Crisis-hit Aspire Achieve Advance has been telling its staff to not date any paperwork for “planned enrolments” in the midst of a government suspension on recruiting apprentices.

Employees at the apprenticeship giant, better known as 3aaa, were also instructed not to tell current and prospective employers that the ban has been placed upon it.

The provider has denied any wrongdoing.

Emails sent to staff on Monday morning (September 17), seen by FE Week, have exposed the activity at the training provider which is subject to an ongoing ESFA investigation.

No apprentices have been enrolled since the suspension

3aaa’s new managing director Richard Irons, who took over running the company on Monday after co-founders Peter Marples and Di McEvoy-Robinson resigned, provided staff with a company update.

This informed them of the departures of Mr Marples and Ms McEvoy-Robinson. It then stated that Mr Irons had “taken the decision with the support of the board to pause all enrolments until I am fully comfortable with all elements of our activities”.

This is despite 3aaa confirming to FE Week the following day that it was in fact the ESFA who told the provider to stop taking on new starters.

Mr Irons added: “I expect this process to take approximately one month and we should plan on the basis that enrolments will restart no later than 1st November.”

A subsequent communication made by a different 3aaa boss said they had been “instructed” to tell seniors to inform other staff not to tell clients that the provider has been barred from enrolling new apprenticeship starts, and not to date any paperwork associated with “planned enrolments”.

FE Week has meanwhile been contacted by other businesses this week who claim 3aaa has been calling them to offer new apprenticeships despite the suspension, which is not guaranteed to be lifted.

A spokesperson for 3aaa did not deny the instructions went out to staff, but offered the following statement published here in full: “3aaa has agreed a suspension of apprentice enrolments with the ESFA.

“As a result, when current employers or potential employers of apprentices contact us we explain the situation with regard to the freeze.

“We can confirm that, in accordance with the agreement with the ESFA, no apprentices have been enrolled since the suspension.”

It is understood that the pause in starts will not be lifted at least until Ofsted’s inspection of the provider has been completed.

Mr Irons’ company update revealed that the provider is expecting a visit in the next few weeks, but it won’t be another full inspection.

“As you are aware, we are yet to receive our final Ofsted report and we continue to have positive engagement with both Ofsted and the ESFA,” he said.

This is an exciting time for the business

“We expect that Ofsted will revisit the business in the next few weeks to review the final 2017-18 data before our report is issued. We are not expecting a full re-inspection and this process will be in parallel with filing our critical 2017-18 period 14 submission mid-October.”

He concludes by saying: “This is an exciting time for the business during which the senior management team and I look forward to working with you closely over the coming weeks to help define the future.”

3aaa had the largest allocation for non-levy apprenticeships last year at nearly £22 million. Its overall ESFA allocations totalled more than £31 million.

In June FE Week revealed that 3aaa’s latest Ofsted inspection, which was expected to result in another “outstanding” rating, had been declared incomplete following intervention from the ESFA after claims by a whistleblower.

A month later it was revealed that an independent auditor, Alyson Gerner, had been called in by the Department for Education to investigate its own funding agency over their contract management of 3aaa.

When asked what action the agency would take following this latest revelation, a DfE spokesperson said: “We do not comment on any investigations, ongoing or otherwise.”

London South East Colleges has hosted the highest echelons of Ofsted after the inspectorate’s chair chose its Bromley Campus for his landmark lecture. 

Amanda Spielman, the education watchdog’s chief inspector, and chair of its board Professor Julius Weinberg were given a tour of the college before Professor Weinberg gave a speech reflecting on his first year at the helm.

FE Week took the opportunity to sit down with Ms Spielman to talk about the some of the biggest issues currently facing FE.

As the introduction of T-levels looms ever nearer on the horizon, with the first pathways due to be introduced in 2020, the chief inspector admitted that the inspectorate is still unsure how performance of the new qualification will be measured.

“First of all, the government has got to get clear on what T-levels are really going to be, and get them to the point of being ready for teaching. It will be a bit later in the process that we really start to think about what it is that we will be able to look at and how,” she said. 

