The number of new apprenticeship standards approved for delivery declined dramatically in March and April, FE Week analysis has revealed.
The Institute for Apprenticeships only cleared four standards in April and 10 in March, down from 21 in February.
The agency’s chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan (pictured) only launched its Faster and Better initiative in December to “streamline the approvals process”.
A spokesperson claimed the figures are not surprising, as the IfA expected recent reforms to slow things down temporarily ahead of an anticipated upturn.
“The Faster and Better programme is made up of a number of different initiatives that are being introduced over time,” she said.
“The impact of such initiatives will take time to be fully felt. However, we anticipate they will help to speed up the development process and improve the overall customer experience significantly in the second half of this year.”
The impact of such initiatives will take time to be fully felt
She explained standards applications are “reviewed on a six-week cycle”, and a “range of factors can affect how many are approved for delivery in a particular month, such as fluctuations in the volume of submissions”.
“We piloted our new online template for proposals and standards in February and rolled it out for all submissions in March, and we published completely overhauled and simplified guidance in March.”
The number of standards approved in total so far this year was said to be “a marked improvement”, as “between July and December 2017, we approved 37 apprenticeship standards for delivery”.
Apprenticeship standards, which are developed by groups of employers, are gradually replacing the old frameworks. Each contains a list of the skills, knowledge and behaviours an apprentice will need to have learned by the end of their apprenticeship.
The IfA website showed 271 had been approved at the time FE Week went to press.
There are, however, 268 more in development, of which 29 have assessment plans that haven’t been approved for delivery.
Sir Gerry launched Faster and Better to address complaints from employers and providers that the approvals process was far too slow and bureaucratic.
The Confederation of British Industry’s head of education and skills John Cope described the March and April figures as “disappointing”, but backed efforts to speed things up.
“Businesses support the IfA’s strategy to speed up the standards process and improve support for trailblazer groups – something the CBI has long called for,” he said.
“We need more rapid progress, but it’s also crucial we get them right,” added Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute. The IfA needs to set out when they expect numbers to pick up so we can see if it’s on track.”
Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden pledged to monitor progress over the rest of 2018 “very carefully”.
“It is of course concerning that the approval of standards has slowed down. However I have personally spoken to the chief executive of the IfA who is confident the process will speed up in the second half of the year.
“This is a situation we will be monitoring very closely, not least because of the government’s track record in failing to deliver the resources and capacity the Institute has needed from day one.”
Lord Baker has mounted a robust defence of university technical colleges, despite the growing list of setbacks to befall the 14-to-19 programme he helped build. In an exclusive interview with FE Week’s Billy Camden, he refutes claims from other major players who once backed it, including George Osborne, that the movement is in serious trouble.
Lord Baker has come out fighting.
“Neither of my main critics have ever even visited a UTC,” he claims, when asked what he thinks about George Osborne and Michael Gove’s recent condemnations.
Of the former chancellor, he adds: “He is not in the picture any more. He has no idea what has happened.”
In fact, this week Lord Baker has even written to Mr Osborne, inviting him to visit a UTC to “show him their success”.
The latter told the Commons education committee last week that he would consider scrapping the UTC starting age of 14 if he were still in charge at the Treasury, after coming to the conclusion that they are in need of radical reform.
Many people from across FE agree that the model “clearly hasn’t worked”, given that eight have so far closed and six of the 30 inspected by Ofsted are rated ‘inadequate’.
But Lord Baker refuses to accept any of this. The former education secretary has also invited Mr Gove, who in fact visted at least one with him in 2014, to check what they are like now. He doubts he will take up the offer though. Mr Gove, himself a former education secretary, was always “against” the movement because he was “dug in his own philosophy” of academic education and “did not like or understand” technical education.
Lord Baker believes there is outstanding evidence that UTCs are successful, and reveals that two new ones are in the pipeline, to be based in Newcastle and Doncaster.
“Our recruitment went up last year by 20 per cent,” he claims, adding: “Our destination data is incredible. Last year we had 2,000 leavers and only 23 NEETs. That is an unemployment rate of one per cent whereas nationally it is 12.2 per cent.”
