Previous Job: Director of Apprenticeship Delivery and Diversity, Kaplan UK
Interesting fact: Jenny is a member of the Academy of Cheese, and enjoys cold water swimming and surfing (to offset some of the cheese)
Zohayb Mohammed
Deputy CEO, South Essex Colleges Group
Start date: April 2025
Previous Job: Chief Financial Officer, South Essex Colleges Group
Interesting fact: Zohayb designed and built his own home and became qualified in several skilled trades along the way — a fitting project for someone who simply likes building things that last
Young people who risk becoming NEET will be the focus of Get Britain Working cash handed to mayors this year.
Alongside its employment white paper published last year, the government gave £240 million in “place-based trailblazer” funding to several regional mayors, the Welsh government and local NHS boards, to test ways of reducing economic inactivity.
Most regions have now published plans to tackle the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), and on helping adults with health issues or caring responsibilities into work.
Among the measures are improved tracking for teenagers up to 19, so regional officials have a clearer picture of where their young people end up.
Youth (16-24) NEET numbers have topped 980,000, according to the Office for National Statistics’ latest estimates. The government also wants to rein in welfare spending, which is forecast to grow from £313 billion to £373 billion by 2030, and plans to cut health and disability benefits for young people alongside its ‘youth guarantee’ to “remove any potential disincentive to work”.
Laura-Jane Rawlings, chief executive officer of Youth Employment UK, said mayoral staff were “working hard” to pilot new approaches.
But she added all face significant time and resource pressures to begin delivering this year, due to the government’s one-year timeline for funding.
Meanwhile, officials at West Yorkshire Combined Authority warned there was “considerable” risk that some initiatives “will not be delivered” by the March 2026 funding cliff edge.
Here are some of the key initiatives:
Tracking destinations
Three regional mayors plan to spend cash on “enhanced destination tracking” systems for 17 to 19 year olds to gather extra intelligence on their “activities and destinations”.
Historically, local authorities were responsible for tracking young people’s destinations up to age 19, but in 2016 this was relaxed to the academic year they turned 18.
Liverpool City Region said the rule change meant local focus on young people’s outcomes had suffered after the age of 17.
It said the authority will develop “enhanced” tracking of 17 year olds, which will extend to a “targeted proportion” of 18 year olds, and it will explore the tracking of care leavers up to age 21.
The West of England has set aside £510,000 for a similar “tracker system” and “NEET indicator data rollout”.
Subsidised work
The idea of Kickstart-style paid work placement schemes has proved popular, with five mayors seeking to introduce local versions.
Kickstart was a £1.1 billion government scheme launched during the pandemic that offered around 163,000 subsidised work placements for young people receiving universal credit from 2020 to 2022.
Liverpool City Region is offering employers £3,000 “incentives” to recruit selected 18 to 24 year olds, while Tees Valley will fund 620 work placements and “taster sessions”.
In the East Midlands young people will be offered “flexible learning and work placements”, especially those from “disadvantaged backgrounds or who face health challenges”.
West Yorkshire will use £4 million to fund up to 400 placements and “wraparound support” for young people with the aim of securing permanent employment.
West Midlands Combined Authority told FE Week it will test “slightly different” work experience models across its region. One model is its Path2Apprenticeships programme, which offers paid training and work experience to people aged 19 to 29.
Tailored help
Most mayors are creating dedicated teams to provide services.
This includes mental health specialists, pre-apprenticeship courses and programmes for people from disadvantaged areas.
South Yorkshire’s Pathways to Work programme will provide £10 million for the county’s local authorities and £8 million for the NHS to help up to 3,000 people secure jobs. It is building a “triage” system that promises to make it “quicker and easier” to connect people with employment, health and skills support.
Targeting employers
Employers will also be encouraged to offer job opportunities to young people. “Coordinated” engagement is being rolled out by some mayors, including in the East Midlands.
York and North Yorkshire will offer advice, toolkits and support to help businesses develop “inclusive and healthy” workplaces, while West of England has budgeted £425,000 for “coordinated employer engagement”.
Listen to the youth
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is the only combined authority planning a “youth forum” that will place “young voices at the centre” of its plans.
The forum will “offer young people a platform” to guide the programme, identify barriers to employment and ensure the combined authority’s programme is “youth friendly”.
