The government’s flagship National Citizen Service trust has been slammed after its rent ballooned by more than ten-fold to over £1 million last year, following a move to new offices in west Kensington.

The trust, set up by former prime minister David Cameron (pictured) as part of his “Big Society” agenda in 2011, also missed more than half of its key performance indicators last year – despite receiving £181 million from the government, annual accounts reveal.

Last year the NCS, whose providers promote four-week activity programmes to schools and colleges, was criticised by MPs for lax spending controls and poor management.

That’s unbelievable. They could be based anywhere

Now Meg Hillier, chair of the public accounts committee, has slammed the trust, stating it “didn’t need to be based in such an expensive part of London”.

West Kensington is one of the most exclusive postcodes in London, where the average house price is £1.5 million. This is nearly 150 per cent above the £600,000 average house price in London, according to the Foxton’s estate agency.

The NCS was renting school premises in north Kensington for £103,000 in 2016-17, until the school needed them back, said a spokesperson.

Its rental costs shot up to £1.1 million, according to the accounts published last month, which the trust said was down to moving to “larger premises in west Kensington”. It also now leases an office in Exeter to directly manage the NCS south west programme. But the spokesperson didn’t reveal how much was spent on each site.

The trust needed to minimise attrition of staff “by choosing a location as close as possible to our previous office,” said the spokesperson. The premises were negotiated below market value and were bigger because more staff were employed, they added.

But Hillier said: “That’s unbelievable. They could be based anywhere.”

 

The programme was founded on a blueprint partly designed by Jon Yates, who is now special advisor to education secretary Damian Hinds. He headed The Challenge Network, one of NCS’s major providers, before joining the Department for Education this year.

Annual accounts for the year ending March 31 showed the trust missed five of the six targets under its first objective – to increase demand to fill places and improve retention of participants.

The target for filled places was missed by 1,821, with 98,808 places filled. Only 92 per cent of participants completed the programme – a percentage point below target – and 19 per cent of signed-up pupils didn’t participate in the programme – three percentage points below.

Overall, 12 out of 22 key performance indicators were missed, albeit by slim margins.

However, the NCS met its unit cost for the programme. Set at £1,773, it came in at £1,692.

Accounts showed the number of staff rose from 104 in 2017 to 183 in 2018. The number paid more than £60,000 also rose from 18 to 48.

Kate Wood, the chief people officer, was the top-earner, being paid in the £140-145,000 bracket.

MP James Frith, who sits on the education select committee, called for greater scrutiny of its spending on staff and premises given the failure to meet participation KPIs, and in light of the fact other youth provision is being “gutted”.

An NCS spokesperson added that while they “were disappointed to narrowly miss certain targets, we were pleased to have met many including ethnic mix and special educational needs and the impact NCS has on social mobility”.

The Association of Colleges has been warned that it risks “becoming an irrelevant voice” in the FE sector after it offered staff an “insulting” one per cent pay rise again.

The University and College Union said the deal, which was presented to AoC members yesterday, was a “wholly inadequate” response to the pay crisis in FE which has left teaching staff being paid £7,000 less than school teachers.

Last year the AoC said it regretted only making a one per cent offer and has conceded that staff need a rise. But without additional funding from the government a larger pay rise appears to not be possible.

David Hughes, the association’s boss, said he is “deeply disappointed” that a better offer cannot be made but he “cannot recommend a completely unaffordable pay award”.

He added that his members need to “continue to focus our collective energies on pushing the government for better investment”.

The UCU said warm words were “not a substitute for fair pay” and warned this year’s repeated offer sent a “worrying signal to staff that they were not valued and that their employers were not prepared to fight their corner”. 

The union pointed out that Capital City College Group has agreed a 5 per cent pay deal for over 1,700 staff, despite a large deficit, and claimed that less than half of colleges followed the AoC’s previous pay recommendation. 

A walkout over pay by more than 700 UCU members caused disruption across six colleges last week – and even forced one to close for two days.

Further disruption is likely to occur in the New Year, as strike ballots opened at another 26 colleges, with a closing date of December 19.

“The offer will annoy staff who need their employers to be fighting their corner as the pay gap between them and school teachers widens further,” said UCU head of policy and campaigns Matt Waddup.

“It is not right that staff at one college can receive a five per cent increase while their colleagues down the road get nothing for doing the same work.

“The AoC cannot continue to believe that warm words are a substitute for fair pay and they risk becoming an irrelevance. This offer increases the likelihood of more waves of strikes after Christmas and puts the ball firmly in the court of colleges who are prepared to follow CCCG’s lead and actually do something to tackle the pay crisis in further education.”

An AoC email to members, seen by FE Week, said the association “firmly believes” that college staff should be awarded a 3.5 per cent pay increase to at least match the school teacher pay award.

“However, due to the continued chronic under investment in the sector this is currently not an option,” it added.

Mr Hughes said: “Every college leader wants to pay a fair salary to be able to recruit, reward and retain the best people.

“College staff have had to work harder than ever as the funding cuts have bitten but we cannot recommend a completely unaffordable pay award.”

The popular chartered manager degree apprenticeship standard will have its funding slashed by £5,000, the Institute for Apprenticeships has confirmed.