He also claims that UTCs were only slightly below the national average for year 13 leavers attending university (46 per cent compared to 51 per cent). “Yet”, he adds, “78 per cent of these entered a STEM course, helping to address skills shortages in sectors that are key to economic growth, compared to just 22 per cent nationally”.
He puts recent recruitment success down to two factors: the new legal requirement on local authorities to write to all parents of year 9 students telling them about other types of education providers, and the Baker Clause, named for the intervention he made in the passage of the recent education bill, which forces schools to open their doors to colleges, training providers and UTCs.
But not all councils and schools are complying, and Lord Baker wants strict action enforced on them.
The department appears to have listened.
On May 10, a senior DfE official travelled to Cumbria to have face-to-face showdowns with headteachers who are not letting the Energy Coast UTC speak with pupils.
There is such good evidence that we are successful
“Some schools postpone and are awkward, which is outrageous,” he said, though the academies minister Lord Agnew is “prepared to instruct them to comply”.
“The DfE needs to make a physical presence and ministers need to instruct specific schools.”
What action would he like to see taken against these rogue schools? It would be “a very good idea”, he says, for Ofsted to “condemn them” in inspection reports.
In terms of local authorities, the Baker Dearing Trust, which oversees UTCs, is compiling evidence of non-compliance to show the DfE. Once passed on, ministers are expected to write to rebel councils to demand they comply with the law.
If at this point the LAs still do not play ball, Lord Baker says the whole weight of the DfE “should descend upon them”.
Regarding the historic low Ofsted grades at UTCs, Lord Baker believes the inspectorate’s current regime is unfair.
“A UTC is not a school or a college, it is a hybrid animal,” he says. “Ofsted takes no account of employability in inspections and that is a big test for us.”
He hopes that the watchdog’s new common inspection framework, expected in 18 months’ time, will go some way to taking into account “the special nature of our offer”.
Some leading FE figures, namely former skills minister Nick Boles, have suggested that UTCs should function as part of multi-academy trusts to make them “stronger”.
Some UTCs have started to recruit at 13 – a year earlier than the standard recruitment age of 14 – because schools in local areas are beginning key stage 4 learning at year 9.
Lord Baker is a fan of this idea, and says if the whole country evolves to this model, then so will UTCs.
There ought to be a statue of me in every FE college
“We would absolutely be happy to change to starting at 13 instead of 14,” he confirms.
In terms of closures, the peer confesses that he knew starting the movement was a “high-risk strategy and any entrepreneur will tell you that you always lose 10 per cent, which we have lost”.
He realises that every child “only has one education”, but for those at UTCs that have closed, he claims that not one of them became a NEET, “so we gave them something”.
Asked if he would send his own child to a UTC, even if it was severely under capacity like many currently are, Lord Baker says he “certainly would” if they were technically inclined.
Many critics of the UTC movement have labelled it as a “failed Baker pet-project”. He refutes this.
“My last pet project was academies, so I want this pet project to be as successful as that,” he remarks. “It might not happen in my lifetime but I am sure it will eventually.”
In the Conservative Party manifesto there was commitment to have a UTC “within reach of every city”. Lord Baker believes this was a “rather strange objective”, but one that has mostly been fulfilled as “we have them scattered around all the big cities”.
He finishes with a joke and a smile: “I have a high regard for FE Colleges and there ought to be a statue of me in every college because I was the minister who removed them from local authority control and gave them the chance to grow.”
The chequered history of UTCs
Since the first wave of university technical colleges launched in 2010, FE Week has been there to report on their troubles.
The first and most pronounced sticking point has been the constant battle to convince students to transfer school at the tricky age 14.
At this age pupils are not only just about to enter the critical GCSE learning period, but they’re also embedded in their school community and friendship groups. UTCs are also still a relatively new concept, and most parents are put off taking a punt on them for fear of ruining their child’s education with the unknown.
Most UTCs have severely struggled with recruitment as a result. As FE Week revealed earlier this year, almost every UTC missed their recruitment targets and were overpaid by the government in 2016/17, leaving them with a combined debt of over £11 million.