Support for care leavers
A collaboration of 12 London boroughs will run a scheme focused solely on moving care leavers aged from 17 to 25 into employment, education or training.
The programme will “build an evidence base” about what works to improve outcomes for care leavers, who face “significant social and economic disadvantage,” including a lack of formal qualifications and living in unstable housing.
A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “We are determined that no young person gets left behind as we drive up growth and opportunity in every corner of the country through our Plan for Change.
“Our trailblazers will identify those most at risk of falling out of education or employment as we ensure every young person is given the opportunity to earn or learn through our Youth Guarantee.”
A drive to turn mechanics into FE teachers has stalled due to government reluctance to provide funding, bosses have claimed.
The “FE lecturer reservist” trial aims to recruit mechanics and engineers to retrain as teachers so they can teach alongside their industry jobs.
The pilot scheme’s developers, including the Institute of the Motor Industry (IMI) and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), hoped to kickstart it in the West Midlands before last year’s general election after winning support from Tory skills minister Luke Hall.
But since Labour came into power, the programme’s creators told FE Week that officials had gone cold on their plan for a pilot that would now cover the whole of the Midlands.
Benjamin Silverstone, skills policy and workforce transformation lead at WMG, said it was proving “very difficult” to get a full-scale pilot off the ground without cross-departmental government “buy-in” – despite skills minister Jacqui Smith being told about the plan in a meeting last month.
He confirmed providers and employers were interested in signing up and the Department for Education “philosophically” liked it, but said it needed financial support from the DfE, Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions to provide training with a long-lasting impact.
“We know what would have happened,” Silverstone said. “These companies would have volunteered, and then the government probably would turn around and go, ‘if they’re going to volunteer anyway, then why should we put any money into it?’”
The plea for cash comes amid public funding cuts, including in education, that are impacting adult skills budgets and led to the axing of the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge (ASK) careers programme.
But the DfE is desperate for more FE teachers amid the current recruitment crisis. This was underscored last week by a National Audit Office report that found the DfE was unlikely to meet its 6,500-recruitment school and college teacher target. It also estimated between 8,400 and 12,400 FE teachers were needed by 2028/29.
The FE lecturer reservist initiative proposed to reimburse participants up to £400 per day to cover the difference between their substantive salary and the rate paid by the provider. Small- and medium-sized enterprise employers could also claim £500 per month when their reservist employee was teaching.
Silverstone could not confirm how much was needed to get the pilot going.
Meanwhile, West Midlands Combined Authority has fully funded an eight-week “Aspiring Teachers” scheme, run by Dudley College of Technology, which mirrors the reservist scheme.
The college-accredited course covers an introduction to pedagogy, managing behaviour, professional conduct and supporting SEND learners.
Eighteen people have so far completed the programme, and the college has 10 learners in its current cohort.
“To date we have worked with adults from a number of technical areas including electrical engineering and construction and have hopes to expand this further in the new academic year,” said Diana Martin, CEO and principal of Dudley College of Technology.
Independent training providers will be expected to follow the government’s Gatsby Benchmarks for the first time from September.
Private providers that train 16 to 18 year olds will be “strongly encouraged” to offer learners “meaningful” workplace experiences, provide “encounters” with employers and create a board-approved “stable, structured” careers programme.
The Gatsby Foundation first developed eight benchmarks in 2014 to set standards for careers advice and guidance in education. The government initially adopted the benchmarks for secondary schools before expanding its framework to colleges in 2018.
While the benchmarks are statutory for schools, they are voluntary for colleges and ITPs.
John Yarham, interim CEO of The Careers & Enterprise Company, told FE Week: “ITPs with learners up to the age of 18 (or 25 if they have an education, health and care plan) are included to ensure that all young people have access to a high-quality careers offer, regardless of which type of institution they are learning in.”
Ben Rowland, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said: “The decision to formally include independent training providers in the updated guidance is a very positive step. With strong employer links, our members are well placed to support careers education that is embedded in real-world employment settings.
“Many ITPs are already delivering the eight Gatsby Benchmarks in practice, so we welcome this as an opportunity to bring greater clarity and extend the sharing of best practice further.”
The Department for Education encouraged ITPs and colleges to self-report their progress against the benchmarks each term.
