The south-east took the glory for the second year running at last weekend’s AoC Sport National Championships, retaining the coveted Wilkinson Sword Trophy.
It was a close-fought battle with their local rivals the south-west, but in the end, the winners finished nine points clear of the 40th annual championships after three days of fierce competition across a range of individual sports.
Trailing just behind in third place was the north-west, who finished 21 points off the top.
The AoC Sport National Championships is the biggest sporting event in the college calendar. Over 1,700 student athletes took part this year, hailing from 121 colleges represented by 11 regions across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
They competed for gold, silver and bronze medals in 13 sports – golf, squash, football, hockey, badminton, cricket, rugby, tennis, volleyball, basketball, cross-country, netball and table-tennis.
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The competition celebrated its 40th year and welcomed a very special guest to mark the occasion.
But first, let’s talk results.
The south-east showed its dominance in cross-country in particular: the women’s team won their race by a substantial margin before Zakiraya Mahamed – a family name that will be familiar to AoC Sport spectators – took silver in the men’s competition.
Zakiraya’s brother, Mahamed Mahamed, both from Itchen Sixth Form College, had won gold in the men’s cross-country for the previous three years.
The south-east also took the individual bronze in the women’s race.
The region also prevailed in the women’s basketball, where the team from Itchen College won the tournament.
Meanwhile, Jamie Markwick, a student from Barton Peveril College, took gold for the south-east in the men’s individual golf tournament, before also leading the men’s team to victory.
Joshua Bennett, the south-east’s captain, from Bexhill College, was “really proud” to lead his region to victory in the national championships, “especially in such a big year for the event”.
“The standard of competition was really high, so to be able to retain our title is a huge achievement,” he added.
The south-east won the Wilkinson Sword for the first time in 2008 – 27 years after the national championships launched in 1979. It soon entered a period of dominance, winning the grand prize for four consecutive years until 2012, when perennial rivals the south-west took over, reigning as champions for the next three years.
But the south-east returned to the top spot at last year’s championships.
Kicking off this year’s national championships was an energetic opening ceremony, complete with flag presentations for each region, the AoC Sport oaths, and dance entertainment from the thrilling Flambé Circus Theatre.
Danny Crates, a Paralympic gold-medallist sprinter and a former world record holder, was the evening’s host.
He had once been a promising rugby player but lost his right arm at the age of 21 in a car accident. He is now a world-renowned motivational speaker and TV presenter, alongside being a hugely successful Paralympian.
Hugh Johnson, the founder of the championships in 1978, was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Before giving a brief speech, the 92-year-old cut a specially made cake celebrating four decades of the prestigious event.
He set up the national championships under the British Association for Sport in Colleges, as the first chair – a post he held until 1985 when he retired as principal of Airedale & Wharfedale College in Leeds.
Back then, only 600 students made the finals. Nearly 2,000 now grace the competition every year.
“I could never have imagined it would grow so big,” said Mr Johnson. “It really is thrilling to have so many students involved and it realises a dream.”
His granddaughter ran in the cross-country event when it was held in Derby one year and won a silver medal, which he said was “a great thrill”.
Following the opening ceremony, three days of competitive sport got underway across the University of Nottingham’s brand new £40 million David Ross Sports Village, as well as at Trent Bridge,
Nottingham Wildcats Arena, Morley Hayes Golf Club, and Nottingham Tennis Centre.
A closing ceremony, featuring the all-important presentation of the Wilkinson Sword itself, rounded proceedings off on the Sunday.
“The atmosphere has been terrific and many competitors have told me what a great time they’ve had. Many congratulations to the south east region for winning again,” said AoC Sport’s current managing director Marcus Kingwell.
A college that has received millions of pounds in government bailouts has announced plans to merge.
Accrington and Rossendale College will join forces with grade one Nelson and Colne College later this year, under plans announced by the two institutions today.