They’ve also struggled to retain students. Learner numbers dropped at around two thirds of the colleges that had been open for three or more years in 2016/17. Further to this, in April 2017 over half revealed they were still at less than half capacity.
On top of this, schools have come out fighting whenever a UTC has attempted to poach their technically gifted pupils, creating unhealthy competition in the education sector.
Established general FE and sixth-form colleges, which consistently return a much higher proportion of better Ofsted grades, also view UTCs as unwelcome.
Many have become financially unviable due to low student numbers, and eight have closed as a result.
Most of the 14-to-19 technical providers have also run into trouble with Ofsted. A grade four report into South Wiltshire UTC published last month brought the total number of UTCs inspected so far to 30 and the number rated ‘inadequate’ to six.
Eight others are rated ‘requires improvement’. Just one is ‘outstanding’.
What has made matters worse is that the government has continued to judge UTCs by school standards, despite being totally different.
UTCs have attempted numerous different ways of improving Ofsted results and easing recruitment woes.
Some have rebranded after opting to join multi-academy trusts, and others have lowered the recruitment age to 13 to fit in with local schools who start the key stage 4 period in year 9.
Despite the mounting list of setbacks, the man behind them, Lord Baker, is convinced they will be a success. Only time will tell if his dream comes true.
A college in Hertford will be kicking itself this week after Ofsted praised it for “much improvement” since its last inspection, but not enough to boost it up to a grade two.
Hertford Regional College received ‘requires improvement’ ratings across the board in 2016.
Ofsted went back in for a full re-inspection two months ago and gave it ‘good’ ratings in four of the eight headline fields, including for apprenticeships.
But “despite much improvement since the previous inspection, not enough teaching is good,” inspectors said, who subsequently gave it an overall grade three again.
Ofsted praised the college’s leadership which has “strengthened since the previous inspection”, and as a result, managers have “comprehensive knowledge of the progress of current learners, which they use effectively to improve provision”.
Inspectors added that leaders now implement “robust performance management and quality assurance processes” that are “ensuring that underperforming areas are improving quickly”.
Most apprentices at the college “improve their technical skills, make good progress in their job roles and are valued highly for their contribution to their employers’ businesses”.
However, “too many teachers do not expect enough from learners; target-setting is not ambitious enough and learning activities do not challenge learners to excel.
“Not enough learners following study programmes make good progress from their starting points, and achieve as well as they could, although results are improving.”
And although leaders “ensure that the majority of learners” attend their lessons regularly, “too many do not”.
To make that jump to a grade two, the college needs to continue to “improve teaching, learning and assessment so all learners benefit from a high-quality experience during their time at college”.
Meanwhile, another independent training provider received an early apprenticeship monitoring visit this week which resulted in a positive report.
Quest Vocational Training Ltd, which was formed in 2012 and is based in Dorset, was found to be making reasonable progress in all three themed areas.
The inspection was undertaken as part of a series of monitoring visits that are taking place with a sample of new apprenticeship training providers directly funded through the apprenticeship levy.
Directors and senior managers have “ambitious and clear plans to become a high-quality provider to the health and social care sector,” inspectors said.
“They are increasing the number of apprentices on the prime contract as part of a sustainable strategic plan to meet the requirements of a range of different employers in this sector.”
Almost all apprentices interviewed during the monitoring visit said they receive “appropriate time and support from their employers to complete off-the-job training at work”.
And all employers interviewed were “clear about how their apprentices have improved their skills and behaviours as a result of undertaking their apprenticeship”.
Ofsted also noted that senior managers ensure that safeguarding arrangements are “effective”.
The only other Ofsted report to be published for the FE sector this week was a short inspection for Cheshire West and Chester Council, which retained its ‘good’ rating.
With the 2020 start date for the first T-levels fast approaching, Ewart Keep lays out just a few of what he sees as their biggest problems
It is apparent that T-levels are now yet another in a long line of government projects that have been deemed too important to fail, despite the long and failure-strewn history of reform to vocational qualifications. Does anyone (not least at the Department for Education) remember the 14-to-19 diplomas, to which T-levels bear a strong family resemblance?