It also encouraged ITPs to hold the matrix standard, a Department for Education-owned national quality standard that helps providers to assess and measure their advice services. Colleges in receipt of adult skills funding are already mandated to hold the matrix standard.
Beefed-up benchmarks
The Careers & Enterprise Company confirmed slight changes to each of the eight benchmarks.
Benchmark 1: A stable careers programme
Colleges and ITPs should now have a board-approved “stable, structured” careers programme with a trained careers leader. The benchmark previously only called for an “identified and appropriately trained person”.
The careers programme should also detail how parents and carers will be engaged.
Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
This benchmark now asks providers to incorporate up-to-date labour market information during each study programme.
It was updated to specify that young SEND learners may require different or additional information.
Benchmark 3: Addressing the needs of each young person
FE providers are advised to integrate careers advice from secondary schools and keep records of learners’ participation.
“Records should begin to be kept from the first point of contact or from the point of transition,” the guidance says.
Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers
Colleges and ITPs are recommended to provide every learner throughout their programme of study with “opportunities to experience how knowledge and skills developed in their subjects” help people get their foot in the door of a wide range of occupations.
Benchmark 5: Encounters with employers and employees
The guidance says colleges and ITPs should arrange at least two meaningful encounters with an employer, with at least one delivered through their curriculum area.
It also says the encounters should be with employers of “different sizes and specialisms”.
The updated benchmark includes learners’ “own part-time employment where it exists” but should not replace the need for other meaningful encounters.
Benchmark 6: Experiences of workplaces
The new guidance also states that college and ITP learners should have had “at least one further meaningful experience” in a workplace by age 18.
The DfE defined a meaningful experience to mean having a “clear purpose”, appropriate learning outcomes, and involve “extensive” two-way interactions with staff and learners.
Benchmark 7: Encounters with further and higher education
This benchmark has updated terminology to include ITPs to “better reflect the education and training landscape”, now explicitly referencing technical education.
It now specifies that children under the age of 16 should have meaningful encounters with providers including sixth forms, colleges, universities and ITPs.
“ITPs are now listed as a provider type that all young people should encounter because they are an important education and training option for many young people,” the Gatsby report said.
Benchmark 8: Personal guidance
School sixth forms, colleges and ITPs have also been encouraged to provide personal guidance meetings to learners by the age of 18, which entail either an internal or external meeting with a careers adviser.
Bridget Phillipson has been accused of “political posturing” with a “daft” concession on level 7 apprenticeships that exempts a tiny number of 16 to 21 year olds from having their funding axed.
In a leaked letter to Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden last month, seen by FE Week, Phillipson said she hoped retaining level 7 funding for under-21s would mean “colleagues” could drop their opposition to her original plans to remove the funding from all master’s level apprenticeships.
But experts hit out at the “ridiculous” move, which they predict will still lead to a widespread wipeout of level 7 apprenticeships, with public services such as the NHS and councils braced to bear the brunt.
The government only publishes data on apprenticeship starts in three age groups: under-19s, 19 to 24 year olds, and 25-plus.
FE Week analysis for the most recent full academic year, 2023-24, shows of 23,860 level 7 starts, of which 468, or 2 per cent, were for under-19s, while 7,995, or 34 per cent, were people aged 19 to 24.
Most providers and universities that spoke to FE Week this week said less than 10 per cent of their annual level 7 starts are for those aged 21 or under.
The Department for Education refused to provide a full age breakdown.
Mandy Crawford-Lee, chief executive of the University Vocational Awards Council described the 16 to 21 age restriction as “ridiculous… daft and somewhat disingenuous”, adding that the decision “is driven by political posturing and positioning” (click here to read full op-ed).
The backlash comes during a difficult week for Phillipson, who again appeared in multiple news reports over the weekend as being tipped for demotion in an upcoming reshuffle.
Shadow skills minister Neil O’Brien said: “Abolishing level 7 across the board, with a tiny exception for young people, will be a disaster. It will blow a hole in the NHS long-term plan which relies on this route for advanced nurses. It will hit other public services and local government and it will shut down a vital route into the professions for less well-off people who don’t have the money to fund their own professional qualifications.
