Hundreds of companies, many never having filed a set of accounts, had successfully applied to a register that would give them unlimited access to apprenticeship funding.
The money will be spent on monitoring visits to all new providers, followed by a full inspection within 12 months where insufficient progress has been found.
This is excellent news and shows a genuine commitment from the government to put quality above quantity.
However, it still leaves a series of important unanswered questions, and the National Audit Office is currently looking again into whether the DfE is “ensuring that the programme and levy system are not abused by stakeholders.”
The NAO’s follow-up review is due for publication in early 2019, so here are four questions they might want to ask the DfE:
What will the early monitoring arrangements be for providers delivering levels 6 and 7? When we asked the Office for Students and the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education they seemed less than sure.
Why do apprenticeship providers have unlimited access to levy funding? This allowed one employer to recruit 650 apprentices before their Ofsted early monitoring visit exposed serious failings. Surely those with no track record should be limited until their quality is proven?
The provider register has officially been shut to entrants since last October and the rumour is the new version won’t be open this month as promised. So what is the plan to introduce quality thresholds and potentially remove some through a reapplication process?
Now Ofsted has received much needed additional resource, what about the ESFA in terms of what’s needed to manage the fallout from their “market entry” policies? For example, many apprentices will need to be found new providers as part of their “market exit” intervention support.
The way the provider register was set up was deeply flawed, but with a well-resourced Ofsted and some sensible ESFA changes, things can only get better.
John Widdowson, chair, Workers’ Educational Association
Start date: July 2018 Previous job: Principal, New College Durham Interesting fact: John had his heart set on a career in law. He fell into education by accident, after taking a teaching job at a college to earn some extra cash – and was hooked immediately
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Karen Heaney, chief operating officer, NCG
Start date: September 2018 Previous job: Director of regeneration, Home Group Interesting fact: Karen has more hobbies than you can count including playing the violin and digital piano, crochet, yoga, watercolour painting, golf and horse riding
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Marion Plant, deputy chair, WorldSkills UK
Start date: September 2018 Previous job: Principal, North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College (she remains in post) Interesting fact: Marion grew up in Zambia and is a qualified midwife who loves cross-country skiing
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Mike Wilmot, chief finance officer, NCG
Start date: September 2018 Previous job: Director of finance, Parkdean Resorts Interesting fact: Mike has been musical director for numerous musicals over many years working with both youth and adult groups
Ifyou want to let us know of any new faces at the top of your college, training provider or awarding organisation please let us know by emailing news@feweek.co.uk
Any transition period for moving small employers onto the apprenticeship service should only last until March 2020 to avoid another “unnecessary procurement exercise”, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers has said.
It’s one of a number of proposals the AELP has put forward for the non-levy transition period and creating a sustainable apprenticeship system, announced today.
Other recommendations include a more streamlined apprenticeship service, designed to work for smaller employers, a more robust register of apprenticeship training providers, and a guaranteed £1 billion in funding for small employers.
“There may be levy funds unspent now, but the demand for higher and degree level apprenticeships among levy paying employers points to the bulk of the levy soon being used up,” said Mark Dawe, AELP chief executive (pictured above)AELP .
“This is why AELP is articulating solutions that should give both smaller and large employers a fair chance of gaining access to apprenticeship funding over the long term.”
Small employers had been due to start using the apprenticeship service to access apprenticeship funding from April 2019, but last month the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced this would be delayed and it would instead extend existing contracts for a further year.
A week later it launched a survey asking for feedback on what any transition period might look like, which could include apprenticeships with non-levy employers being funded through contracts and directly through the service for a period of time.
The AELP proposed that this ‘dual running’ period should run for a year, from April 2019 to March 2020, when the current non-levy contracts run out.
As a result there would be “no need for a further unnecessary procurement exercise”.
This approach would be subject to the apprenticeship service being “modified and streamlined to support the wide breadth of needs and requirements for smaller employers”.
The current set-up for levy-paying employers is “particularly arduous” and “time-consuming”, and would create a “sizeable barrier” for smaller employers that would lead them to “reject the opportunity to invest in apprenticeships”, the AELP warned.
It also said the ESFA’s register needed to be more “robust” if it was to become the gateway for providers to have direct access to funding, and proposed a number of ways in which it could be strengthened.
These included taking into consideration a provider’s previous delivery, and to “thoroughly test the competency and capacity of new providers”.
The AELP also reiterated its previous demand for a guaranteed £1 billion for non-levy payers, to ensure that funding for smaller employers isn’t limited as demand by levy-paying employers increases.
