A little-known entrepreneur, Wayne Janse van Rensburg, has overnight become one of the most powerful figures in FE after taking the reins at Learndirect. He’s watched from afar as, over the past 12 months, the nation’s biggest FE provider lost a battle with Ofsted to suppress a ruinous grade four inspection report, with the fallout involving high-profile parliamentary investigations. Its government skills contracts will be fully wound down within two weeks, but that doesn’t seem to have deterred the ambitious new owner. So why would he take on such a tough project? Senior reporter Billy Camden interviewed him to find out.

 

The takeover of the nation’s largest FE provider has been “a baptism of fire”, Wayne Janse van Rensburg admits, referencing last week’s sudden departure of 22 key staff at sister company Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd (LDA).

But the South African-born tycoon, who claims to have dreamed of running Learndirect since he was 13, is unfazed.

“Part of my vision, and people might question my sanity here, is to bring the brand back into the forefront of education,” he says.

“I have big things I need to do in terms of reputation repair, but we owe something to the sector both in terms of a sorry, and repayment of what we have done in the past. I need this business to be an asset to the sector.”

Mr Janse van Rensburg (pictured) is determined to bring Learndirect back to its glory days.

I need this business to be an asset to the sector

The takeover from Lloyds Development Capital seemed like a rushed deal, concluded less than a week after an agreement with a company called PeoplePlus Group fell through at the eleventh hour.

So did they really have time to carry out due diligence? “We already had a fairly good understanding of the business, so to speak,” responds the new owner, somewhat enigmatically.

“Our focus over the next two or three days following the call was to build a sustainable business plan for Learndirect and LDA going forward, and challenging some of that evidence that was there for the due diligence.”

Prior to the acquisition, Mr Janse van Rensburg was a relatively small player in FE. He was the owner of Stonebridge Colleges, a distance-learning college with around 150 staff and a turnover of roughly £10 million, including a government-funded training provider called Dimensions Training Solutions.

The group has worked with Learndirect over the past two years by supplying it with a virtual learning environment through its technology company, PEARL.

This is where Mr Janse van Rensburg wants to rebuild Learndirect – through technology. And they might even offer it for free.

“I plan to keep the business and run Learndirect Ltd as a commercial training provider, as there is no opportunity for us to receive any more government funding,” he says.

“It has great content, initial assessments and diagnostics, which a lot of money has been spent on over the years.

“My ambition is to bring that into the sector and allow other training providers to use our content to support their delivery.

“Whether we charge to do that or, as part of our ‘sorry’ statement to the sector, give it away for free, that is where we want to go with Learndirect Ltd.”

Learndirect was formerly a giant of a training provider, with turnover reaching £200 million and nearly 2,000 staff. But this will all change in August once government contracts end and redundancies are complete.

Mr Janse van Rensburg expects to need only about 60 staff for the soon-to-be commercial provider,.

But it will be “business as usual” at Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd, which currently has 350 employees. Mr Janse van Rensburg hopes it will become the “largest and most successful apprenticeships provider in the sector”.

However, life at LDA has got off to a far from smooth start.

Four senior executives – including the managing director – and 18 other employees quit suddenly at the end of June and moved to the PeoplePlus Group, the firm that only recently had a purchase offer rejected.

“I do not know their reasons for leaving,” Mr Janse van Rensburg confesses. “They obviously thought there was a better opportunity for them elsewhere.” Legal action against the ex-employees is not an option he wants to pursue: “My focus has got to be about stabilising the business and the staff that remain.”

I acknowledge that our employers were rattled by the news

On top of this, FE Week has recently learned that LDA is losing business from high-profile levy-paying employers including William Hill and Lloyds Banking (see page 13).

“I acknowledge that our employers were rattled by the news [of the sale],” says Mr Janse van Rensburg, who is “not entirely sure we were providing the service to the best of our abilities previously”.

His job is now to “communicate to them what has happened and reassure them that the ship is steady”.

Learndirect was previously run by Andy Palmer, who has taken the brunt of the blame for its downfall over the past 12 months, but who has stayed on in an “executive chair” role. Mr Janse van Rensburg says the former leader will have a job at Learndirect for as long as he “proves his value”.

Asked who is officially the boss of Learndirect Ltd, he can barely disguise his excitement at fulfilling his teenage dream: “I am the chief executive of Learndirect, thank you very much.”

Aside from the staff departures, Mr Janse van Rensburg says, two weeks into his takeover “everything seems to be going according to plan”.

The focus now is to “drive revenue into the business so it can be sustainable, and bring Learndirect back to the sector”.

Apprenticeship funding bands currently under review by the Institute for Apprenticeships will be given a minimum two-month notice period if their funding rate is reduced.

But in the case of standards whose funding rate increases, the change will be immediate.

Lucy Rigler (pictured), the IfA’s acting deputy director for funding policy, revealed the extra detail regarding the funding-band review of 31 of the most popular standards at a Westminster Employment Forum on apprenticeships this week.