“The letter leaked to FE Week shows, unbelievably, that other departments are doing more to defend education than the Department for Education is. This will be a shameful legacy for Phillipson.”
Fears for future of level 6 follow level 7 precedent
The education secretary’s letter revealed she sought clearance from the Cabinet Office on March 3 “on the decision to remove public funding from all level 7 apprenticeships, with no exemptions”.
FE Week understands that multiple government departments objected and forced Phillipson into a rethink.
The 21-and-under age limit, which chimes with the government’s youth guarantee, “aligns with our opportunity mission and our intention to rebalance the apprenticeship programme to support more young people at the start of their career”, the letter said.
It added that “while not giving employers everything they seek”, this “important concession… demonstrates that government has listened to business”.
Former Conservative skills minister Robert Halfon said the exemption was a “baby step in the right direction” but added this was “not a level-headed way of doing things”, and advised the education secretary to make concessions for different sectors instead of age.
He told FE Week he also feared “overreach” from the precedent that will be set when level 7 apprenticeships are moved outside the scope of levy funding, as this could pave the way for axing level 6 apprenticeships, which would be “absolutely disastrous”.
Accountants and solicitors least affected
Apprenticeships least affected by the new age cap are the accountant and solicitor standards.
FE Week analysis shows that the “accountancy or taxation professional”, which has become the most popular level 7 apprenticeship standard with 9,204 starts in 2023-24 and attracts a £14,000 funding band, had 3 per cent of participants under 19, while 68 per cent were aged 19 to 24.
FE Week understands the proportion of level 7 accountancy starts for those aged 21 or under varies for providers from 10 to 25 per cent.
Maggie McGhee, executive director, strategy and governance at the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) said she was “concerned that changing the funding rules to restrict funding to learners 21 and under would create perverse incentives for employers to change recruitment patterns”.
Alan Vallance, chief executive of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW), said his organisation “supports the idea of an age concession” but that the range of 16 to 21 “may not be appropriate”.
“Our position remains that an age exemption of 18-25 would be an effective compromise that supports the government’s wider objective for economic growth,” he said.
Elsewhere, the solicitor apprenticeship, which attracts the maximum funding band of £27,000, had 1,352 starts in 2023-24. Of those, 10 per cent were under 19 while 45 per cent were aged 20 to 24.
Meanwhile, 0.4 per cent of the 1,589 starts on the level 7 advanced clinical practitioner apprenticeship used mainly by the NHS were for those aged under 25. The district nurse standard had 2 per cent of 94 starts at 24 or below.
The senior leader level 7 apprenticeship, which the Chartered Management Institute claims is largely taken by professionals in the NHS, education and civil service, has less than 1 per cent of starts for those aged under 25.
Other popular level 7 apprenticeships likely to become unviable to due to a 21 age limit include senior people professional, digital and technology solutions specialist, chartered town planner, artificial intelligence (AI) and architects.
Vanessa Wilson, University Alliance CEO, said: “If what is being reported comes to fruition, then the decision is bordering on the ridiculous. Limiting funding for the highest level of apprenticeship to an age group that typically hasn’t even finished level 6 education, most of whom wouldn’t even qualify for level 7, is hardly a concession.
“This would have serious knock-on effects, especially for vital employers like the NHS, local authorities and education, who don’t have access to additional budget to fund these qualifications outside of the apprenticeship levy.”
Former special adviser to skills ministers Tom Richmond pointed out that, considering the vast majority of level 7 apprentices are university graduates, sparing 16 to 21 year olds from the proposed cuts will “not do much to soften the impact on employers and providers”.
Experts also flagged that defunding the majority of level 7s is counterintuitive to the government’s industrial strategy, including ministers’ focus on advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence and clean energy.
Mis-sold pathways and unviable cohorts
Dan Lally, deputy chief operating officer at Sheffield Hallam University, described the age limit as “somewhat of a non-announcement because it really doesn’t move the needle” considering the small numbers of 21-and-under level 7 apprentices.
He said the policy “pulls the drawbridge” on the concept of apprenticeship standards being designed to provide a linear pathway for students to work their way up.
“We may have people in the system now who have always planned on progressing, and this policy just takes that opportunity away from them. So you have got to think, have we mis-sold to young people?” Lally said.