“Essentially, T-levels themselves – their shape and form and implementation – has to be clear before we can design how we inspect.”

She also didn’t rule out that Ofsted’s role in ensuring quality T-levels could include directly inspecting workplaces, but said it was “too early to say”. 

At a time of squeezed budgets, Ms Spielman also defended the inspectorate’s increased focus and spend on research, and said one of the regulator’s main reasons for conducting so much research was to “look at the validity and reliability of its own processes” and to draw together “insights that we get from our birds eye view” from inspecting thousands of providers every year. 

“It makes people grumpy and we’re criticised if we don’t draw together the insight from that and put it out in a form that’s useful for the sector,” she said. 

“What we’ve done over the last year and a half is really just to reinstate some of the capacity that we used to have that had been stripped out over the last few years, to get us back to a sensible level of research team of a scale that fits the operation we have.” 

Professor Weinberg insisted that a “small proportion of the budget” was spent on research, and denied
suggestions of a board disagreement over the matter. Board minutes from last November showed questions being raised about “what, if anything, regional directors would need to stop doing” in order to carry out the research programme and how much such a programme would cost over two years.

Professor Weinberg said: “One of our roles as a board is challenge and scrutiny. So when Amanda [Spielman] proposes a spend, because we are not flush with money, every spend has an opportunity cost. So if we spend on one thing, it does mean we have less to spend elsewhere, although we’ve been extraordinarily good at maintaining our level of activity and finding ways of saving money.

“The board did exactly what it should do. It’s in the minutes because we scrutinised and we challenged and we were convinced. We absolutely support the research money.”

The Ofsted bosses appearance at a college came in the same week that a damning report from the Institute of Fiscal Studies warned that FE has been hit the hardest in the education sector by cuts to government funding.

The IFS report found that spending per student had fallen eight per cent in real terms since 2010-11, and Ms Spielman acknowledged that a “decline in quality” in FE “may” be linked to the lower funding.

“We’ve seen and acknowledged previously that funding for FE has declined a lot relative to schools, and
it’s got a tough job to do with all the technical and vocational education. And we’ve also seen a decline in quality in the sector. They may be related.

“What I can’t do is definitively attribute, because the work we do doesn’t investigate to the point of being
able to say ‘this is because of that’, but we have seen a decline in quality in the sector in recent years which is a concern to us.”

When asked whether a possible link between a drop in quality in FE and lower funding should be investigated, Ms Spielman suggested this was not a job for Ofsted.

“The ESFA is the funding agency which has the direct line into what colleges are spending money on,”she said. “Pulling together the information in the system to get a clear picture is generally good news.”

She also said it was too early to say whether college mergers were successful in raising quality, as there have only been three inspections of institutions after “area review driven mergers” so far.

“I don’t think you can draw very much from that small an evidence base,” Ms Spielman said. “I think in the
coming years we’ll start to see a little more coming through. 

 “The profile of inspection outcomes will shed some light on it, but one of the difficult things about mergers is it takes quite some time after them happening before you know if they’ve worked or not.”

 

Twenty two of the UK’s most highly skilled young people will fly to Budapest next week to compete in EuroSkills 2018.

The team will go up against the best Europe has to offer from 27 countries in disciplines ranging from mechatronics to cooking, heavy truck maintenance to floristry.

Each member of Team UK has swapped their evenings, weekends, and social life for dogged training regimes over the past year, ever since they won places at the UK’s Skills Show, now known as WorldSkills UK Live, last year.

Now the training is over, the team is raring to compete in what will be the first international competition for most of them.

Everyone in the team has been hard at it, working on weekends and in holiday periods

“Prep has gone really well,” said WorldSkills UK chief executive Dr Neil Bentley. “Everyone in the team has been hard at it, working on weekends and in holiday periods.

“What’s been really good is the sense of togetherness that you see at the boot camps and the camaraderie that they’ve got.”

He said the target was to finish in the top 10.