It warned that a system that culminates in a “stop-go approach” in which “demand of funding outstrips supply and a hard close is required” must be avoided at all costs.
“Any such system would have a catastrophic impact on providers’ ability to manage cash flow and staffing resource,” it said.
Education secretary Damian Hinds this week followed in the footsteps of many a government minister before him and jetted off for a fact-finding mission to our neighbours on the continent.
His visit to Germany and the Netherlands was intended to “discover how they educate their young people to have the practical and technical skills needed for a highly productive economy”, according to an article in the Times newspaper on Monday.
A similar trip by former skills minister Nick Boles to Norway in August 2015 (pictured) came just months before the launch of the Sainsbury review, which resulted in proposals to develop T-level qualifications.
Those plans bear a certain resemblance to Norway’s post-16 education system, so what new developments can we expect to see as a result of Mr Hinds’ visit this week?
Speaking to FE Week from Dresden Airport on the third day of his trip, where he was about to catch a plane to Amsterdam, the education secretary was either unwilling or unable to say.
“I’ve been here 72 hours and I’m going to assimilate what I’ve heard here with other points of learning,” he said.
Professor Ewart Keep explains what we can learn from Germany
However, he indicated this was unlikely to be involve importing systems wholesale or cherry-picking individual elements.
“You can’t copy en masse a system from one country into any other, given that the traditions are different, the industrial structures are different, the ways of working are different,” he said.
“They rely on years, decades, sometimes even centuries of development.”
At the same time: “I don’t think you can take individual little elements and say I have learned that one thing, and copy that across,” he said.
Mr Hinds’ research mission came at a critical time for the reform programme in this country’s technical education system – 16 months after the introduction of the apprenticeship levy and the associated changes to the system, and 24 months before the first T-level courses will be taught.
It was “right as we go on our ambitious reform programme we also seek to learn from systems like Germany and others”, he said.
Germany, where Hinds spent the first three days of his trip, is “world famous” for its technical education system and “has a very high reputation,” he said.
The policy, established for nearly 50 years, is known as the ‘dual system’ in reference to the two training locations – vocational school and the workplace.
An apprenticeship in this ‘dual system’ is considered to be the main route into employment for young Germans. It is well-recognised and highly valued by employers, and by the young people themselves.
The “parity of esteem” between technical and academic education, which the government is aiming to achieve through its reforms, “comes across very clearly here,” he said.
“The technical system, the apprenticeships, the professions that people are learning in, that’s a very well-established system which has great respect across society and is very well-entrenched,” Mr Hinds said.
He spoke about the central role that employers had in making the ‘dual system’ work.
Businesses in Germany had a “deep commitment” to “every side and at every level to apprenticeships”, he said.
This was driven “partly from their own interest to bring on talent, and to identify who’s going to bring them further on and help them grow”.
But it was also because “it’s part of what people do, what businesses do in society”, he said.
The Netherlands, where Mr Hinds was due to spend the rest of his fact-finding trip, is “another system that is useful to look at”, he said.
One of the key features of its education system, which is perhaps less well-known than that of its neighbour, is that children can choose a vocational route from the age of 12.
Employer involvement in the Dutch system is less well-established than in Germany, and only became formalised in 1996.
The system is “in terms of industrial structures, in some ways more similar to our own,” Mr Hinds said.
German technical education explained
Germany’s long-established system of technical education is the envy of many countries, linked as it is with high productivity and low unemployment.
Just over half of young people in Germany go through the ‘dual system’ – a proportion that has fallen in recent years.
For the majority this is likely to be an apprenticeship lasting two or three years, beginning at the age of 16. A transition year is an option for those who can’t find a company to train with or need further education or training before they can start an apprenticeship.
Apprentices spend one or two days a week or several weeks at once in vocational school, called Berufsschule, with the remainder of their time spent learning on the job.
The German apprenticeship system is strictly regulated and any company taking on an apprentice must ensure they are trained up to specific standards – and there are around 350 of them.
These are set by the relevant Chambers of Commerce, which play a central role in the ‘dual system’ – in effect managing the system on behalf of the national government.
All German companies must belong to a Chamber of Commerce, and must pay a levy that goes towards the cost of running the training system.
Costs for the vocational school element of apprenticeship training are paid for by the state, while the employer pays for on-the-job training.
Around 20 per cent of German companies are involved in the apprenticeship system, according to the Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung.
Education in the Netherlands
Vocational education can begin as early as 12 in the Netherlands.
Dutch children are split into three different types of secondary school, with only one of them giving direct access to an academic university.
The other two types are more vocationally focused. Of these the ‘pre-vocational education’ route, called VMBO, is the most popular and chosen by more than half of Dutch children.