“This time, it will be different” and “we will make it work” are phrases I hear repeated by officials. But will it be different, and will it work?
There are lots of reasons to worry about T-levels, but I only have space for a couple here. First, there is the issue of what might be termed “critical mass”. This has two aspects.
Will there be enough students, particularly at colleges outside large urban areas, to make some of the pathways viable? I am curious if anyone has run the numbers on this. Colleges report they need an intake of 18 to 20 students to make a course/pathway “wash its face” financially. How many colleges will get 18 to 20 applicants for some of the pathways?
This in turn reflects a second, much broader issue about student numbers.
“This time, it will be different” and “we will make it work” are phrases I hear repeated by officials
T-levels will operate at level three. In many colleges, the bulk of their 16-to-18/19 students are studying at level two or below. Thus in 2016/17 the enrolments at 16 to 18 at different levels were as follows: entry/foundation level – 119,450; level one – 198,830; level two – 427,780; level three – 620,650.
In the new world, large numbers will be on their transition year before T-levels. Official assumptions seem to be that the majority will ultimately move up to level three and onto T-levels. If current patterns of labour market demand and student achievement hold good this is unlikely, however. At many colleges, especially in less prosperous areas, the majority of students will not be on
T-levels, or at level three. Some will be doing applied general courses (if this category continues to exist) and A-levels rather than T-levels.
Moreover, so much 16-to-18/19 FE provision is remedial – it is trying to get students to achieve at level two (and sometimes the maths and English) after their schools failed to equip them during their lower secondary phase. This means that for many students there is the danger that the money will run out at the cut-off point at age 19, before they have completed the combination of the transition year and a T-level.
The other area for concern is one that other contributors to FE Week have already been highlighting: the willingness and ability of employers to deliver what is needed. T-levels are founded on the notion of co-creation and co-delivery, with employers acting not as semi-detached customers, but as full partners in the process. It is an admirable ideal, but making it work will be very hard.
There are at least two problems. First, will the T-level standards devised by small panels of employers be recognised by the wider employer community in the relevant sector/occupation? Evidence from the apprenticeship standards process suggests this may not always be the case.
Second, the work placements are a major ask. Employers are still adjusting to the demands of the levy and the associated apprenticeship reforms. They are also being bombarded with multiple and uncoordinated requests from education (schools, colleges and universities) for more work experience and work placement opportunities.
For example, in higher education, the Wakeham Review of STEM, and the Shadbolt Review of computer science provision have both stressed the need for more and better work experience provision to ensure employability and the relevance of courses to working life. Multiple demands on employers may lead to stress and disengagement. Policy on work placements needs to look at demand from education holistically rather than in discrete blobs like T-levels.
Selling T-levels to employers is going to be a major task.
Professor Ewart Keep is director of SKOPE at Oxford University
The inspectorate’s criticism of a provider new to government-funded apprenticeships when it joined the register of apprenticeship training providers in March 2017 was particularly brutal.
Its apprenticeships were “not fit for purpose”, and most people received “a poor standard of training” according to inspectors who visited the provider in February.
Despite this damning verdict Key6 Group was suspended for just two months – and it is now allowed to take on new apprentices once more.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said it had stopped the group from “taking on new apprentices until it addressed the concerns outlined in Ofsted’s report”.
“The suspension was lifted in April after it provided a robust improvement plan,” she said.
Key6 Group has not explained how it managed to turn things around in such a short time period, despite multiple attempts by FE Week to get in contact.
And its website gives no clue as to its activities, as it simply says “currently updating our website – back soon!”
The treatment of Key6 Group is in marked contrast to that meted out to existing providers given a grade four for their apprenticeship provision.
Under rules published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency in January, an ‘inadequate’ provider should be given five days’ notice of removal from the register.
Furthermore, they must not take on any new apprentices, and any existing apprentices would be able to stay on only at the employers’ discretion.
To date, one college and at least 10 independent training providers have been removed from the register as a result of a grade four rating for their apprenticeship provision.
But Key6 Group has remained on the register throughout its suspension, as the date it was added, March 13 2017, is unchanged.
