The general secretary of the University and College Union has resigned for health reasons, it was announced today.

Sally Hunt has held the top position at the union since it formed in 2007 and has won three elections, most recently in June 2017.

The union’s national executive committee will meet on Friday (March 1) to determine the process for the election of her successor.  

In a message to UCU members and staff, Hunt said: “UCU is and will continue to be a great union; a reflection of its truly wonderful membership who contribute so much to the culture, politics and economy of this country.   

“It is no surprise then that the union itself is vibrant, energetic and stimulating. I am grateful for the trust given to me as their general secretary and wish every UCU member and staff member well.  It has been a real honour. Thank you.”

UCU president Vicky Knight said the union “owes a huge debt of gratitude” to Hunt.

“She was central to the creation of UCU and has led its growth and success with utter dedication to the interests of the members that we represent, and with an integrity that I know is widely acknowledged and admired throughout the movement and beyond,” Knight added.

“She has been one of the leading female union leaders of her generation and has inspired many others by her example. We will all miss her greatly and I wish her the very best for the future.”

Before the formation of UCU, Hunt had been general secretary of one of its constituent unions, the Association of University Teachers. Prior to that she had been an AUT regional official and a senior union official in the finance sector.

She has been a longstanding member of the executive committee and general council of the Trades Union Congress, and has been its international spokesperson. She recently served as TUC president in 2017/18.

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said Sally was a “fantastic president” and “continues to be a great champion of education and lifelong learning, open to all”. 

“A strong woman in a tough job, Sally has been a source of inspiration and support to me and many others right across the trade union movement,” she added.

“Whatever Sally chooses to do next, she will be brilliant at it.” 

You can read FE Week’s full profile with Hunt from 2012 here.

An independent specialist college has been hit with an ‘inadequate’ rating after Ofsted found students with high needs were being placed in “potentially harmful situations,” in a less than impressive week for FE providers.

Elsewhere two out of five early monitoring reports for new apprenticeship firms resulted in ‘insufficient’ verdicts, while one private provider was rated grade three in its first ever inspection.

The only positive report was for CTS Training, which upped its ‘requires improvement’ grade to ‘good’.

Chatsworth Futures Limited was the worst casualty of the week, being downgraded from a three to a four by Ofsted.

The inspectors said leaders and managers need to “urgently” address health and safety. Key hazards, such as the safe storage of tools, have not been identified in risk assessments.

The provider, which has 15 learners with special educational needs on level one courses, has been told to find senior leaders who have experience of working with those kinds of students in FE settings as its current team are “not suitably experienced”.

The failure at the independent college comes after it joined Chatsworth multi-academy trust in September 2018.

Interlearn Limited, which has 420 apprentices, scored a grade three in every area of its first inspection.

Inspectors said too many apprentices on the early years and on the care management frameworks make slow progress because of disrupted learning and infrequent assessment.

Apprentices work independently through online resources towards their functional skills qualification, but have to wait up to six months to receive feedback on how they have performed.

However, apprentices develop a wide range of new skills during their programme and stay in employment following completion of their course.

Independent learning provider BNG Training scored two insufficient ratings from a monitoring visit.

Assessors, the report said, do not ensure apprentices’ starting points are assessed accurately at the beginning of their programme.

But apprentices, of which there are 74 at BNG, do develop professional and supportive relationships with parents, carers and children while on their framework in children and young people’s workforce.

BNG said that since the monitoring visit took place there have been “significant changes within BMG Training”, including the appointment of a new director of operations and the implementation of a “robust action plan to address the areas in the report findings”.

CTS Training, which had 275 learners at the time of inspection, improved its Ofsted grade from three to two, with inspectors praising the “significant” improvement in achievement rates.

“Learners increase their confidence and prospects as a result of the respect, kindness and wraparound care that they receive,” the report says.

CTS works with vulnerable learners and was commended for giving a high level of pastoral support to learners who have previously lived in institutional settings.

Chamber Training (Humber) Limited, which has 119 apprentices and 12 adult learners, made reasonable progress in four themes of a monitoring visit.

The independent learning provider brought in a new curriculum in health and social care since their grade three inspection in 2018, a decision the inspector described as “sensible”.

The provider is now much more rigorous in how they recruit apprentices to the hairdresser course, but tutors do not challenge apprentices to aim for the higher grades in their assessments. Apprentices do not even know if they are on track to pass their qualification.

Digital Skills Solutions Ltd scored three reasonable progress scores from its first monitoring visit.

Leaders and managers were found to have been successful in setting up systems for recruiting seven apprentices and placed them on successful apprenticeships and they are making good progress.