“We are delighted to announce the vision for a new merged college for Pennine Lancashire building on the strengths” of both colleges, said Lynda Mason, Accrington and Rossendale’s interim principal, and Amanda Melton, principal of Nelson and Colne College, in a joint statement.
“Both colleges have ambitious plans to support students, staff, employers and other stakeholders and to achieve greater success,” they added.
Accrington and Rossendale College was rated ‘good’ at its most recent Ofsted inspection, in February, but has an ‘inadequate’ rating for financial health.
It had also “received a commitment from the Education and Skills Funding Agency that they will provide a further £1,228,000 of funding in the period to March 2018”.
The college, which had an income of £12.3 million and 3,990 learners in 2016/17, has held a notice of concern for financial health since November 2015.
It emerged from Lancashire area review, which ended in February 2017, with a recommendation to merge with Burnley College by May 2017, but this plan never came to fruition.
FE Week reported last month that the college was involved in an FE commissioner-led structure and prospects appraisal to find a new partner.
Nelson and Colne College, which was rated ‘outstanding’ at its last Ofsted inspection in April 2008, had a turnover of £20.1 million and 15,500 learners in 2016/17.
It was part of the same area review as its new merger partner, and had planned to remain standalone.
According to the report from the review, published August 2017, the college had “a strong balance sheet with low borrowing, healthy reserves, and a strong current ratio”.
Consultation on the proposed merger runs from today until May 27, with the plan for the two colleges to formally join forces in November.
Everything about skills training at the Royal Navy is shipshape and Bristol fashion, after Ofsted judged the employer provider to be ‘outstanding’ across the board.
In a glowing report published on April 26, the education watchdog said nearly all of the Navy’s 5,000 apprentices make “exceptional progress towards becoming experts in their job roles”.
They become “excellent engineers, caterers, administrators and Royal Marines” after receiving “exemplary” practical training that helps them to work in “highly challenging situations to a precise standard”.
Naval Service recruits are enrolled onto intermediate apprenticeship programmes in subjects such as manufacturing technologies, ICT, hospitality and catering, public services, transportations and operations and sport and fitness.
They benefit from theory lessons that “link well to working practice on ships and submarines”.
This prepares apprentices “well to live and work on ships of all types, including the newest vessels such as HMS Queen Elizabeth”, inspectors said.
Staff expertly equip apprentices to become resilient and well-prepared service personnel
“Staff expertly equip apprentices to become resilient and well-prepared service personnel who can work in very challenging environments,” they added.
“Trainers employ highly effective coaching and mentoring techniques that help apprentices to fulfil their potential. Apprentices work to extremely high standards; engineers expertly solve complex electrical problems and administrators use highly effective methods to communicate in demanding environments.”
While no other Ofsted reports published this week reached the heights of the Royal Navy’s, two maintained ‘good’ grades.
The first was Project Management (Staffordshire) Limited, an independent provider whose senior leaders have created a “positive culture that supports some of the most disadvantaged learners in their community to access education and employment, promoting social mobility”.
To make the jump to ‘outstanding’, Ofsted said it needs to ensure that learners in all programmes “develop further their English and mathematics skills and pass qualifications in these areas well, including at level one and above”.
The other grade two report came in the form of a short inspection for Coulsdon Sixth Form College, based in London.
“Staff are strongly committed to maintaining the quality of the programmes,” inspectors said.
“Leaders and managers have ensured that the curriculum offered meets the diverse needs of individuals, by introducing more vocational courses to develop the skills learners need to progress to higher education or apprenticeships.”
Three other Ofsted reports were published this week, and all of them came back with ‘requires improvement’ ratings.
Alpha Care Agency Limited, a private provider in London, was given a grade three in its first ever inspection.
Staff are strongly committed to maintaining the quality of the programmes
Ofsted criticised leaders and board members who “do not know enough” about the quality of teaching, learning and assessment.
“Too few assessors provide students with clear and constructive feedback that shows them how to improve their practical skills and theoretical knowledge of care settings,” inspectors said.
