Latest news from FE Week

The government should raise the funding rate for 16 to 19-year-olds by a “significant amount” in the upcoming spending review, the Social Mobility Commission has said, piling yet more pressure on the Treasury.

The commission’s 2018-19 State of the Nation report says funding for the age group has “fallen 12 per cent since 2011-2012 and is now eight per cent lower than for secondary schools”, leading to “cuts to the curriculum and student support services that harm disadvantaged students”.

It has now added its voice to those from across the education sector and political parties that sixth form funding is not sustainable at its current level, and called on the chancellor Philip Hammond to fix the situation in the spending review.

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, are calling for this to be increased to £4,760.

The Association of Colleges has meanwhile said the rate should be upped to £5,000, which it says is needed to avoid a T-levels crisis.

“Further education provides alternative life chances for all 16 plus age groups,” said Alastair da Costa, a Social Mobility Commission commissioner and chair of the Capital City College Group.

“Consistent budget cuts have made it more difficult to provide opportunities for everyone. But as 75 per cent of disadvantaged 16 to 19 year-olds choose vocational education, the cuts represent a class-based segregation of the school system.”

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “Treasury and DfE should carefully consider these recommendations because they echo similar calls from many other reports and institutions, including employers groups such as the CBI.

“The case is so strong now, we simply are awaiting the Treasury to acknowledge and respond in the spending review this year.”

Today’s report found that “twice” the number of disadvantaged 16-18-year-olds are in FE colleges compared to school sixth forms and this “segregation” within the education system has risen by 1.2 per cent since 2013.

It said that disadvantaged students “still do worse in improving their scores when they resit level 2 exams compared to their more affluent peers and the gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students is growing”.

The commission said the government should “introduce a Student Premium for disadvantaged students aged 16-19 that models the Pupil Premium in schools, with a goal of targeting funding and focussing on raising attainment for disadvantaged students”.

The commission also found that, driven by funding shortfalls and a £2,500 difference in pay between FE and school teachers, recruiting and retaining teachers in FE colleges is a “major problem”.

“Ninety per cent of colleges report difficulty recruiting and the average college had 16 vacancies at the start of the 17/18 school year, creating volatility for students and impacting on student attainment,” it reported.

Education Secretary Damian Hinds said: “We want to create opportunity for everyone. Employment has risen in every UK region under this government, wages are outstripping inflation, the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed and the proportion of 16 and 17-year-olds in education or apprenticeships is at its highest ever. 

“We are supporting pupils to thrive at every stage – setting a 10-year ambition to boost children’s early reading and communication skills, transforming technical education and providing coaching for young jobseekers.”

Apprenticeship starts for the period August 2018 to February 2019 are up 10 per cent on the previous year – but 18 per cent down for the same period in 2016/17 – the year before the levy reforms were introduced, figures published this morning show.

Provisional figures for February 2019 show 25,300 starts, up 16 per cent on the 21,800 provisional starts published this time last year but still well down on the final figures for the same month in 2017 before the levy was introduced.

FE Week analysis of progress towards the government’s manifesto commitment of 3 million starts by 2020 shows a 24 per cent and widening gap. An average of nearly 90,000 starts per month are required for the remaining 14 months to achieve the target. In the 46 months since 2015 the average starts has been less than 40,000. See graph above.

Apprenticeships and skills minister Anne Milton said: “It is great news that these figures show we are continuing to see a rise in the number of people starting their apprenticeship journey – an increase of 10% compared to the same point last year. It is also brilliant to see that over four million people have started an apprenticeship since May 2010.”

Mark Daw, the chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said his organisation “still believes that introducing the levy was right but starts being over a third down on pre-levy levels show that the Chancellor was also right to call for a fundamental review of how the funding system is working”.

“As last week’s report by the Federation of Small Businesses illustrated, it’s increasing funding available for SMEs as major providers of level 2 and 3 apprenticeships which is the biggest priority and the government must use the Spending Review to restore the funding for them that was there prior to the levy,” he added.

Two flagship apprenticeship surveys have had their publication date delayed by six months and will incur additional costs to the Department for Education.

The Apprenticeship Evaluation and Pay Surveys 2018, comprising the Apprenticeship Evaluation Survey (AEvS) and Apprenticeship Pay Survey (APS), will not be released to the public until mid-October.