He added that universities need cohorts of at least 20 students to be viable – a number most are unlikely to be able to achieve with just 16 to 21 year olds.
Other large level 7 providers, like Kaplan and Cranfield University, agreed that the age exemption will have “little impact”.
The University of Sunderland added that even if it did attract apprentices for these programmes in the 16 to 21 age group, it is “highly unlikely there would be sufficient to enable the cohort to be viable both financially and in terms of the other academic and pastoral support required”.
Employers and providers also criticised the DfE for not communicating the concession with the sector, and for failing to say when any defunding would kick in.
The government will cut the length of postgraduate teaching apprenticeships from 12 to nine months to bring them in line with the school year.
It comes as analysis shows interest in the route continues to increase, with recruitment already a third higher in the first half of this academic year compared with the same period last year.
The postgraduate teaching apprenticeship is a one-year course for graduates and leads to both a level 6 qualification and qualified teacher status. It is different from the four-year teaching degree apprenticeship for non-graduates currently being piloted.
But its 12-month minimum length causes a headache for schools. Apprentices gain QTS after nine months, meaning some drop out of the apprenticeship part of the training. If this happens, the government claws back funding.
Analysis shows about 85 per cent of participants complete the year.
The route has become increasingly popular as schools seek ways to spend money paid into the apprenticeship levy and trainees seek a way of earning while they learn.
FE Week analysis found there were 1,702 starts on the postgraduate apprenticeship between August 2024 and January this year, up 33 per cent from 1,283 in the same period the year before.
Unlike other routes, apprentices don’t always start training in September. In 2023-24, more than 400 starts were registered between February and July.
Figures from the Department for Education also show that last year about 2,800 eligible applicants were “unable to secure a place on a coveted course”.
Ministers hope that by changing the course’s duration, more schools and providers will take on apprentices.
Sir Andrew Carter is chief executive of the South Farnham Educational Trust, which hires dozens of apprentices every year and was involved in the route’s design.
He said the 12-month rule “added a great sense of jeopardy” to hiring apprentices, and his trust had wanted a change “for a very long time”.
Carter said more schools would now hire apprentices, which was an “opportunity for the DfE and others, all of us in the business” to convince sceptical leaders of the benefits of the course.
The DfE insisted courses would still offer “the same high-quality content, but at a reduced length, with trainees gaining qualified teacher status after they have completed the programme, going on to build successful careers in teaching”.
Catherine McKinnell, the schools minister, said bringing teaching apprenticeships in line with the school year was “not only logical, it will open the doors for more and more people to become brilliant teachers”.
Weston College has been stripped of an “excellence in governance” award by the Association of Colleges following the FE Commissioner’s damning findings last month.
The Association of Colleges Charitable Trust, which runs the annual Beacon Awards, has also launched an “independent review” – led by a recent president of the membership body – to examine the “process and judgments” that led to the granting of the award in 2022-23.
It is the first time the AoC has rescinded an award in its 30-year history.
The action forms part of a potential series of sanctions against Weston College and former principal Sir Paul Phillips, who has recently left the Prisoners’ Education Trust, while another award organiser deliberates withdrawing a further gong.
It found some governors did not know the extent of Phillips’ pay package and that regular payroll procedures were “bypassed” to make direct payments.
The Department for Education has an ongoing investigation into the college’s financial controls.
The news sparked a backlash on social media, with multiple FE sector leaders calling on the AoC to strip the college of its governance award.
Pressure built last week when satirical news magazine Private Eye pointed out the “embarrassing” situation.
‘A really positive, public step’
Mark White, AoC’s trust chair, said: “The AoC Charitable Trust has commissioned an independent review of the process and judgements that led to the granting of the Beacon Award for excellence in governance to Weston College in 2022.
“The review is intended to ensure that the approach taken in granting awards is as robust and rigorous as possible.
“As part of this process, the trust has asked Weston College to return the Beacon Award and I am pleased to say that the new board agree that is the right course of action.”
Former AoC president Corrienne Peasgood has been appointed to lead the review. Peasgood took up the presidential role in October 2022, six months before Weston College was announced as winner of the governance award.
A spokesperson for Weston College said: “Significant changes have been made to governance membership, structures and procedures at the college in line with recommendations made by the FE Commissioner.
