huge: in January FE Week reported that John Connolly, the former principal of the RNN Group who also resigned with immediate effect in October, received a £150,000 “emolument” payment, and Amarjit Basi received a £200,000 payout when he resigned as principal of the troubled Cornwall College Group in July 2016.

NCG confirmed that Docherty, who was one of the highest paid principals in the country, taking home a £227,000 salary in 2017/18, was paid a “contractual entitlement” when he left, but would not disclose the figure.

The seven other colleges that saw their top boss leave with immediate effect (in a spate of resignations after the start of the 2018/19 academic year) have all also failed to find permanent replacements.

BMet told FE Week this week that Cliff Hall, who replaced Andrew Cleaves as interim principal in September, still holds the post, and West Nottinghamshire College confirmed that Martin Sim is still interim principal after taking over from Dame Asha Khemka in October.

Cornwall College Group said Dr Elaine McMahon is still heading up the college on an interim basis after the departure of Raoul Humphreys in November 2018, and the job at Havering College is still being done by interim Paul Wakeling after Maria Thompson left in September.

Penny Wycherley is still in charge of City College Plymouth on an interim basis after Garry Phillips stepped down in November, and lastly, Rachel Nicholls continues to be the acting principal at Peterborough Regional College after Terry Jones resigned in October.

Labour launches second National Education Service consultation

The Labour Party has launched its second consultation on its plans for a National Education Service, which will explore how to move to a system “empowered” by “local accountability”.

It will be of particular interest to colleges, considering Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn previously revealed to FE Week his plans for free lifelong learning could mean they lose their status as independent corporations and be brought back under local authority control.

In a consultation document entitled “local accountability in the National Education Service”, the party’s early years, education and skills policy commission warns that “in our haste to rectify the damage the Conservatives are doing to our education system, it could be tempting to simply return to what has been done in the past.

“But this would be a wasted opportunity,” the document states.

Labour wants to “empower” local communities “to influence change where it is needed and guarantee that the education system meets their needs”.

The party’s first consultation on the NES, which ran for 12 weeks last year, was light on detail and didn’t include any costings for how these policies would be implemented.

This new consultation, which runs until June 30, equally gives away little about the party’s vision for a National Education Service, beyond its promise to “empower” local communities “to influence change where it is needed and guarantee that the education system meets their needs”.

“By reinstating local democratic accountability, and involving local stakeholders in the creation of shared education aims trust can be built,” it states.

The six questions posed are deliberately broad and open-ended.

Labour members and supporters are asked whether they believe there should be a “single democratically accountable structure” for the National Education Service, that would “deal with each part of the system and its institutions at local and national level”.

Respondents are also asked how they would “ensure education institutions retain appropriate levels of autonomy and independence”, and to say what role they think local authorities, combined authorities, metro mayors and local enterprise partnerships should play.

In November 2017 Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party feels “there’s a danger with the independent model of college education that they get too far away from local communities and local education authorities” and “we’re looking to is a model that will bring them closer to that, but not removing the important connection with local industry”.

Then, in September 2018, the shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden refused to rule out bringing colleges back under local authority control.

The National Education Service is a flagship policy of Corbyn, and seeks to emulate the popularity and support enjoyed by the NHS.

At last year’s conference, the party voted to recreate a “coherent, planned and appropriately funded national public system which is accountable to its various stakeholders and communities”. It has also set out 10 guiding “principles” which will be followed during policy development.

To help shape the NES, Labour has launched a lifelong learning commission.

Earlier this month a team of 16 education experts joined the advisory board, including former education secretary Estelle Morries, former Association of Colleges chair Carole Stott, managing director of City and Guilds Kirstie Donnelly, and FE Week contributor professor Ewart Keep.

One of its tasks will be to carry out work on funding models that would “ensure that education is free at the point of use for all those who need it”.