Meanwhile, Lancaster and Morecambe College was given a grade three for the second time in a row.
“Leaders, managers and governors do not have sufficient oversight of the progress that current learners studying vocational courses and apprentices make on their programmes,” inspectors said.
They added that teachers and assessors “do not consistently identify the skills, knowledge and experience that learners and apprentices have at the start of the programme in order to plan their learning diligently”.
The last grade three was given to The Brooke House Sixth Form College in London.
Governors were criticised for not challenging leaders to “bring about rapid enough improvements in the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and student achievements”.
They added that students’ attendance and punctuality at lessons “remain poor” and in most subjects, “too few students attend regularly enough to make good or better progress in their learning”.
Seventeen current ESOL learners at Uxbridge College have given presentations about their countries of origin to fellow learners as part of an annual event celebrating the college community.
Students from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Kurdistan, Somalia, Syria, Egypt and Vietnam shared their experiences of growing up outside of the UK, and taught their peers to say hello in their native languages at the Unity 2018 event, which encourages learners to find out about each other’s backgrounds.
Over the course of the four days of the event, the group also delivered presentations on the political systems, landmarks, interesting facts and popular dishes from their countries.
“For those who have been raised in the UK and grown up in peacetime with rights like a democratic vote, access to education regardless of gender, and laws to protect everyone’s human rights, it can be a real eye-opener to find out that there are so many people of their age who have not been able to take these things for granted,” said Claire Beale, the college’s course team leader for ELT young learners. “It was great to see English speakers learning foreign languages as well as the reverse.”
A trio of business students from north London have reached the finals of a national innovation challenge with a safety device inspired by the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Their invention, called the “safety Jumping Bag”, is a giant airbag that lets people jump from high buildings without injuring themselves, and can be deployed in situations such as fires and earthquakes, where emergency services are struggling to reach.
The team from the College of Haringey, Enfield and North-East London are up against 20 other colleges from across the UK in the final round of the Big Idea Challenge, after impressing judges with their original idea and business plan.
The winning team in the competition, run by London Metropolitan University, will get the resources to make their product a reality, including free websites, business mentoring and internships.
“We’re aiming to sell this product to developers who would pay the full amount, directly to councils and governments for half price and the fire services, who will have a mobile unit on the back of their trucks,” explained 22-year-old team member Melany Monteiro Moniz.
Forty sports students at City College Norwich now have a qualification in anti-doping.
The group successfully completed UK Anti-Doping’s accredited adviser course alongside their college studies. They covered what doping is, the value of clean sport, and how sport performance can be enhanced safely and legally through a healthy diet and the right nutrition.
Typically anti-doping isn’t covered on sports courses until degree level, but tutors at the college are keen for their aspiring sports coaches to take the course for a head start in their career.
“We are training aspiring sports practitioners who will go on to work with sportspeople who might have been tempted to try performance enhancing substances,” said Jason Fligg, a sports science lecturer.
“By taking this qualification, these students can play their part in promoting clean sport – reducing the health risks to athletes and supporting the integrity of competitive sport.”
“The course has shown me how easy it is for people to get stuck into the trap of using performance enhancing drugs,” added Ben Brighton, a level three sports and exercise science student. “It happens a lot more than we realise.”
Colleges delivered less than a quarter of traineeships last year and nearly half across the country had no starts whatsoever, according to FE Week analysis of government figures.
In fact, the Education and Skills Funding Agency is aware that only 24 per cent of traineeships were delivered by general further education colleges.
That works out at 4,900 of all 20,450 traineeship starts in 2016/17, and amounts to a two percentage point drop from the previous year (see table below).
Just 110 colleges delivered the programme last year, a little over half of the total in England. Of these, a mere eight recorded 100 or more starts. In contrast, independent training providers had 14,430 starts last academic year, or 71 per cent of the total.
Catherine Sezen, senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, defended colleges for their low level of engagement blaming rigid traineeship rules, particularly around the length of the programme.