“Nevertheless, considering findings in relation to the actions of some members of the previous governing body, the new board can see the benefit for the AoC Charitable Trust in reviewing procedures in relation to the granting of the AoC award for excellence in governance in 2022. It is important that awards processes are as robust as they can be.
“Weston College is very proud of the many other awards achieved through the efforts of our excellent staff teams whose achievements have rightly been recognised and celebrated through multiple AoC Beacon Awards in recent years, as well as awards from many other authorities.”
The AoC has now set out five “areas of focus” to ensure good college governance in light of the Weston revelations. These include: compliance with the AoC’s governance code, governing body oversight of principal/CEO performance, the conduct of the remuneration committee, payroll arrangements and transparency of college financial statements.
David Hughes, AoC chief executive, said: “Today’s announcement is a really positive, public step showing how the college is moving on.
“However, it is really important that, as a sector, we learn some crucial lessons from this and college chairs, board members and executives make sure that in their governance arrangements, they maintain a clear focus on the five key areas we have highlighted.”
Further action to come?
The Pearson National Teaching Awards told FE Week it was “reviewing” Phillips’ “lifetime achievement” gold award, handed out in 2020, in light of the FE Commissioner’s report.
Elsewhere, Phillips was removed as a director of the Prisoners’ Education Trust last week.
Chief executive Jon Collins confirmed to FE Week that Phillips resigned as a trustee but did not provide the reasons for his resignation.
Phillips was halfway through a second term on the trustee board of the PET.
PICTURE: Weston College being presented with their AoC Beacon Award
Rugby-loving boss of Knovia Group Mark Botha has big plans for care, early years and dental training after learning to seize opportunities and take risks
‘Discover the limits of the possible by going beyond them into the impossible’, reads a slogan on the picture looming behind Mark Botha of a man skiing off a mountain peak.
The bravado-enthused image adorning his home office seems appropriate for a man who leads a training provider specialising in some of the riskiest apprenticeship markets out there – care and early years – with their notoriously low margins and achievement rates.
And Knovia Group, made up of Paragon Skills (specialising in care and education), Shaping Lives (early years) and Tempdent (dental), has just taken a sizeable risk by buying up another provider, Babington, after it hit financial turmoil and became embroiled in a historic subcontracting investigation.
But Botha is a man who has never been afraid to take risks. After starting his career in South Africa, he went on to live in England, then Dubai, before returning to England 10 years ago to take the helm at Paragon Skills.
‘Gregarious and confident’
Aside from his boldness, Botha has an unwaveringly cheerful demeanour. As he goes through his life story, there is not a moment of it that he does not describe as having “thoroughly enjoyed”.
Botha grew up in Zimbabwe playing rugby, a game that suits his six-foot-five frame and strong risk appetite. In his late teens, his family moved to South Africa for “better opportunities” at an “economically challenging time”. He was paid (though “not a lot”) to play rugby at county level for Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal).
He was inspired by the example set by his mum, who was a national sales manager for a hotel chain, to study sales, marketing and business management at college. His first professional job involved selling health club memberships on a commission-only basis.
His boss noticed his “gregarious and confident” persona, and he was soon promoted to regional sales manager.
Mark Botha
England-bound
But by the age of 25, Botha was “struggling to get to the next level up” in his career. After getting married, he and his wife decided to move to England in search of opportunities.
Botha’s grandparents were both British, and he felt a “cultural familiarity” with Brits having grown up watching the comedies Fawlty Towers and Mr Bean.
The couple brought their beloved Staffordshire bull terriers along with them, but this made it tougher for Botha to find work in those first few months when the dogs were in quarantine.
“Our immediate priority was to be near the kennels, so we could go visit them. It was pretty disruptive for them and us,” he explains.
Botha occupied himself by working for a distant cousin’s removals business and playing rugby for Newbury. He found the break from high-pressure sales “pretty cathartic”.
Commercial mindset
He returned to corporate life in 2002 as south London sales manager for Fitness First, then the world’s largest privately owned health club chain. When the company launched a specialist women’s-only brand of clubs, Botha became its national sales manager.
He was then made sales and marketing director of an operator of local authority-owned leisure facilities, Leisure Connection, exposing him to the slower-paced world of the British public sector. The facilities they ran for councils tended to employ staff on long tenures who lacked a commercial mindset. Botha was tasked with shifting the culture and set about showing colleagues that “profit isn’t a bad word”.