EuroSkills is the sister competition to WorldSkills, often referred to as the “Olympics of skills”, and takes place every two years.

On offer to competitors are gold, silver and bronze medals as well as medallions of excellence, achieved whenever a team member reaches the international standard in their discipline.

At the last EuroSkills in Gothenburg in 2016, Team UK won two gold medals, one silver, two bronzes and eight medallions of excellence.

Among the competitors this year is Shane Carpenter, who is employed by BAE Systems and will compete in IT network administration.

The 22-year-old is no stranger to the process and competed in WorldSkills Abu Dhabi last year where he achieved a medallion of excellence.

“I would like this time to get top three because I missed out slightly in Abu Dhabi after a few mistakes and that is what I’ve learnt from. I’m pretty confident,” he told FE Week.

Skills minister Anne Milton sang the praises of Team UK at a special send-off event in Parliament earlier this month.

She told them life today is “no longer about what you know, it is about what skills you have got as well”.

“You will be going out to Budapest representing your country and doing us proud.”

Speaking to FE Week after the event she added: “It is going to take endurance, fortitude and determination to show the rest of Europe what they can do. Good luck to them all.”

Team UK flies to Hungary on September 24, and will take part in three days of intense competition between September 26 and 28.

FE Week is media partner and will be reporting every step of the way.

A college in financial crisis requested a multi-million pound government bailout just 48 hours before it would have run out of cash, FE Week understands.

West Nottinghamshire College, whose principal Dame Asha Khemka is one of the highest paid college bosses in England, received a £2.1 million exceptional financial support loan from the Education and Skills Funding Agency in July.

The ESFA published a financial health notice to improve this week, which triggers a formal review from the intervention team and the FE Commissioner.

FE Week can now reveal that the last-minute loan was requested after the “partial” sale of its software company was pulled at the eleventh hour.

Part of the college’s plan for financial recovery was the partial sale of bksb

A spokesperson for WNC told FE Week: “Part of the college’s plan for financial recovery was the partial sale of its highly successful and profitable subsidiary company bksb.

“Until late June/early July, the college understood this sale was proceeding well and would address the short-term cash flow issues at the end of 2017/18.

“However, as the terms of that deal became apparent, it was clear that it did not represent good value for the college or bksb and as a result the board took the decision not to proceed.

“Consequently, the college found itself in the position of needing to approach the ESFA for exceptional financial support at short notice.”

Bksb, which is wholly owned by WNC and claims to be the UK’s “most popular eLearning solution for functional skills and GCSE”, has a turnover of £3.4 million and made £1.5 million pre-tax profits for the college in 2016/17.

WNC’s former deputy principal and finance director Alastair Thomson told FE Week that he took on the sale of an unnamed “asset” when he joined in April this year and negotiated a value “well in excess of the amount the college had initially sought” before leaving for an overseas holiday.

When he returned the principal and governing body “without consulting me decided not to pursue the plan”, he claimed.

“I asked to meet with governors on several occasions following my return from leave to discuss a range of issues and they have steadfastly refused to meet with me and explain the basis for their decisions in this and a number of other matters,” he said.

Mr Thomson left the college on July 20, four months after his arrival. The terms of his departure are unknown.

Board minutes from April say the college was running low on reserves which were below the £9 million set in its banking covenants. The college has a £15 million loan outstanding with Lloyds Bank, which was negotiated in 2012 to pay for redevelopment and has another 20 years to run.

The minutes also reveal the college’s worryingly low cash days – the number of days an organisation can continue to pay its operating expenses given the amount of cash available.

For colleges these are benchmarked by the FE Commissioner at 25.

“The current position is 11 days and therefore the margin for error on cash is incredibly tight and will present some challenges,” the minutes say.

The financial crisis is said to have been brewing for years because of decisions made by the principal and governing body, according to Mr Thomson.

“What I can say is that the college’s current financial challenges had very little to do with the sort of cash management issues that I, or any other finance director, would have been able to manage as they were the natural consequences of a number of strategic decisions made by the principal and governing body,” he claimed.