It involves a mix of vocational training and general education, and runs from the age of 12 to 16.
After the VMBO young people can then move onto the MBO, or middle-level applied education. This can last between one and four years, and can be either classroom-based or an apprenticeship – although both options include some time spent learning on the job.
Graduates of the four-year middle-level training can progress onto higher professional education in the equivalent of what had once been polytechnics in this country.
Employer involvement in the Dutch vocational system is much less well-developed than in Germany, and was only formalised in the 1990s.
The 1996 Educational and Vocational Training Act gave businesses more influence on the content of vocational and skills programmes.
Having identified some new funding for teacher pay, it could have been spent fairly across the system – instead it has caused division, laments Eddie Playfair
The government’s latest decision on the teacher pay grant is clumsy and divisive and creates a new level of unfairness in their treatment of colleges.
To give credit where its due, the Department for Education are to be congratulated on securing an extra £30 million to help support sixth form teacher pay. It shows that they acknowledge there is a problem. But by spending this additional money in such a brazenly unfair way they have managed to squander the goodwill this might have bought and snatch failure from the jaws of success.
Take two similar colleges where similar students are taught the same subjects by teachers who have the same pay and conditions. The teachers in one college are set to receive a government funded pay rise and those in the other will receive no additional funding. Why the discrepancy? Simply because one has converted to academy status and the other hasn’t.
The unfairness is evident, and everyone hates unfairness
What are teachers and college leaders to make of this? Is there any rational explanation as to why teachers in colleges which have academised are more deserving of a pay rise than their colleagues in virtually identical colleges which chose not to? Are 16-19 academies more in need of a vital cash injection than all other colleges? The unfairness is evident, and everyone hates unfairness.
Having identified some new funding for teacher pay, it could have been spent fairly across the system. Instead, the manner it which it’s being used risks creating a new sense of grievance. This iniquitous treatment will only serve to mystify and anger everyone by creating unnecessary new divisions and storing up more problems for the future. It’s quite an achievement to upset nearly everyone and still have to pay for the privilege!
In recent years, there has been a welcome trend towards more equal treatment of 16-18 provision wherever it takes place; with the move to a single funding rate and then the harmonisation of free school meal entitlement. ‘Standards not structures’ was the mantra and despite the overall underfunding of 16-18 education we could at least see that government was aiming for a level playing field with no favourites. It feels like we might now be going into reverse and moving away from a free market towards a rigged market.
College leaders, governors, staff and students will be coming together in October to make the case for proper investment in further education as part of Colleges Week. One of our specific asks is for an immediate cash injection to fund a decent pay rise for college staff. We can only hope that the government listens to the case for equity when it has money to spend.
The Institute for Apprenticeships has begun its first statutory review of apprenticeship standards since it began operating more than a year ago.
It’s inviting feedback from employers, apprentices and training providers on 12 standards in the digital sector, all of which were approved before April 2017, via an online consultation which runs for four weeks.
Sir Gerry Berragan (pictured above), the IfA’s chief executive, said it was taking “an employer-led approach” to the review.
“We’re asking industry experts to tell us if these digital standards produce apprentices that are occupationally competent. If they don’t – what do we need to address the shortfall?”
The review will incorporate feedback from employers, apprentices and training providers alongside the IfA’s own quality criteria.
The IfA’s approach to the reviews would be “overseen by the appropriate route panel, and will underpin the quality of T-levels”, and will take “into account other work such as the funding band review”, a spokesperson said.
Digital was chosen for the first review as “we are prioritising those standards linked to T Levels” and those approved pre-2017.
The 12 standards under review had 5,640 starts between them in the first nine months of 2017/18 (see table).
The IfA’s consultation closes October 18, and the outcomes of the review will be published in the New Year.
The peer made clear he was concerned about standards that overlapped, were too job-specific, or lacked enough technical content to justify 20 per cent off-the-job training.
That review, launched in May, was intended to “help make sure that employers can access high quality apprenticeships and that funding bands represent good value for money for employers and government”.
It covers 31 standards – including some of the most popular.
FE Week has reported on the outcome of nine of these reviews: six of which have resulted in a recommendation for the band to be cut, one for it to remain the same and two for it to be increased.
Writing exclusively for FE Week, Anne Milton said last week that the full results would be published “shortly”.
London’s mayor has been warned that his current adult education budget team of 72 administrators may not be enough to handle the fund when devolution kicks in next year.
The Greater London Authority has calculated a “risk” that the number of contracts and grants to be dished out from the annual £311 million budget will be “greater than can be reasonably managed by the current team”.