This is because the supplier, IFF Research Ltd, had the deadline to finalise its research extended to July 15, 2019, despite being given an original publication date of the end of  March 2019.

Government protocol mandates that once research is finalised, it has to be published within 12 weeks.

Asked if its name should be the Apprenticeship Evaluation and Pay Surveys 2019 instead of 2018, the DfE said the titles for the surveys will be decided once the work is finalised.

IFF Research was contracted to design and question current and graduated apprentices, as well as employers, about satisfaction, motivation, benefits, retention and post-apprenticeship progression for the AEvS.

Meanwhile, the APS includes surveying current apprentices in England, Scotland and Wales about their pay, hours and training.

There were also delays to the  publication of the full report on the 2016 APS, which was finalised by suppliers in January 2017, but not released until July of that year.

When it was eventually published, it revealed that nearly one-fifth of apprentices at levels 2 and 3 were illegally paid less than the minimum wage.

An FE Week report published the same week found that it was likely that no one had been fined or prosecuted for illegally underpaying apprentices.

Following the revelations from the 2016 APS, the government’s director of labour market enforcement Sir David Metcalf gave warning that government enforcement agencies and industry bodies would work to better identify employers who underpay workers and punish them with severe jail sentences.

In addition to the delays to the 2018 surveys, the DfE will also incur additional costs from the APS, on top of the £535,535 plus VAT research costs, though the exact amount was redacted in the contract variation document.

The extra cash is needed, according to the document, because the survey interviews with 2,500 current learners were overrunning by two minutes so the DfE has agreed to pay to extend the interview length, rather than stick with the original budget by reducing the sample size by 320.

The costs will be published on Contracts Finder when the research is complete, a DfE spokesperson said, but until then they will remain commercially sensitive”.

Delaying the publication of the APS means that its final findings will not be initially included when the Low Pay Commission (LPC) makes its recommendations on minimum wage levels (which will take effect from April 2020) as the commission will stop taking evidence in June.

The LPC says it will make a recommendation to the government on the April 2020 level of the apprentice rate of the National Minimum Wage in autumn.

“We do not expect the delay in the Apprentice Pay Survey to affect this, and we will have early access to the data ahead of publication,” a spokesperson added.

The DfE said the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which is responsible for the pay survey, has handed the vast majority of APS data from the survey to the LPC for use in its report.

The Careers and Enterprise Company will continue to be reliant on government handouts after ministers dropped their ambition for the quango to become self-sustaining.

Announcing the creation of the company in 2014, former education secretary Nicky Morgan, said that “in the longer term the company will sustain itself”.

But CEC’s new sustainability plan, seen by FE Week, revealed the government has ditched this ambition.

Ongoing government support will ensure continued rapid progress in line with its careers strategy

We can also reveal government grants handed to the firm, which runs mentoring programmes in schools and a network of “enterprise advisers” to boost careers education, rocketed by nearly two-thirds, up from £18.8 million in 2017-18, to £30.2 million in 2018-19.

Although the grant funding dropped to £24.3 million this year, the company has now received more than £95 million from the public purse.

The company’s original sustainability plan, published in 2016, said the CEC was “on track to achieve 50 per cent of alternative sources of income by 2017-2018”. The idea was to sell the company’s products to employers and make use of other funding sources.

However the new plan, obtained by FE Week under the freedom of information act, shows CEC and the government “no longer envisage replacing government funding with alternative sources of income in the way that was originally intended when government set up the CEC”.

This is because the nature of the CEC’s work has “expanded significantly” to deliver the government’s careers strategy.

The plan added there was “significant value to DfE continuing to fund the CEC”. However, the DfE expects the company to “continue to leverage additional funding to deliver its objectives”, including through match funding.

Since the CEC was launched, the company claims to have also “leveraged” £16.5 million from “other sources”. This includes £6.5 million from Local Enterprise Partnerships, which are themselves part-publicly funded, and £6.5 million came from investment funds.

The disclosure comes amid increasing pressure in recent years for CEC to prove its value for money.