“It was quite a quick turnaround – success breeds success,” he says.
Botha then joined Premier Global, a health and fitness company that at the time owned the awarding organisation Active IQ, where he was promoted from sales to chief operating officer.
He learned that whereas in the commercial world, “your only stakeholder really is your customer,” in the compliance-dominated world of awarding organisations, other stakeholders, including Ofqual, had to be responded to.
Mark Botha and compatriots in Dubai
Creating fruit salads
A unique opportunity then arose for Botha to return to Fitness First. Although its brand was then struggling in the UK – “squeezed out” by low-cost 24-hour gyms – in Dubai, Landmark Group had just bought franchise rights to expand the brand across the Gulf. Botha moved to Dubai with his wife and five-year-old son Kai to lead its sales and operations.
Over the next five years, the group opened 50 health clubs in the region. Botha took regular trips across the Middle East, and to India and South Africa to recruit new talent.
On one trip to India he interviewed around 500 people in three days, asking them to leave their families for the prospective roles but without being able to tell them which country he might send them to. He found it “fascinating how resilient people are, and willing to take a leap of faith”.
The health clubs were a “fruit salad of cultures”, although not all cultures gelled well.
It was also a “challenge”ensuring that newcomers, particularly party-loving South Africans and Australians, were aware of the Gulf countries’ strict laws.
Running the Dubai marathon
Going ‘home’
After four years in Dubai, Botha and his family returned to England so he could take the helm at Paragon Skills. The provider had been established in 1998 and bought by Sovereign Capital Partners, a UK private equity “buy and build” specialist, 10 years later.
Botha was brought in to “set the tone and direction” for a turnaround. Paragon had just been downgraded by Ofsted from grade two to three and was struggling to embrace the online age by moving away from a paper-based portfolio system.
But Botha found his tutors “pushing back” against moving online, claiming their learners were against the idea. “It turns out it was mostly our tutors who were probably a bit afraid of change,” he says.
Less is more
Before Covid, Paragon’s provision extended to 100 programmes ranging from automotive to hairdressing and boatbuilding, all split into north and south regional teams.
Post-pandemic, there was a period of soul-searching about the company’s direction, and Botha’s team decided to shed its reputation as generalists. “We wanted to be the experts,” he says.
So they “stripped right back” to 40 programmes (since pared down to 19) and moved to a sector-based model around care, professional services, early years and education pathways.
Botha says the move has helped his company engage more employers and not harmed growth.
But it is striking that the sectors Paragon has chosen to specialise in also have the slimmest profit margins and some of the greatest recruitment and retention challenges. The level two adult social care apprenticeship is its fastest-growing.
Although “there are sexier sectors we could be in”, they are “on a mission” now, “without a doubt”, he says.
“There are probably no more important jobs to train people for than looking after the elderly and the young.”
With Fitness First colleagues in Dubai
Shaping lives
In 2023, Knovia Group was formed by Sovereign Capital Partners after it bought dental training company Tempdent – tapping into another sector with a social purpose and dire workforce shortages.
Last month, Knovia took over Babington, one of its competitors in the professional services space. Babington recently reported financial losses and is currently being investigated by the Department for Education over subcontracting irregularities.
Botha had considered making another acquisition, this time in early years, but the company decided instead to build up and rebrand its existing early years provision into ‘Shaping Lives’.
“I anchored in on the name, because that’s exactly what we’re doing,” he says. With the expansion of free childcare provision from 15 to 30 hours a week and the national focus on improving school readiness, Botha says that early years is his company’s “focus for this year, without a doubt”.
Making up headlines
Botha steered Paragon to grade two Ofsted results in 2017 and 2023, but is aiming higher.
The “internal joke” at Paragon, he explains, is to imagine what they would want the headline to read if, following a visit from Ofsted a year from today, the inspection result makes it onto FE Week’s front page.
They have settled on “Paragon Skills delivers outstanding teaching and learning to every learner every time”, which I tease Botha sounds like rather too lofty a goal to ever achieve.
“But what’s the alternative?” he responds. “If I don’t set that as the ambition, I’ll end up with mediocre teaching to some of the learners some of the time.”