In order to mitigate the threat, Sadiq Khan has been told that the authority will either need to recruit more personnel to its current AEB team, and pay them using funds in the budget, or risk “potential negative impact on quality”.
FE Week revealed earlier this year that the GLA is having to recruit a huge team of new bureaucrats to hand out the budget to London’s training providers from 2019, with most of their wages paid every year by taking £3 million from the AEB.
There remains a low risk that the number of contracts and grants will be greater than can be reasonably managed
Despite the AEB unit now totalling 72 officials, the authority is anticipating the workforce might not be enough and it could need to apply a greater top-slice to the AEB to recruit and pay more staff – taking yet more cash away from frontline learning.
“Even with the minimum contract value, the final risk is that there will be insufficient resources to manage the contracts awarded,” said a GLA briefing document published ahead of a board meeting about the AEB that took place this week.
“There remains a low risk that the number of contracts and grants will be greater than can be reasonably managed by the current team, applying the proposed project management approaches.”
If this risk arises, there are two “potential mitigations: additional internal or external project management resources may need to be identified, with a consequent cost to the AEB and ESF budgets; or the current project management approach may need to be amended to require less resources, with a potential negative impact on the quality”.
The GLA has always maintained that the Department for Education is forcing it to make the top-slice because it refuses to offer any funding to cover operational costs.
However, a letter sent by the DfE to the authority in March, seen by FE Week, has revealed that it was the department’s own recommendation to take cash from the budget to pay the administrators.
It says that when the AEB is delegated, the authority will be able to “retain underspends generated within the AEB” and goes on to suggest that 3 per cent of the £311 million annual budget “may be a useful indicator” for what can be used as a top-slice.
In other words, the GLA could have £9.3 million to cover staff costs from underspend.
Mary Vine-Morris, area director (London) for the Association of Colleges, said as much money as possible should go directly on teaching and training and any additional funding for support functions should be found elsewhere.
The GLA briefing document noted another of its “top three” issues was that there is still no agreed position with the ESFA on audits.
Mary Vine-Morris
If the authority is made to audit the AEB then its team of bureaucrats could grow even larger and incur more costly top-slices.
A decision on the audits was supposed to be made by mid-August but the DfE failed to meet this deadline. This issue is still unresolved, according to the GLA.
The authority’s interim head of paid service, David Lunts, wrote to the DfE’s permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, last month to pursue the issue.
“We have proposed to your officials that audit should continue to be conducted by the DfE so that providers are not subject to additional burdensome audits from us,” the letter said.
“I also understand that the ESFA will soon be refreshing its current contract/agreement for its audit services. Given the timing for this, it presents a good opportunity to reach agreement on this issue as soon as possible.”
The GLA told FE Week that because the audit approach has still not been agreed it does not have a figure for the cost if it ends up being the authority which has to carry them out.
We still have some way to go before we will be on a par with other European countries – we must look past the podium to see what we can learn from their skills systems, says Ben Blackledge
It’s no coincidence that Switzerland and Austria were in first and second place respectively at the last EuroSkills competition in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2016. Both countries have technical programmes that enable them to punch above their industrial weight and produce skilled competitors ready to deliver on the international stage. That is why it was hugely pleasing that in 2016, Team UK was able to compete so well against technical systems across Europe and place seventh in the WorldSkills Europe rankings.
There is always more to learn, however. As we look forward to this year’s EuroSkills in Budapest, we aim to retain a top ten place. We are also hugely encouraged to see that – against the backdrop of the introduction of the apprenticeship levy and falling apprenticeship numbers – 64 per cent of Team UK will be apprentices. This has increased from Gothenburg 2016 (58 per cent) and is a good indicator that despite significant change in the apprenticeship programme, the quality of apprentices in the UK is really strong.
But we are the first to admit that we still have some way to go before we will be on a par with Switzerland and other European countries. This is not surprising, when you consider the value that is placed on apprenticeships in these countries, with its accompanying investment.
The vastly differing approaches to apprenticeships in Europe, is why EuroSkills is more than just a competition. Yes, medals are important, but we must also look past the podium to see what we can learn from our European neighbours. The event provides us with the very tangible opportunity to re-visit the role skills competitions play in developing world-class apprenticeships and apprentices. This is a chance not only to raise the profile and prestige of apprenticeships in the UK, but also to bring back the learning from these international competitions to make the UK education system truly world class.
The levy can be used to offset the costs of a skills competition
Employers have told us that WorldSkills UK competitions provide a form of accelerated development in which apprentices achieve greater technical excellence in their skill. But more than that, the training they undertake to prepare for international competition develops high-level transferable skills. My counterparts across Europe tell me employers in their countries feel the same.