In May last year, CEC chief executive Claudia Harris (pictured) and chair Christine Hodgson were quizzed by MPs about the company’s £2 million research budget, its staffing structure and a lack of evidence that the organisation is making a difference.

Supporters of the company were subsequently urged to tweet their backing for the under-fire organisation after MPs raised questions about its impact and transparency.

The organisation was further criticised in November, when the House of Commons youth select committee urged the government to commission an independent review into whether the CEC is doing a good job helping poorer students get work experience.

And later that month, the company was blasted for spending more than £200,000 on two conferences, with MPs demanding to know why private sponsorship was not sought.

In January FE Week revealed the Department for Education had been criticised for spending tens of thousands of pounds on apprenticeship advisers, as the CEC said its own consultants were not “experts” on the subject.

Reacting to the decision about the CEC’s future funding, Harris said: “That the government is continuing to invest in careers support for young people is enormously welcome.

“Ongoing government support will ensure continued rapid progress in line with its careers strategy and make sure all young people receive the vital opportunities and inspiration they need.”

Plans for PhD-level apprenticeships have been thrown into doubt after the Institute for Apprenticeships raised concerns they were not in the “spirit” of the programme.

In December the IfA’s approval funding committee had deferred approving the first PhD-level apprenticeship “in order to seek further guidance from the board and the Department for Education on whether level 8 apprenticeships were compatible with the aims of the apprenticeship reform programme”.

The committee was concerned “whether it [the level 8 clinical academic professional standard] could be approved under current rules and whether it was in the spirit of apprenticeship policy”.

Discussions are ongoing regarding these new proposals

Minutes from the IfA board meeting in January, published this week, reveal a discussion concluding with an action for “the DfE to explore the concept of level 8 apprenticeships further and agree a policy position”. 

FE Week asked the department this week if they had now agreed a way forward, to which a spokesperson said: “We are continuing to keep the programme under review and discussions are ongoing regarding these new proposals.

“We are looking carefully at what the priorities of the programme should be from 2020 onwards.”

The chair of the trailblazer group for the clinical academic professional standard in the health and care sector was unavailable for comment.

However, the employers behind the development of the “technical specialist in nuclear engineering, science or technology” apprenticeship were expecting a speedy resolution.

The Nuclear Skills Strategy Group oversees apprenticeship developments in the nuclear sector and has been developing the level 8 standard since the middle of last year.

A spokesperson told FE Week the plans for the PhD-level standard were “included in our Nuclear Sector Deal, agreed with industry and government last June, so we are already in close contact with government about the policy issues, and we look forward to their being resolved so that we can complete this development and have the standard ready for use this year”.

In the context of introducing the first level 8 apprenticeships, the IfA committee members “also noted concerns that the increasing number of degree apprenticeships, particularly at level 7, may put pressure on funding for delivery of apprenticeships at the lower levels, while cross-subsidising higher education from the apprenticeship budget”.

Despite the minutes listing an “action” to “prepare a paper for the board setting out the issues/concerns” an IfA spokesperson said the board did not discuss it the following month but it would be considered, looking ahead.

The IfA approvals committee includes four of the ten board members.

When asked if the board shared the committee’s concerns, a spokesperson said: “The board has not formed a view as the issue was not discussed at the meeting.”

In December, the IfA estimated that the apprenticeships budget for England could be overspent by £0.5 billion this year, rising to £1.5 billion during 2021-22.

Subsequently, a report by the National Audit Office, published in March, warned there is “clear risk” that the apprenticeship programme is not financially sustainable after the average cost of training an apprentice hit £9,000 – double what the government had predicted.

The NAO suggested the government should think about reducing the level of public funding for certain types of apprenticeships after finding levy-payers are “developing and choosing more expensive standards at higher levels than was expected”.

Following this, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers called for all level 6 and 7 apprenticeships, including those with integrated degrees, to be removed from the scope of levy funding in order to relieve mounting pressure on the budget.

A week later the DfE’s permanent secretary Jonathan Slater admitted during a Public Accounts Committee hearing that “hard choices” would need to be made if the treasury cannot find extra funding for the programme in the upcoming spending review.

“It will be self-evident to the committee that if the amount of money were to be constrained at its current level, that would require choices to be made between level 2 and level 6, the balance between one sector and another,” he said.