Their introduction is believed to be a result of growing concerns around the number of untested training providers that had made it onto the register, and therefore had access to potentially huge sums of public money.
Sixty-four providers currently on the register are listed as a “new organisation without financial track record”, 24 of which, including Key6 Group, were successful in the first application window in early 2017.
Four early monitoring visit reports have been published – but Key6 Group’s is the only one for a provider new to apprenticeships.
Jigsaw Training and the London College of Apprenticeship Training were both subcontractors before the introduction of the levy in April last year, while North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust is an employer provider.
An argument over pay between unions and the Association of Colleges has worsened, after the latter refused to enter negotiations while industrial action is ongoing.
The various FE teaching unions insist that the body which represents the sector has told them it is “not minded to consider” a pay claim for 2018/19 while University and College Union members “remained in dispute over the 2017/18 round at any AoC member college”.
This is “unacceptable” to the trade unions – which include the National Education Union, Unite, Unison and GMB as well as UCU – which have claimed in a letter to the AoC’s boss that he is “attempting to put pressure on some members of one union”.
“Attempting to avoid dialogue” on next year’s pay settlement “will not make the issue go away”, the letter said – and could in fact “increase the likelihood of greater and more widespread industrial action and disruption in the sector”.
“In the absence of a change of heart by the AoC, we will have no choice but to consider alternative approaches with a view to achieving progress for our members,” it concluded.
In response, Mr Hughes said: “While a small number of local UCU branches are taking action on the national pay claim, it would not be appropriate to open negotiations on the 2018/19 claim.
“We have written to all the unions to explain our position and we are optimistic that these few remaining disputes will be resolved soon, allowing us to begin negotiations for the next pay round.”
FE Week edition 244 cartoon
Earlier this week the UCU announced that staff at 10 colleges around the country would walk out for up to seven days during exam season, in the third round of industrial action over a “disappointing” pay offer of just one per cent made by the AoC in September.
The unions had submitted had submitted a claim for an across-the-board rise of around six per cent in April last year.
But the final offer from the AoC last September was just one per cent, or the sum of £250 “where this is more beneficial”.
Mr Hughes expressed regret at the time that it was unable to offer more.
“We wish we were in a position to make a better recommendation, but current funding levels for colleges do not allow us to do so,” he said.
But in today’s letter the unions said the AoC’s current position “appears to be at odds with your acknowledgement that last year’s offer of 1 per cent wasn’t enough”.
It warned the unions would now “consult members on how to respond to what we regard as an unnecessary provocation which could undermine the credibility and relevance of the AoC to the sector”.
The marketplace is changing rapidly, and it’s awash with new standards and providers. Stefano Capaldo explains how to sort the wheat from the chaff
Twelve months ago, the levy gave employers control of apprenticeship funding in England. While this is welcome in lots of ways, it has become increasingly difficult for employers to identify a training provider able to support the delivery of these skills – and much of this is down to their methods of procurement.
The move to employer-led standards from the old-style frameworks, the introduction of the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP) and key requirements such as 20 per cent off-the-job training have left many employers unsure what apprenticeship delivery now involves, and consequently with little idea of what good provision looks like.
Learning development and procurement teams have fallen back on what they view as reliable indicators of performance, or “cultural fit”, in competitive scenarios. The problem is that many of these indicators are no longer relevant, or even available.
On price, procurement teams still expect providers to reduce costs in return for higher delivery volumes – but this makes a mockery of the fee-cap structure, and quality is harder to achieve. Fee caps for standards are based on experienced providers’ estimates of the resources needed to deliver a quality programme; asking them to deliver for less significantly reduces the quality of the offer.
Employers need to identify additional benchmarks of quality that can be fulfilled by all those providers accepted onto RoATP
Recent months have seen a trend towards lower price-weighting in tenders. But when the government claims it wants higher-quality delivery and increased market diversity – particularly more SME providers – why ruin it by continuing to weight price at all?
Meanwhile, according to FE Week’s latest analysis, only around 25 per cent of current RoATP members have a grade one or two from Ofsted, and the majority of the remainder are unable to provide any grade at all.