We expect to make recommendations coming out of the review to the department in August

The review was launched in May at the request of the Department for Education, but information since then has been scarce.

“We’ve been working with all the trailblazer groups involved so they all do have an expected timetable,” Ms Rigler said when questioned on the change by FE Week.

“We expect to make some of the recommendations coming out of the review to the department in August. Some of them will probably be in the cycle after that, so more in the early autumn.

“It is all a bit dependent on how quickly those trailblazer groups are able to mobilise things like getting some expected costs or real costs in from training providers.”

She continued: “Where we have an agreed position, it is out there with the trailblazer groups.

“Where a recommendation is for a funding band to go up it will happen immediately, and where it is going down there will be a minimum period of two months’ notice.”

News of the funding band review rocked the sector after FE Week analysis showed that 21 of the 30 standards with the most starts this academic year are among those involved.

Universities were particularly outraged, as the chartered management degree apprenticeship is one of the 21. Its funding band is already at the maximum upper limit of £27,000. This means its rate has nowhere to go but down, and HE providers would receive less cash to deliver training.

It was predicted that many universities would stop offering degree-level standards if the rate were to drop, as delivering the apprenticeships would become unaffordable.

But both the IfA and DfE argue that a reduction in bands will be welcomed by employers who have felt unable to negotiate with providers on the price of standards, and will provide greater value for money.

As far as the review itself is concerned, early indications suggest that it is going well.

The IfA seems very keen to ensure that there is full input from employers and providers 

“The IfA has been proactive in briefing the apprenticeship trailblazer chairs on the process for the review of the funding bands,” Petra Wilton, director of strategy for the Chartered Management Institute, told FE Week a few weeks after the review commenced.

“The IfA seems very keen to ensure that there is full input from employers and providers in terms of understanding the costs of delivery and to have real insights into the challenges.

“There is a welcome commitment from the IfA that the review should focus on quality, as well as taking into account affordability.”

Another trailblazer member whose standard is under review said its meeting with the IfA went “well and was perfectly amicable”.

The Association of Colleges is a fan of the review process, if it is carried out “carefully”.

“It is right and proper that IfA should review what has happened within standard development since their standards introduction,” Teresa Frith, the association’s senior policy manager, previously told FE Week.

“But we would hope that they will listen carefully to provider concerns about the actual cost of delivery and take these concerns seriously. It is one thing costing apprenticeships to hit a volume target and quite possibly a different thing to fund them for cost-effective delivery.”

A membership body representing universities has written to the skills minister to say it would be a “massive mistake” to water down policy on employer fees for apprenticeships.

The University Vocational Awards Council issued the warning to Anne Milton this week.

The letter argued that the 10 per cent co-investment fee for non-levy payers is “not a barrier to employer engagement”.

It complained that some of its 78 university members who are engaged in apprenticeship and who were unsuccessful in gaining funding in last year’s non-levy tender are “turning employers away” and in desperate need of cash that is seemingly going unused.

Universities are turning away employers who would happily pay a 10 per cent co-investment

UVAC suggests transferring unused non-levy funding from providers who say the 10 per cent fee is a barrier, to those who have demand.

“Up and down the country UVAC has identified degree apprenticeship cold spots, resulting from the ESFA procurement, where as a result of regional scale-backs, there is no ESFA funding to provide degree apprenticeships to non-levy paying employers,” wrote Adrian Anderson (pictured), the council’s chief executive.

“Universities are turning away employers who would happily pay a 10 per cent co-investment.

“Could we suggest resource is transferred from providers who bid for funding who were well aware of the co-investment requirement and now claim employers will not pay the 10 per cent co-investment, to providers who did not secure non-levy funding from the ESFA and are turning employers away?”

The apprenticeship levy is paid by employers with an annual payroll of £3 million or more, who can then spend their contributions on apprenticeship training.

Smaller employers can also access the funds generated through the levy, although they must pay 10 per cent towards the cost of the training, through the co-investment model.

There have been a number of calls in the sector, led by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, to remove this requirement for non-levy payers if they are delivering level two and three apprenticeships to people under 25.

AELP claims the requirement was responsible for the sharp drop in apprenticeship seen since the introduction of the levy.

But at last month’s AELP conference, Ms Milton said she was unwilling to make any concessions. Although the issues have been “noted”, she said, there would be no rule change any time soon.

UVAC backs the minister’s stance.

“The 10 per cent co-investment requirement is an essential component in ensuring the quality of the apprenticeship programme at all levels,” its letter said.

“Put simply, if an employer isn’t prepared to invest just 10 per cent of the cost of the apprenticeship, the apprenticeship is not exactly valued by the employer.”