Chameleon Vocational Training Limited, which has nine apprentices, was said to have made reasonable progress in three areas of a monitoring visit.

Most of the apprentices are making their expected level of progress towards their qualifications, and leaders receive regular reports on the progress of apprentices so they can highlight who is falling behind and intervene.

Agincare Group Limited received two ‘insufficient progress’ ratings this week, and say they are already delivering a plan to address the shortcomings identified in the report.

Independent Specialist College	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Chatsworth Futures Limited	22/01/2019	22/02/2019	4	3

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Chamber Training (Humber) Limited	30/01/2019	19/02/2018	M	M	RRRR
CTS Training	15/01/2019	18/02/2018	2	3
Agincare Group Limited	22/01/2019	20/02/2019	M	M	IIR
Digital Skills Solutions Limited	23/01/2019	21/02/2019	M	M	RRR
BNG Training Limited	22/01/2019	19/02/2019	M	M	IIR
Chameleon Vocational Training Limited	08/01/2019	18/02/2019	M	M	RRR
Interlearn Limited	15/01/2019	21/02/2019	3	N/A

 

The government “anticipates” it will be able fund all over-delivery on non-levy apprenticeships for providers who exceed their contract allocation in the January 2018 to March 2019 period.

The news will be met with a cautious welcome by the many providers who surpassed their share of funding to train apprentices with small employers this year, after many had run dry and some were even having to turn apprentices away, as revealed by FE Week earlier this month.

The unprecedented issue, which Association of Colleges boss David Hughes described as “market failure”, embarrassingly came just weeks after the Department for Education launched a new campaign to drive up the number of apprenticeships in England.

But following pressure from FE representative groups and FE Week’s revelations, the Education and Skills Funding Agency confirmed today that it should be able to fund all over-delivery.

“Over-delivery is subject to affordability and conditional on your compliance with the terms of the funding rules and your contract with ESFA,” an update from the agency said. “We anticipate having enough budget to fund all over-delivery.

“However, if after completing due diligence this turns out not to be the case, we will write further to all providers where there is over-delivery to tell them of the criteria that will be used to allocate the budget available.”

However, the agency will not fund any over-delivery from April 1 when providers’ new contracts come into play, which will run to March 2020.

“We plan to issue variations for over-delivery to R06 in February and will revisit 2018 to 2019 financial year capping again in May and November,” it said. “As a reminder, we will no longer be funding over-delivery from 1 April 2019.”

One sector expert has questioned what this means for carry-in apprentices.

“The ESFA have said they’ll review April 2019 to March 2020 allocations based on April returns which, by inference, means they’re going to fund learners who won’t finish until after March 2019 even if that means increasing the allocations,” said Steve Hewitt, an MIS and funding consultant for FE Associates.

“This, it seems, is different to funding growth somehow (if you start 200 learners next week it’s not going to be this year’s allocation that bares the brunt of it).”

He added: “I’m actually more annoyed that it’s taken them until six weeks before the end of the contract for them to confirm they’ll fund over-delivery. Are the ESFA getting a bung from the treasury to cover all the funding for these learners? Or could they really not do the sums until now?”

The ESFA has been approached for comment.

Responding to today’s announcement, Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief policy officer, Simon Ashworth, said: “This is welcome news and will help relieve some of pressure that we have seen build up.

“However the ESFA need to ensure that they take this support into account when they issue the contract extension values shortly for April 2019 through to March 2020; otherwise all they are doing is robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Around £500 million was allocated by the ESFA for delivering apprenticeships to small employers for the 15 months from January 2018 to March 2019 – a major fall on the £1 billion that was available for this provision in the previous 12-month period, according to a previous estimate from the AELP.

Nearly 700 providers currently share the pot but many started to feel the financial strain towards the end of last year after being denied opportunities for in-year growth funding.

The AELP has been advising its members to be “very careful in calculating the risk” of going ahead with new starts.

In August, the ESFA announced it was going to extend current non-levy contracts from April 2019 to March 2020, but no growth funding will be available unless a “significant budget” becomes available.

Tributes have been paid to former FE Commissioner Sir David Collins who died after losing his fight against cancer.

Sir David (pictured), whose career in FE spanned over 40 years, which included becoming the first elected president of the Association of Colleges, passed away last Thursday.

He held the role of FE Commissioner from 2013 until 2016, responsible for intervening in colleges that ran into financial or Ofsted trouble. In this post he had a leading role in the post-16 area review process.