The college’s 2015/16 accounts make reference to investing £6.5 million along with cash from the Local Enterprise Partnership to build a higher skills centre.

And board minutes from as long ago as July 2016 note that “one member of the board challenged the senior team and asked whether the college generally has an over-optimistic view of its ability to take on new projects”.

The college’s accounts for 2016/17 have yet to be published.

The financial challenges were the natural consequences of strategic decisions made by the principal and governing body

A spokesperson said the aim was to publish them in October, 10 months late. Dame Asha’s £262,000 remuneration package has meanwhile been confirmed.

Earlier this year WNC blamed changes in apprenticeship subcontracting rules, which reduced their income from management fees, for having to cut more than 100 jobs in an effort to make £2.7 million in savings.

The 2015/16 accounts also describe the college missing its adult skills budget target by £700,000 and board minutes from April 2018 suggest under-delivery continues to be a problem.

Leigh Powell, UNISON’s national officer for FE, claims the college has repeatedly refused to heed financial warnings.

“It’s a disgrace that financial troubles have escalated to this level,” she said.

“Senior managers at the college have played fast and loose with public money to the detriment of students’ education and the future of the dedicated staff who work there.

“Staff are now left wondering who will be leading the financial recovery plan and how future changes will affect them.”

The WNC spokesperson said he was “unable to provide any further comment on matters relating to the FE Commissioner’s recommendations but would be willing to do so on their publication.”

An independent learning provider has been given a grade three rating across the board in its first Ofsted inspection as the results for five more early monitoring visits of apprenticeship providers have been published. 

The only full Ofsted inspection published this week saw Encompass Consultancy gaining a ‘requires improvement’ judgement in every possible category. 

The Hull-based provider, which has delivered apprenticeships as a subcontractor since 2013 but secured its own contract to deliver non-levy funded apprenticeships in the last academic year, was criticised by inspectors for being “slow” to make improvements. 

The report said that managers were “not sufficiently self-critical” in assessing the quality of the provision provided, and found the current self-assessment plan to be “overgenerous” and not paying enough attention to the delivery of the two subcontractors it works with. 

However, the report did note that directors had “recently” recognised the issues and appointed a new management team to implement improvements, and said “sensible steps” had been taken to focus the curriculum on management apprenticeships and employability training. 

Inspectors also found that “too many” adult learners on courses funded through advanced learner loans “make slow progress”, with just over half completing their courses and achieving their qualifications within the planned timescales in 2016/17.

They also warned of “significant gaps” in the progress of different groups of adult learners, including between men and women and between Asian and white British learners. 

When assessing apprenticeships at the provider, Ofsted warned that the quality of teaching, learning and assessment was currently “not good enough” to allow apprentices to make the progress expected of them. 

Five more early monitoring visit reports were also published this week as part of the inspectorate’s scrutiny on new apprenticeship providers. 

Securitas Security Services (UK) was found to be making ‘insufficient’ progress in two of the three themes looked at by inspectors, who warned that the provider did not have enough assessors to meet the needs of its 650 apprentices. 

“Most apprentices do not have a choice about enrolling for the apprenticeship training programme. As a result of this compulsory training, apprentices do not enjoy their learning or understand its nature,” the report said. 

The Mitre Group also received two ‘insufficient’ ratings from Ofsted this week, and was particularly criticised for its lack of off-the-job training and the quality of apprenticeship provision. 

Under new rules from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, any provider with an ‘insufficient’ rating in at least one theme will be banned from taking on any new apprentices – either directly or through subcontracting agreements – until the grade improves.

However, there was better news for the three other providers to have monitoring visits published this week. Darwin Training, ABM Training (UK) and icount Training were all found to be making ‘reasonable’ progress in the themes looked at by inspectors, and Darwin Training was commended for making ‘significant’ progress in ensuring safeguarding is effective. 