However, I am aware some organisations have been deterred from entering their apprentices because of a perceived time-cost and complexity. This may come as surprise to many, but because skills competitions have been recognised to contribute to that individual’s development in achieving their apprenticeship, the levy can be used to support their involvement.
The levy can be used by colleges and training providers in agreement with employers to offset the costs associated with taking part in a skills competition. One employer that has benefited from embedding skills competition activity in their internal apprenticeship training programme is Toyota. The manufacturer has had significant presence in Team UK, with two apprentices in this year’s team and their apprentices winning the bronze medal in Mechatronics in 2016. For Toyota, being part of WorldSkills UK competitions is not a “nice to do”, but is central to them benchmarking and driving up the quality of skills.
Members of Team UK for Budapest 2018 will also play an important role as ambassadors for WorldSkills UK – and it is their personal stories that will inspire more young people to consider taking up an apprenticeship. With the support of colleges and training providers, we want employers to pledge to use part of their levy to support their apprentices in competition. It is this combination of inspiring role models and investment from the sector that will create greater access for the next generation of skilled apprentices, and it is those apprentices that will continue Team UK’s success in EuroSkills Graz 2020 and beyond.
As the Education Secretary tours the German technical education system, what might he learn that would be relevant to the UK? Ewart Keep explains
England has been worrying about the superior performance of overseas vocational education and training (VET) systems since the Great Exhibition of 1851. Overseas study visits have been one device used to explore what we could learn from abroad. Switzerland and its apprenticeship system have recently been popular, but now we are back with Germany as a source of envy and angst.
What might such visits achieve? National education systems operate as such – as a set of interconnected and mutually supportive institutions, incentives, and attitudes. Trying to copy isolated elements of a system and transpose them to another country mean that the copied element lacks the wider supportive infrastructure that allowed it to thrive back home. The key is to think in terms of policy learning, not policy borrowing. In essence, what makes the German set-up tick so successfully and can we learn from these design principles?
The starting point is that Germany has a system. It is conceived of and understood as such by all who contribute to it. We have created a set of VET marketplaces, including one for levy-paying firms’ apprenticeship, and another for non-levy firms.
The German system is stable, and is sometimes criticised for being too slow to adapt to new skill requirements. Our apprenticeship marketplace is, and has been since the mid-1990s, subject to ceaseless, rapid change, all of which has been engineered by government rather than employers and their representatives, and/or the social partners. As a result, our apprenticeships have been seen by many firms as a government scheme.
The German system is stable, and is sometimes criticised for being too slow
In Germany, apprenticeship is an exercise in co-production between government, vocational schooling, and employers and trade unions. This system belongs to its stakeholders, not to government. Reform must be negotiated and agreed by all parties. The change by ministerial fiat that has marked UK VET reform for the last 35 years is not merely alien to the German system, it is impossible within it.
The German VET system, besides covering vocational colleges and dual apprenticeship provision, also incorporates a supportive institutional infrastructure. One key element are the chambers of commerce and handicrafts, membership if which is compulsory for firms; and another is the large, long-established and well-resourced federal vocational education and training institute (BiBB).
Unlike here, German apprenticeship is genuinely employer-led, in that firms or employer organisations undertake the vast bulk of the on-the-job training, and firms need to have an appropriately qualified trainer on their staff and to have been been approved as a trainer by the local chamber of commerce. They take quality control seriously.
In England, employers are used to heavy subsidy from the state, with many firms in the past not paying anything for apprenticeships beyond the apprentices’ wages. In Germany, the only direct state support is for the off-the-job element of the training. For the rest, the employer pays. Germans would also be puzzled by the large proportion of adult apprentices that we have and the idea that an employee of several years standing could become an adult apprentice. In Germany, apprenticeship is for relatively young entrants to the workforce, including some for recent graduates, rather than experienced and established adult workers.
Unlike here, German apprenticeship is genuinely employer-led
Finally, German apprenticeships aim to create a broad occupational identity, contain an element of enterprise education (equipping people to become self-employed or to set up their own business one day), have a healthy chunk of general education, and are normally set at the equivalent of our level 3. Germans would be perplexed by some of our entry level job-specific apprenticeships (e.g. dual fuel smart reader installer).
Besides the emphasis on a system-led approach, the main point to take away from Germany is that finding ways to help and support employers to act collectively in relation to the co-design of, co-investment in, and co-production of VET is critical to success. Given our recent policy history, this is not an easy lesson for us to learn.