Just 32 per cent of RoATP organisations were even in scope for inspection in Ofsted’s 2016/17 schedule, but in a tender exercise, an Ofsted grade is the first thing requested by employers to demonstrate quality. Providers without Ofsted ratings are asked to give “alternative evidence of quality” or (in some cases) are excluded from tendering altogether.
This vague requirement for alternative evidence is difficult for providers to fulfil and equally hard for procurement teams to score, as it relies on evaluators having a specialist knowledge of the sector and bidders providing comparable evidence.
Employers need to identify additional benchmarks of quality that can be fulfilled by all those providers accepted onto RoATP – ideally with the help of the ESFA, which set the original RoATP criteria.
Standards were introduced in 2015 and take an average of two years to complete. As a result very few providers have any substantial achievement data – and what data they do have only goes back one year.
In the digital sector, the British Computer Society’s statistics show that of 4,205 registered apprentices on digital standards in March, just 196 had undertaken end-point assessment.
Employers, however, are continuing to ask for results data going back at least three years.
Providers may substitute achievement data from previous frameworks, but given the differences in structure, content and assessment requirements between frameworks and standards, it’s unwise to assume that this is any guarantee.
So, when it’s time to find a provider to deliver your apprenticeships, what are the questions you should be asking during procurement?
1) Be as detailed as you can about your requirement. Do your homework on how many roles you need to fill, the specific role type, and whether this will be on a rolling basis or just a one-off. The clearer you can be about what you want from providers, the easier it is for them to show you how they fit your needs.
2) Don’t start with just one if you’re trying to build a large-scale programme. A single apprentice gives you no idea of how effectively the programme can be managed at scale, whether it is effective or even whether apprentices are right for your business – you may strike very lucky or unlucky with a particular hire. Aim to hire a cohort of at least ten, and ask the provider to demonstrate how they will help you monitor and evaluate the programme’s success to build a long-term apprenticeship culture.
3) Check the provider understands the importance of supporting the employer. They’re not just a ‘helpline’ for the apprentice; they should be supporting learning in the workplace by working with the learner, their manager and even their colleagues to show how the apprenticeship supports day-to-day business.
4) Ask them to demonstrate. Don’t rely on a written procurement to get what you want. Invite teams to presentation. Ask to speak to the delivery staff, not just the salespeople. Check that what they claim they can do is carried all the way through to the end of the process, and that they’ve got a good grasp of apprentice management basics such as safeguarding.
These questions will get to the heart of what’s important; the fundamental relationship between apprentice, employer and provider that (if handled correctly) will embed apprentices into ‘business as usual’ across the company.
Making these questions the foundation of your procurement process will help you identify the right provider for your needs, for every apprenticeship, in every sector, every time.
The group developing three long-delayed FE teaching standards is in a bitter stand-off with the Institute for Apprenticeships, claiming the funding bands on offer represent just half what these standards would cost to deliver.
The three standards, ranging between levels three and level five, have been in development since 2015. They were recently assigned funding bands of £5,000 to £9,000.
But the education and training trailblazer leadership group has rejected the IfA’s offers – insisting they are between 50 and 57 per cent lower than lowest estimate submitted.
Ian Grayling, the director of CETTacademy who vice-chairs the trailblazer group, told FE Week the situation is “extremely frustrating”.
“Any decision on a funding band needs to be based on evidence and on a formal, transparent process by which it’s arrived at,” he said.
“I don’t believe there is any quantitative process of scoring or metrics being applied here.”
The group has lodged an appeal with the IfA, but Mr Grayling admitted they weren’t confident it would succeed – not least because they were only allowed to appeal the process, not the funding band, “and there is no procedure we can appeal”.
For its part, the IfA has insisted the way it assigns funding bands to standards is “fair”.
A spokesperson for the body did not say why it had appeared to ignore the trailblazer group costings, or why they won’t share details of their new indicative rate setting methodology.
She said “a range of factors” are considered when making funding band recommendations, including “information supplied by trailblazers and providers” and “advice from industry-led route panels”.
“We are satisfied that our process is fair, and that the recommendations we make are appropriate for each apprenticeship standard,” she added.