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade
icount Training	14/08/2018	17/09/2018	M
Encompass Consultancy	07/08/2018	17/09/2018	3
Mitre Group	09/08/2018	18/09/2018	M
ABM Training (UK)	23/08/2018	19/09/2018	M
Darwin Training	22/08/2018	21/09/2018	M

 

Employer providers	Inspected	Published	Grade
Securitas UK	16/08/2018	19/09/2018	M

 

The government has coughed up the full £5.4 million Ofsted requested to visit all new apprenticeship providers as its crackdown on poor provision continues.

In an exclusive interview with FE Week, Paul Joyce (pictured), the inspectorate’s deputy director for FE and skills, said the amount was nothing less than what was requested and will be provided from now until the end of March 2020.

However, he could not say how many more inspections or inspectors the money was likely to fund to carry out the mammoth task.

Potentially as many as 1,200 providers could now be in scope for a two-day monitoring visit. The Education and Skills Funding Agency confirmed last month that any apprenticeship provider which Ofsted deems to have made insufficient progress in one or more themes under review would be stopped from taking on new apprentices.

These restrictions will stay in place until the provider has received a full inspection and been awarded at  least a grade three for its apprenticeship provision. Full inspections for providers which receive an “insufficient” rating will now take place within six to 12 months.

At the time of going to print the inspectorate had so far published 59 early monitoring visit reports of apprenticeship providers and deemed 12 of them – 20 per cent – to be making insufficient progress in one or more themes. Two of these – Key 6 Group and Training Solutions – have been rated as insufficient in every category. 

Half of the insufficient-rated providers are currently barred from taking on new apprentices, according to the register of apprenticeship training providers, but the fate of the other six is not yet known.

Of the providers which have been inspected so far, 42 have either previously been a subcontractor or are still subcontracting alongside delivering their own provision. Seven of the subcontractors, 16 per cent, have been deemed insufficient. However, almost a third of those who have not subcontracted have been deemed insufficient, with five falling foul of the inspectors.

September has also seen a surge in the number of reports, including “insufficient” reports, being published.

So far this month 14 early monitoring visit reports have been published, of which five had an insufficient rating. In comparison, just 17 reports were published across the whole of August and just two of these were deemed insufficient.

Mr Joyce said that Ofsted would be analysing the results of the reports, but added that “no specific pattern” was currently emerging.

“I think it’s the nature of the new providers that we’ve got out there,” he said. “In many cases we know very little about them in terms of their previous history, so we send inspectors out and their job is really to report as they find. The reports that have been published reflect what we have seen.”

Mr Joyce would not be drawn on whether the Education and Skill Funding Agency could do more to crack down on rogue apprenticeship providers, including by limiting how quickly new providers can grow.

“That’s a question and a matter for the ESFA to deal with,” he said. “I would hope, and I’m sure, that our monitoring visits will be useful to them and help inform their processes.

“But again – their policies, their decisions.”

What does insufficient progress look like? 

The “insufficient” reports have thrown up several common issues between the providers, including poor governance, low quality teaching and a lack of off-the-job training.

Apprentices at Care Training Solutions, which was rated insufficient across the board by inspectors, were said to be not making enough progress, with inspectors warning that “too many apprentices are behind in every element of their apprenticeship”.

Leaders at Unique Training Solutions were criticised for not holding employers “sufficiently to account when they do not play their part in helping meet the expected requirements of the apprenticeships programmes,” meaning that “too many” apprentices did not receive enough off-the-job training within working hours. 

Not enough off-the-job training was also said to be an issue at the Education and Skills Partnership, and at the Mitre Group where inspectors found that “most of the training [apprentices] complete in their own time and not during their working hours”. Quality of provision and improvements were said to be “too slow” at Mears Learning. 

At Peacocks, senior management were described as being “too slow to respond to significant weaknesses that exist in the apprentices’ programmes and the quality of the education and training that apprentices receive”, while apprentices at Mooreskills complained to inspectors that “they are not developing new skills or enhancing their existing knowledge”. 

Watertrain was criticised for “using the apprenticeship programme to enable employees to gain qualifications in existing skills and knowledge”, and inspectors noted that some apprentices “reported that they did not want to be an apprentice and did not see how they are gaining anything from the programme”. 