The results of the IfA’s controversial review of another 17 standards (see table below) have been released, and it spells bad news for the popular management apprenticeships and the employer groups who had joined forces to appeal any funding cuts.

The chartered manager degree apprenticeship standard will see its funding fall 18 per cent from £27,000 to £22,000 on March 4.

The operations/departmental manager will lose £2,000 in funding, falling 22 per cent from £9,000 to £7,000, while the ever popular team leader/supervisor standard will drop 10 per cent, from £5,000 to £4,500.

The employer group behind all three management apprenticeship standards, led by the Chartered Management Institute, launched an appeal to overturn plans to slash the funding bands. However, today’s announcement shows this did not succeed.

Rob Wall, head of policy at the CMI, said the cuts “will damage the market for a management apprenticeships, stall critical investment in management development and undermine efforts to boost UK productivity. The more intensive programmes that support young people and drive social mobility will be the hardest hit.”

He added: “Over 100 employers wrote to highlight the impact that cuts will have, and indeed have already had with some apprentice recruitment programmes put on hold. Today’s announcement shows that ministers are not in listening mode, and is another nail in the coffin of an employer-led skills system.”

Another popular management apprenticeship, the level four associate project management standard, will have its funding cut by a third from £9,000 to £6,000 despite a campaign from the Association for Project Management against the cut.

Debbie Dore, chief executive of the Association for Project Management, warned the cut to the associate project management standard would lead to “the end of this high-quality offering” and described it as a “profoundly disappointing development”.

“The employers group for this apprenticeship standard has been clear that a quality offering could not be delivered at this reduced price and we expect that most employers and providers will now withdraw.

“What makes this decision more perplexing is that this apprenticeship has been increasingly popular and successful with employers in the public and private sectors alike. Apprenticeships are supposed to be employer-led, yet in this case the views of employers have been completely disregarded.”

A spokesperson for the IfA said the priority had been to ensure standards “have the appropriate funding band to support high quality delivery and provide value for money for employers and the taxpayer, whilst ensuring consistency in the way older and newer standards are funded.

“Throughout the process, we have worked collaboratively with trailblazers to ensure the review was carried out in an open way and have worked hard to resolve any concerns about changes to funding levels.”

Today’s announcement follows the 12 changes announced in October. Of the standards announced so far, 21 are set to receive reduced funding. Two standards – aviation ground specialist and senior healthcare support worker – will receive big increases. The aviation ground specialist standard will have its funding doubled, from £3,000 to £6,000, while the senior healthcare support worker standard will rise from £3,000 to £5,000.

Six standards will not see any change to their funding, and two – digital technology solutions professional and motor vehicle service and maintenance technician – have not yet had a decision made on their fate.

The IfA announced in May it would look at the funding given to 31 standards, at the request of the Department for Education.

At the time, FE Week analysis showed that 21 of the 30 standards with the most starts in 2017/18 were among those being reviewed.

Earlier this month, it was announced that a further 30 funding bands would face review. All changes are finally signed off by the education secretary, Damian Hinds.

Damian Hinds has said he would “not blame colleges at all” in the way that Amanda Spielman did for putting students on courses such as arts and media which have slim job prospects.

The chief inspector told the Association of Colleges conference last month that there is a “mismatch” between the numbers of students taking the courses and their “future employment in the industry”.

She went on to say this was giving learners “false hope” and questioned whether some colleges are chasing income over students’ best interests, which AoC boss David Hughes agreed with but “incensed” many others in the FE sector.

It also caused a media furore, making headlines in The Guardian, The Times and the Daily Mail. A theatre newspaper and website, The Stage, even launched a poll asking readers whether or not they agreed with Ms Spielman’s comments, in which 1,327 people voted “no” and 385 voted “yes”, which prompted Ofsted to write a blog about the situation.

Education secretary Damian Hinds was delivering a speech about ending “snobbery” over technical education at Battersea Power Station in London today, and appeared to make similar remarks to Ms Spielman.

“Right now, we have a training market that is driven by the choices colleges and other training providers make… For the people putting on the training there is good reason to go for cheap, popular courses that are easier to put on, easier to pass,” he said.

“We need a strategy that means both the individuals choosing their courses and the colleges putting the courses on are incentivised to develop skills that match the labour market needs of the future… With the number of people training in proportion to the number of opportunities likely to be available.”

FE Week questioned him on this after the speech, and asked if he was agreeing with the chief inspector that colleges have been selling students an “impossible dream”.

But the education secretary denied this.

“I’m not putting blame on colleges at all in that way but it is right that we do give young people realistic information,” he said.

“There is something of a balance between people are going to be good at and enjoy, obviously that is an important factor in choice, but also it’s important to know where the opportunities are and where you have got a really good chance of getting into a good job which will help to give you a good standard of living and then later on in life will help you to provide for your family.

“I do think that kind of supply and demand matching up and clear information for young people is vital.”

Ms Spielman’s comments followed the inspectorate’s thematic report on level two qualifications which included a graph with just 11 responses which said arts and media courses have the “least chance of progressing to employment in a relevant industry”.

Writing for FE Week last week, the principal of Grimsby Institute Debra Gray, who spoke out during a question-and-answer session with Ms Spielman at the AoC conference, criticised the research for being based on perception not facts.