Ms Sezen said colleges often felt it is “more appropriate, particularly with 16- to 18-year-old learners to put them on a full year’s study programme” that could be “very similar to a traineeship” but with more time for the learner to focus on improving their skills, including English and maths.
“Greater flexibility in the traineeship model would probably lead to increased uptake by both students and colleges,” she added.
Traineeships, launched in 2013, are designed to get young people aged 16 to 24 ready for work or an apprenticeship. They can last up to six months, and include a period of work preparation, English and maths courses and a work experience placement.
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The much higher level of starts at ITPs prompted Mark Dawe, the boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, to reiterate calls for his members to be more involved in developing prestigious new T-level qualifications.
FE Week asked the ESFA for the number of traineeship starts per provider for each year from 2013/14 to 2016/17, and worked out the breakdown according to provider type.
Our analysis showed that colleges delivered 19,501 of the 74,813 starts in that time period, with independent providers accounting for 50,782.
The remaining 4,530 – or five per cent – of starts were delivered by local authorities, sixth-form colleges and by others, such as specialist colleges.
The fall was more dramatic among colleges than private providers. And some of the colleges with the highest number of starts, such as Eastleigh, subcontract much of their provision.
NCG had the second highest number of starts of any college, with 1,170 over the four years covered by our data, although it subcontracts some of this provision.
Joe Docherty, the group’s chief executive, said it “encourages the take-up of traineeships across its colleges”, though he believes “there needs to be further marketing of traineeships to make sure their purpose is understood”.
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He urged the government to make it “clear that traineeships prepare people for apprenticeships, jobs, further training and full-time education”.
And Kit Davies, the principal of North Hertfordshire College, which had 220 traineeship starts last year, suggested that “incentivising businesses to take individuals on work placements” could help boost numbers.
The government, which has faced criticism for not doing enough to promote traineeships, launched a social media campaign last month.
It is part of its existing ‘Get in go far’ drive which it has already used to spread the word about apprenticeships through Facebook and Twitter. This new branch of the campaign operates under the slogan ‘Traineeships: Everything you need to know’.
“Traineeships offer employers the opportunity to shape training to meet their needs and build the high-quality, highly-skilled workforce of the future, and we encourage businesses across a range of sectors to get involved and offer these work experience placements,” a Department for Education spokesperson said.
Can colleges deliver on T-level work placements?
Colleges have been given a key role in piloting the work-placement element of T-levels – but their lack of engagement with traineeships raises questions about their suitability.
Each learner on these prestigious new qualifications will have to undertake a 45-day placement as part of their course.
AELP boss Mark Dawe believes colleges’ lack of engagement with traineeships supports his argument that ITPs should have a much larger role.
He has been “perplexed” by the extent to which colleges have been given far more of a leading role than colleges: “I know some colleges are successful at running traineeships, but these figures show that ITPs provide the bulk. One of the primary reasons for this is because they are so adept at engaging with employers. Some colleges are good at that too, but this indicates to me that ITPs are a more natural fit for the T-level pilots.
Mark Dawe
“Our argument all along has been that to make T-levels a success the government must involve ITPs and their expertise in employer engagement.”
The Association of Colleges insisted that colleges’ lack of engagement with traineeships had no bearing on their ability to deliver on the T-level work placements.
“Colleges already have lots of contact with employers, in terms of work experience, apprenticeships and additional training that they do for employers, and T-levels will encourage a growth in that,” said Catherine Sezen, the AoC’s senior policy manager.
The learners on T-levels will be “very different” from those on traineeships, and as such the challenges will be different.
T-level learners will be studying at a much higher level than those on traineeships, and will be on their second year of a two-year programme when they begin their work placement – whereas trainees are often just weeks into their programme, she said.
“Of course there may be challenges in terms of finding sufficient work placements, in terms of finding the right placement in the right place for the right student, but I think that’s different from the challenges of traineeships,” she said.
Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, said employers and learners would need first rate support and guidance to get the most out of placements, and “the ability of a provider to do this isn’t determined by whether they’re a college or independent training provider”.
“I hope, therefore, that the government will focus on engaging and supporting employers” and “work with the best providers from across our sectors”.
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said it was “working to determine how best to make work placements work for employers across all technical routes.”
How some colleges have made traineeships work without subcontracting
Not all colleges subcontract their traineeship provision. FE Week spoke to a number that are running the programme themselves – and running it well.
These include North Hertfordshire College, which received an ‘outstanding’ grade from Ofsted for its traineeships, in a report published last November.
It’s had 530 starts over the four years the programme has been running, according to our data – 220 of which were last year.
Dave Hitchen, the college’s director of transformation, said it delivers the programme itself, through the college’s training arm Hart Learning and Development, “because we feel it meets a really important community need”.
The college has the “good employer relationships that you need to run a successful traineeships programme” as well as “good community engagement, in terms of referral partners like JobCentre Plus” which means they have “lots of pathways into the learners”.
With most learners it’s a matter of confidence, and finding which sector they want to work in
He admitted that finding work placements could be challenging – and a lot of hard work.
The “ideal case scenario” would be a company offering a work experience placement for a number of trainees, with the intention of employing some of them at the end.
But in other cases the college’s placement coaches would talk to trainees about their career goals then “hit the phones and try to find employers in the local area that meet that aspirational need” which can be “very time consuming”.
Because traineeships often attract learners who’ve had “a difficult educational experience” or that have “barriers that need breaking down”, it can be “a difficult job” to persuade employers of the benefits of taking on a trainee.
“Our coaches do a great job, but it takes a progressive, forward thinking employer to do that,” he said.
Weston College, which has had 340 traineeship starts between 2013/14 and 2016/17, also directly delivers the programme.
Paul Keegan, group director for apprenticeships and business development, said that “contracting out didn’t serve any purpose” as the college has the capability to deliver the programme as well as the “relationships we already have with employers through apprenticeships”.
Traineeships have proved a “really strong pathway” for learners.
“What we found with most learners is that it’s a matter of confidence, and finding which sector they want to work in,” he explained.
Mr Keegan said one of the secrets to the college’s success was the time it spent with learners to understand the field they wanted to work in – which could involve trying different placements before finding the right one.
“If you map the learner to the employer, it becomes a very direct route,” he said.
Colleges explain why they dropped the programme
More than a few colleges have stopped providing traineeships. FE Week asked them to explain why they took the decision and the grave problems they see with the programme.
Kurt Hintz, the deputy principal of the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London said his college had 180 starts in 2014/15, 10 in 2015/16 and none in 2016/17.
“The inflexibility of the traineeship funding model, along with the strict condition of funding rules around maths and English,” made them “unsuitable” to provide “the highest levels of progression to apprenticeships”.
The condition-of-funding rule requires learners without at least a grade C or 4 in English and maths GCSE to continue studying these subjects post-16.
Mr Hintz said that this rule led to an “over-emphasis on passing maths and English qualifications rather than gaining skills for the industries learners are preparing to enter” through the programme.
Traineeships are a good example of over regulation disincentivising innovation
“Traineeships are a good example of over regulation disincentivising innovation in curriculum design that meets the needs of industry,” he said.
Another college to pull out is Harrow College. An early adopter of the programme, it recorded 60 starts in 2013/14 and 140 in 2014/15 – but none after that.
Pat Carvalho, the college’s principal, said it stopped in order to “focus on apprenticeships, to improve their quality”.
The college also wanted to “concentrate on more local delivery where employers were looking for shorter programmes such as sector work-based academy training”.
Just 110 colleges delivered on the programme last year, down from 124 in 2015/16.
West Nottinghamshire College had the second highest number of traineeship starts of any individual college, according to our data – but the “vast majority” of those were actually delivered by subcontractors.
However, after 210 starts in 2013/14, 310 in 2014/15, 320 in 2015/16, 30 in 2016/17, it won’t be running any more.