Safeguarding was criticised at N-Gaged Training and Recruitment, and the report said no safeguarding arrangements existed for their few apprentices aged under 18 when they attended residential training. At Entrust, governance and oversight of the apprenticeship programme was described as “insufficiently thorough”. 

Key 6 Group’s apprenticeship provision was described as “not fit for purpose” and its governance called “poor” in a report that saw it rated “insufficient” across the board.

“The board of directors do not hold the managing director and the director of education to account for the poor teaching, learning and assessment and weak progress that apprentices make,” inspectors reported.

Leaders at Securitas were also slammed by inspectors, who said their “self-evaluation of the quality of provision lacks realism and reflective analysis” and noted that most apprentices “do not have a choice about enrolling for the apprenticeship training programme. 

“As a result of this compulsory training, apprentices do not enjoy their learning or understand its nature,” the report said.

Principals have welcomed new guidance from the Association of Colleges for setting senior pay in colleges, but unions have warned the voluntary code will not be enough to tackle excessive rewards.

FE Week revealed last week that refreshed remuneration guidance was being developed by the association as top level pay across the education sector continues to come under heavy scrutiny.

The government has clamped down on chief executive salaries in multi-academy trusts and vice-chancellor wages in universities which often exceed £150,000, but left colleges untouched despite many bosses receiving more than £200,000.

The code sets out good practice that I’m sure is already largely followed

A consultation for the AoC’s new code, which encompasses “three core principles: fairness, independence and transparency” and is an amendment to existing guidance created in 2015, was launched to tackle this.

The main proposals include only giving seniors a pay rise if all staff also receive one, removing top college bosses from remuneration committees, separate publication of principal salaries and a requirement to justify any income seniors receive from outside organisations.

Ian Pryce, principal of Bedford College, told FE Week the AoC should be “applauded for being ahead of the curve”.

“We don’t have an issue with senior pay in colleges,” he claimed. “Governors behave very responsibility. The code sets out good practice that I’m sure is already largely followed.”

NCG, the country’s biggest college group, agreed with Mr Pryce.

“NCG welcomes the senior pay code for colleges,” a spokesperson said. “As a leading further education group invested in its staff we already operate by these principles.”

But unions expressed concern that the code is not statutory.

“Whilst UNISON welcomes the AoC’s admission that more checks and balances are needed in relation to senior staff pay in colleges, a voluntary code will not be enough to tackle excessive pay awards,” said Leigh Powell, the union’s FE lead officer.

“This code has been in existence for three years and yet we continue to see principals being awarded pay rises other staff in colleges can only dream about.

“It is difficult to see exactly how adding a few words to a document that has been proven to have little effect to date is going to lead to the necessary changes in practice.”

University and College Union head of further education Andrew Harden agreed.

We hope that the final version will have real teeth

“Whilst we agree that principals shouldn’t be on remunerations committees, we have concerns that the proposed code is only voluntary,” he said.

“We hope that the final version will have real teeth and not allow colleges to get out of proper transparency when it comes to leaders’ pay, especially at a time when staff have suffered pay cuts of 25 per cent over the last decade.”

Mr Pryce pointed out that colleges are independent charities so the code “should be guidance”.

He added: “Senior pay is a low multiple of median salaries. The multiples are higher in the civil service and NHS because median pay is lower, so the code might lead to or justify higher CEO pay.

“Colleges might also concentrate good rises on those staff around the median, rather than the low paid.”

The refreshed senior pay code has been developed at a frustrating time for college staff, after the DfE decided to fund a 3.5 per cent pay rise for school teachers while ignoring FE lecturers. UCU has since launched a ballot for strike action to take place later this year.

“This shouldn’t really need saying but the increasing differentials between senior level pay and that of lecturers and other FE staff is simply inexcusable,” said Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union.

“The NEU firmly supports the effort by AoC to encourage colleges to sign up to and honour a code of conduct that could potentially bring greater fairness into pay settlements.”