His longest leadership role was at South Cheshire College where he spent 16 years as principal, taking the college to an ‘outstanding’ rating.

Sir David received a CBE in 2005 and then a knighthood in the Queens New Year Honours in 2016.

Martin Doel, a professor of leadership in FE and Skills at FETL and a former AoC chief executive, said: “David was an inspiration to me and to many others. His commitment and contribution to further education and its students was immense.

“We will miss his sharp intellect, his honesty, his infectious sense of humour and his absolute determination to do the best for students, for colleges and FE providers of all kinds and for the communities that they support.”

Current FE Commissioner Richard Atkins said: “Very sad news indeed today. Sir David Collins was a true champion of FE colleges and an inspirational sector leader.

“He will be greatly missed. I won’t forget the inspiring leadership development days he led at both colleges where I was principal.”

Prior to South Cheshire College Sir David held roles at Redditch College, Sandwell College, and Bolton College.

He served as AoC president from 2008 to 2009 before becoming chief executive of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, and then interim principal at Guildford College Group.

Before his death Sir David produced a CV to show his achievements, in which he wrote: “In essence, my career has been devoted to improving quality in further education.”

The Education and Skills Funding Agency will reduce the £27,000 digital and technology solutions professional apprenticeship standard by £2,000.

In an update published today, the agency announced the band cap for the level six standard, with a typical duration of 36 months, would be reducing from the £27,000 maximum to £25,000, from May 19.

The standard, which was developed by top employers including BT, Fujitsu, HMRC, IBM, and John Lewis, was part of the first wave of funding band reviews conducted by the Institute for Apprentices and Technical Education, which got underway last March.

All but two of the funding band changes from this review were revealed in December, which included the infamous chartered manager degree apprenticeship being reduced by £5,000, from £27,000 to £22,000.

The other standard that the government needed more time to decide whether to change its funding band, aside from the digital and technology solutions professional programme, was the level three motor vehicle service and maintenance technician standard, which has a current funding band of £18,000.

The ESFA still hasn’t made a decision on this yet.

Discontentment with the funding band reviews has led to a recent uptick in the number of appeals against the reviews, according to the minutes from a November meeting of IfATE’s approval and funding committee.

There were eight appeals from trailblazer groups, which are responsible for apprenticeship standards, in 2017; in January 2018, there were more than five times that many with 42.

Out of the 50 reviews from 2017 and January 2018, 13 were upheld.

However, trailblazer opposition to the reviews is far wider than the number of appeals would suggest.

Many groups, such as the National Hairdressers Federation wanted to appeal against the cut to their funding band, but could not as IfATE only allows appeals if it is believed procedure was not followed correctly, or there was impropriety.

The IfATE launched its second funding band review in December, which involves another 30 standards. The outcome of this is expected to be published in the summer.

A new apprenticeship provider has been judged to be making ‘insufficient progress’ after Ofsted found it did not take into account learners’ previous qualifications when putting them on programme.

Inspectors reported that many of Agincare Group Limited’s 173 apprentices already had a high depth of knowledge and experience prior to starting their apprenticeship and the provider does not know whether they “require adjustments to their planned learning activities and timescales”.

The watchdog’s monitoring visit to the Dorset company, which has an apprenticeship arm called Training Now that delivers the training, found it had made ‘insufficient progress’ in meeting all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision and in ensuring apprentices benefit from high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes.

By not accounting for its apprentices’ prior learning, Agincare could be in breach of Education and Skills Funding Agency funding rules, which requires the provider to calculate the appropriated funding reduction. And if the revised course fell below the one year minimum with 20 percent off-the-job training it would be ineligible for funding.

“We may take action to recover apprenticeship funding where this happens,” the ESFA rules for 2018/19 warn.

The report comes on the tails of the Department for Education tendering a contract to research whether employers are adapting training and the associated costs to take into account the prior learning of apprentices, as revealed by FE Week earlier this month.

Agincare is not the first provider to be found failing to take prior learning into account: in her annual report for 2018, Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman highlighted how apprentices were “not learning anything new”, but were just getting accreditation for knowledge and skills they already had.

Agincare has around 2,800 staff delivering care services to 2,400 people in over 50 locations across the south west and nine regions.

It became an apprenticeship provider in 2017, when it established Training Now. Their apprentices are on programmes in health and social care at levels two, three and five, as well as business administration programmes at levels three and five.

Inspectors found “they do not know whether apprentices who have previously achieved a qualification, at the same level as the apprenticeship, require adjustments to their planned learning activities and timescales” and assessors “do not identify their skills, knowledge and experiences at the start of the apprenticeship programme well enough.”