The level five learning and skills teacher standard was first published way back in August 2015, while the level four assessor/coach and level three learning mentor standards were published in October the same year.
Assessment plans for the level three and four standards were only published last month, while the plan for the level five standard has yet to appear.
According to correspondence shared with FE Week, the standards were allocated final funding bands on April 20.
They were set at £5,000 for the learning mentor, £6,000 for the assessor/coach and £9,000 for the learning and skills teacher.
But they were rejected by the trailblazer group on May 3, based on the “unanimous decision” of its members, which included colleges, universities, training providers and the Education and Training Foundation, along with feedback from the sector.
Mr Grayling told FE Week the group had submitted a range of employer-delivery costings for the three standards, based on estimates from different providers.
“They clearly do not feature in the funding band decision – because if they did how could they award a funding band at 50 per cent below the lowest cost?” he said.
The 24-month level five standard included a teaching qualification, which in itself would cost almost as much as the entire funding band, Mr Grayling said.
In contrast, the equivalent school teacher apprenticeship, at level six, was also given a £9,000 funding band – even though it doesn’t include a qualification, and is only 12 months long.
The IfA’s website lists a number of factors it considers when recommending funding bands, only one of which relates to information provided by employer groups.
However, four relate to comparisons with other apprenticeships, and wider affordability.
Mr Grayling questioned both the openness of this process, and how it was possible to make a comparison when – as in this case – the standards are wholly new.
“Who’s comparing it? How is it being compared? How can we be sure of the validity of that comparison? How can you compare something that doesn’t exist?” he asked.
The boss of a college that saw its turnover slashed last year was given a huge 31-per-cent salary increase in 2016/17 – taking his wage to £260,000.
Garry Phillips’ whopping pay rise made him the fifth highest-paid principal in the country last year, at a time when Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College’s turnover dropped from £41.1 million to £34.6 million.
His salary went from £198,000 to £260,000. On top of this, he took home £37,000 in pension contributions – taking his overall pay packet to £297,000, according to the college’s financial statements.
His salary was more than double the second-highest paid person at the college, which declined the opportunity to justify the figures involved this week.
Bumper pay rises for college principals are an embarrassment to the sector
The University and College Union, on the other hand, which is currently in the middle of a huge national pay dispute with colleges across the country (see page 6), was not shy of slamming the raise.
“Bumper pay rises for college principals are an embarrassment to the sector, especially at a time when staff pay is falling in real terms,” said Andrew Harden, UCU’s head of FE.
“We urgently need to improve the transparency on how decisions about senior pay in colleges are made so leaders can be held properly accountable to students, staff and taxpayers.”
Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College is one of the largest colleges in the capital.
Its turnover dropped by £6.5 million last year, mainly because of the closure of one of its campuses.
Under Mr Phillips’ leadership, the college has risen from the depths of a grade four Ofsted report to a grade two, which was published in May last year.
However, his attempts to secure a controversial merger with Kensington and Chelsea College, to make it one giant group, were scuppered in January amid outcry from local campaigners.
The activists insisted the resulting super-college would not have allowed the local council to redevelop KCC’s Wornington Road campus, situated close to Grenfell Tower, which was devastated by fire over the summer killing 71 people.
It took interventions from both the FE Commissioner Richard Atkins and skills minister Anne Milton before a decision in favour of the campaigners was made.
Principals’ pay has been under a microscope in recent weeks, ever since the Department for Education released the college accounts for 2016/17.
The UCU has lambasted many principals as “greedy and hopelessly out of touch” after new analysis showed a third enjoyed raises of more than 10 per cent last year.
Seventeen enjoyed annual salaries of over £200,000.
These massive raises are all the more controversial, given that college staff across the country have been driven to strike action after they were offered a measly a one-per-cent increase of their own.
The figures also confirmed FE Week’s exclusive story from March, which revealed Matt Hamnett, the former principal of North Hertfordshire College, was the highest-paid principal last year.
He was paid £294,000 on top of a £47,000 pension contribution and benefits in kind worth £1,000 last year – or just over one per cent of its entire turnover of £30 million.