Botha’s staff seem to have put their faith in the business.
Staff satisfaction scores range between 92 and 94 per cent and the average tutor tenure is 3.7 years which Botha says is “very good for our sector”.
In order to retain tutors, for the second year running Botha is providing those employed for at least the previous six months with a “loyalty bonus” of £500 in August, and “hopefully another at Christmas”.
This replaces a pay rise, which he would “love to give my teams… but we are not well funded”. But the bonus is “something tangible that they can see in their paycheck, rather than a salary rise that they just don’t notice”.
Botha is a great believer in “positive energy”, which was integral to his past career in the fitness industry. That means employing people who “wake up in the morning happy”. “I don’t want to surround myself with people that just suck the life out of me,” he says.
On top of ‘energy’, another key Knovia corporate value is having an ‘edge’. To that end, they are piloting AI marking tools with software developer Bud.
So far the project has provided “incredible feedback”. The tutors buy into using AI “if it frees up their time for teaching and developing… rather than making them feel like they’re out of work”.
Sizing up
Botha’s mission is for Knovia to be “number one in size and quality” in its respective sectors. In dental, it is already number one “by quite a long way”, and in adult social care, “we oscillate between first and second”.
Although Botha expresses discontent over how recent announcements to relax functional skills requirements for adult apprentices came with “no warning” to the sector, he feels “very fortunate” that most of Paragon’s adult learners are sticking with their functional skills programmes regardless, and no tutors are losing their jobs.
Shorter apprenticeship durations present an “opportunity” in adult social care, with “lots we could concentrate on to get them through those programmes in eight months”.
The company’s apprentices have not had to endure long waits for end-point assessments in recent times, which he puts down to its “pretty accurate” profiling of apprentices six months in advance and “good working relationships” with EPAOs so they “know what’s coming down the line”.
Overseas aspirations
The only “bottleneck” happens in July when “stress levels get higher”. But creating shorter apprenticeships of eight or nine months “would help with that”, Botha says.
As well as expanding Knovia’s footprint in newly devolved regions, Botha would like to gain a foothold in the devolved nations, and perhaps further afield too.
He confesses to missing the “international side” of his time in Dubai.
He believes that education products “with an English badge on” are generally “really well received” abroad, and shorter, more flexible apprenticeship programmes could be more easily exportable.
Botha is feeling “really optimistic” about the future.
He concludes: “We’re so lucky to work in the sector we work in – what is there to be sad about?”
Over 200 colleges will each receive a share of £50 million next month towards staff pay rises.
The one-off post-16 grant formed part of chancellor Rachel Reeves’ autumn budget funding package for colleges last October, worth £300 million in total.
Ministers announced in January around £50 million would be made available to further education and sixth form colleges to cover the final four months of the 2024-25 academic year.
The remaining £250 million will go towards a 3.78 per cent increase to the 16-19 funding rate in 2025-26.
Details released today show grants worth £51.5 million have been awarded to 210 further education and sixth form colleges.
The Department for Education has again chosen to use colleges’ 16-19 funding as a baseline to calculate the grants, putting colleges with larger apprenticeships or 19+ student cohorts at a disadvantage.
Guidance states each grant was calculated by adding a 3.55 per cent uplift to each college’s 16-19 total programme funding for 2024-25.
Grants ranged from just over £1 million for NCG, England’s largest college group, to a modest £459.56 for Richmond and Hillcroft Adult and Community College. See the full list here.
DfE “expects” to pay the grants in June.
Ministers offered the cash days after FE Week revealed the Sixth Form Colleges Association agreed to drop its judicial review claim against the DfE over last summer’s college teacher pay snub.
The promise of in-year funding led to the SFCA upping its pay recommendation from 2 per cent to 3.5 per cent for September 2024 to March 2025, increasing to 5.5 per cent from April 2025 to July 2025, covering the period of the grant.
This comes as college teaching union University and College Union, itself embroiled in industrial unrest among its own staff, prepares for its national congress later this month with multiple college branches calling for a national teacher strike over pay.
Negotiations for next year’s pay award are ongoing between the joint forum of FE staff unions and the Association of Colleges. Demands include a 10 pay rise, binding pay recommendations and reduced class sizes and teaching hours.