In addition, some apprentices are not given a review of their training that clearly identifies the progress they are making, or checks their understanding of the learning. Inspectors also said some apprentices do not understand the requirements of their course, including both assessments and off-the-job training.

However, despite the failure to account for prior learning, inspectors found most of the apprentices on Agincare’s care and business courses improve their existing practical skills and theoretical knowledge during the apprenticeship.

Assessors make frequent visits to apprentices at the workplace and provide them with effective support between visits, so apprentices can raise queries or concerns.

The inspectors observed that apprentices value the support and guidance they receive from their assessors, particularly in one-to-one sessions, when assessors check apprentices’ understanding of their subject knowledge with a “skilful” use of questions.

This helps apprentices studying health and social care improve their knowledge of caring for those with dementia, and of stroke care.

Furthermore, the provider’s leadership are developing partnerships with two nearby FE colleges to improve their apprentice’s progression and career opportunities.

Aside from the two ‘insufficient progress’ reports, Agincare was found to be making reasonable progress in ensuring effective safeguarding measures are in place.

But owing to the ‘insufficient’ ratings, the provider is likely to be suspended from taking on new apprentices until it improves the grade, in accordance with ESFA rules.

An Agincare spokesperson said: “We are disappointed with the outcome of our recent first monitoring inspection.

“We were aware of the elements picked up in the Ofsted report and were already delivering a plan to address the shortcomings but it was too early to make a judgement on the impact of improvements to learners at the time of the inspection.

“We are committed to achieving our action plan as soon as possible.”

The Association of Colleges has revisited its funding rate plea for 16 to 18-year-olds and upped it from £4,760 to £5,000 at a cost of over £1.2 billion per year, which it says is needed to avoid a T-levels crisis.

In its latest call for an increase to the £4,000 unweighted base rate, the AoC states that the government’s flagship skills policy is at “risk” as the providers tasked with delivering it are “not adequately funded”.

The association said colleges “will not be able to afford to offer the range of specialisms required, because they cannot afford to attract and retain staff”.

It adds that as it stands, “even if every place is filled (reaching 100 per cent efficiency) on specialist courses such as engineering, construction and science, they will be operating at a significant loss”.

On top of T-levels, the government has plans to build a “new generation” of higher technical qualifications at levels 4 and 5 for T-level students to progress onto, which will put further strain on college resources.

The base rate funding per 16 to 18-year-old student has been stuck at £4,000 per year for the last five years. Campaigns including Raise the Rate, which is led by the Sixth Form Colleges Association and the AoC is part of, are calling for this to be increased to £4,760 in the upcoming spending review.

The AoC is now be saying that even this increase would not be enough, and has told FE Week colleges need an unweighted base rate rise of 25 per cent (from £4,000 to £5,000) for all full time 16 to 18-year-olds on all study programmes at all levels.

AoC boss David Hughes (pictured) told FE Week that since the government’s T-level funding consultation was launched in November, and closed yesterday, the association has carried out more analysis based on the detail of the proposals and found an increase of at least £1,000 per student is a “real figure”.

Programme funding for 2018/19 sits at just over £5 billion, so a 25 per cent increase would equate to an annual additional cost of around £1.284 billion every year.

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the SFCA, said the £4,760 figure from the Raise the Rate campaign is a “specific sum of money for a specific purpose” and admitted he was “not aware that the AoC would be making this separate call to increase the funding rate for 16 to 18 year olds by a different amount”.

He added: “All pressure on the government to recognise the needs of 16 to 18 year olds is welcome, but in our view, the key to securing a commitment to raise the rate in this year’s spending review is a single, simple, message that is relentlessly and effectively conveyed.

“Working in partnership as part of a coalition to deliver that message and apply focussed pressure is vital – the more we all speak with one voice, the better.”

This isn’t the first time the SFCA and AoC have bumped heads over campaigns for more FE funding.

The SFCA launched Raise the Rate in October, just a week after the AoC called for an initially smaller rise in their own Love Our Colleges campaign, which asked for a five per cent annual increase in the 16 to 19 funding rate for each of the next five years, amounting to around £1,000 in total.

Nevertheless, Mr Hughes said today: “If we are serious about securing the UK’s economic long-term success, we need to focus on improving skills and productivity. These new qualifications have the potential to do just that, but only if we invest properly in them.

“Adequate funding is needed for colleges to be able to attract and retain the right staff and have the right equipment; current funding levels do not support that so they cannot be delivered.”

He added that there was “no question at this stage” of any colleges pulling out of delivering T-levels from 2020.