The co-investment requirement is an essential component in ensuring the quality of the apprenticeship programme

It adds that giving away “free” apprenticeship provision may increase starts, but would “totally undermine efforts to improve quality”, and that a relaxation of the co-investment rule would “encourage some training providers to offer low level and low-quality programmes”.

As part of a social mobility policy submission in September, the AELP said that to offset the costs of offering full funding for level two apprenticeships, the government should raise employer co-investment up to 50 per cent for higher levels via a sliding scale.

This would start “with 10 per cent at level three, 20 per cent at level four, 30 per cent at level five, 40 per cent at level six and 50 per cent at level seven apprenticeships for apprentices over the age of 19”.

Mr Anderson believes this suggestion is “entirely inappropriate”.

“I think that is totally wrong both from a productivity and a social mobility perspective,” he told FE Week.

“If we want to develop a high-skilled economy that competes in a post-Brexit world, we don’t want to focus on level two.”

He pointed out that research by the Sutton Trust found that a “large proportion of individuals who have undertaken level two apprenticeships tread water educationally – so the social mobility argument is at best questionable”.

“Why would we want to disincentive employers, particularly SMEs, from investing in the high-level skills their businesses need?” Mr Anderson added.

“Are we really saying we want encourage employers to invest in business administration and customer service to develop their business, rather than say digital, engineering or management skills?”

The chair of an influential committee of MPs has hit out at the rushed pace of T-level implementation – after Ofqual gave the sector just four weeks to respond to its consultation.

Meg Hillier, head of the Public Accounts Committee, pronounced the timescale “ridiculous” when the exams regulator began asking for views on July 10 on how it should frame its rules when policing the new technical qualifications, with a deadline for submissions of August 6.

Four weeks is half the usual time period set aside for responding to an Ofqual consultation. The document isn’t light either, as it includes 71 pages with 52 questions.

“It is a very short timetable and at the wrong time of year for educational institutions, which are just about to break up for the summer,” Ms Hillier said.

“If you are going to introduce a new qualification, getting it right is really important. Rushing it through and risking getting it wrong could undermine it completely.”

There is a rush to deliver a government policy, regardless of whether it works, and that is not sensible

She added that Ofqual’s short-turnaround consultation proves there is a “rush to deliver a government policy, regardless of whether it works, and that is not sensible”.

Ofqual itself recognised this was a short deadline and is recommending respondents answer only particular areas, including setting and marking assessments, results and certification, and retakes.

It has offered just four weeks for responses because the Department for Education plans to launch an invitation to tender in September 2018 for awarding organisations wishing to bid to offer the first three T-levels, which will be introduced in 2020.

Ofqual will need to publish its assessment decisions by September in order for AOs to write their bids.

The regulator was unable to launch the consultation sooner because it needed to wait for the DfE to release its response to its Implementation of T-level Programmes consultation, published on May 27.

This set out the design parameters for the technical qualifications on which Ofqual needed to base its policy decisions.

“We have worked hard to develop our proposed approach to regulating these new qualifications since then,” said Phil Beach, Ofqual’s executive director for vocational and technical qualifications.

“It is important that as much detail as possible is confirmed in time for awarding organisations to respond to DfE’s invitation to tender (which we anticipate being published in September).”

A DfE spokesperson defended the four-week consultation deadline.

“As stated in the Ofqual document, the consultation is one part of the engagement process to help them form their approach to regulating the new, high quality T-levels,” she said.

She added that the regulator has undertaken pre-consultation activity during events held with awarding organisations. It is also holding three engagement events to support the consultation.

But delays to the AO tender process look likely.

The DfE’s market engagement events held last month left AOs fuming over the commercial terms to which they will have to agree, prompting the Federation of Awarding Bodies to gear up for possible legal action.

This unseemly rush could risk making it [the rollout of T-levels] go badly wrong

This isn’t the first piece of evidence that T-levels are being rushed through.

In May, the IfA initially gave the sector just five working days to respond to its consultation on the draft content for the first three T-levels – and it was during half term. Following outrage from FE leaders, it was forced to extend the feedback period twice.

This came just days after the education secretary Damian Hinds refused his own permanent secretary’s request to delay the initial rollout of T-levels until 2021 – revealed via a rare ministerial direction.

Jonathan Slater was quizzed by the PAC on this point last month, where he admitted to having concerns about the lack of “contingency” built into the T-levels timetable.

A few days later his boss insisted to the education select committee that the new qualifications were being introduced at a “good pace”.

Ms Hillier admitted she was “surprised” by Mr Hinds’ ministerial direction.

“Surely by now the DfE has learned lessons about what happens when you introduce change too quickly,” she said.

“This unseemly rush could risk making it [the rollout of T-levels] go badly wrong.”

After being shown Ms Hillier’s comments, a DfE spokesperson said: “Since we announced T-levels we have worked closely education providers, employers and other delivery partners at every stage to ensure we are creating qualifications that will give young people the skills they need to secure a great job and provide employers with the skilled workforce they need.”