The college “took the strategic decision” to stop delivering traineeships “after 2016/17 because we found it wasn’t delivering the outcomes we wanted in terms of sustainable employment or progression into apprenticeships,” a spokesperson said.
Not all colleges that have stopped delivering traineeships made a conscious decision to do so.
The RNN Group, made up of Rotherham, North Nottinghamshire and Dearne Valley colleges, had around 180 starts between 2013/14 and 2015/16, but none last year.
A spokesperson for the group said it “continued to have the option available” but was “currently seeing little demand”.
The director of Young People and former sixth-form college commissioner has been given the mammoth task of devolving the adult education budget, as part of a reshuffle at the top of the ESFA.
In an extensive new brief, Peter Mucklow has become the agency’s director of further education, which as well as implementing devolution includes delivering any future national tendering rounds for AEB – a task that was plagued with major issues last year.
He takes on oversight of adult funding from Keith Smith, who recently switched from being the ESFA’s director of funding and programmes to become its director of apprenticeships – which includes taking over from Sue Husband as the head of the National Apprenticeship Service.
Mr Mucklow’s task of making the AEB devolution a success is seen by many in FE as a mission impossible.
It has already been delayed by a year and will not now be rolled out until 2019 instead of later this year as originally planned – and even this timescale is considered too tight.
Only eight areas of the country – London, the West Midlands, Liverpool City region, Greater Manchester, the West of England, Tees Valley, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the Sheffield City region – have signed deals to take control of AEB spending in their regions.
It means the Department for Education will remain as the central distributer of AEB for all other areas.
Peter Mucklow
The mayors from those regions with deals in place have recently “voiced concerns” with the government over the impracticality of the process.
They told FE Week in February they are worried that the combined authorities have “inadequate” influence and a lack of funding during the transition year, as well as “challenging” timescales for the handing over of power.
Future AEB tenders will also prove a headache for Mr Mucklow if history is anything to go by.
Last year’s tender was beset with delays, and successful providers were left outraged when they only received a fraction of their previous allocations.
The ESFA then made things worse by changing procurement rules to allow providers who had failed in their bids to receive 75 per cent of the amount they had the previous year.
Political campaigns and threats of legal action were threatened until the agency brought all provider funding up to the value of 75 per cent of the amount they had last year.
Mr Mucklow was previously the sixth-form college commissioner with a remit covering just 16-to-18 funding – a job which he had held since 2013 but stepped aside from last year when the Richard Atkins’ FE commissioner role expanded to cover SFCs.
In his new job as director of FE, Mr Mucklow is also responsible for the “full range” of intervention strategies he will impose to “prevent or remedy institutions’ poor performance in finance, quality or governance”.
He will also support implementation of the post-16 area reviews.
The job change has been implemented by the ESFA’s new chief executive, Eileen Milner, who started in November following the departure of Peter Lauener.
Keith Smith’s new role meanwhile means he is now the agency’s person who is most responsible for the apprenticeship levy and apprenticeship funding service.
He will be expected to intervene in cases of failure or high risk when it comes to apprenticeships, as well as take charge of NAS.
Ms Husband had been in charge of the service for four years but has now become director of employer engagement at the ESFA.
She is responsible for the National Careers Service, the National Contact Centre, WorldSkills UK and “developing relationships with employers at chief executive level to drive engagement with the skills agenda”. She also leads the ESFA’s people board, and takes on some internal ESFA “employee engagement”.
Meanwhile, the agency’s director of the transaction unit, Matthew Atkinson, is now the ESFA’s director of provider market oversight.
In this post he will keeps control of the transaction unit until it ends, but will also take on the agency’s financial assurance team who audit and investigate funding issues.
Students learned about the career journeys of female staff at Bradford College during an “empowering women” event.
Speakers included college governors, senior leaders and teaching staff, who shared the challenges they faced in their careers, and how they overcame them.
The college’s assistant principal Anita Lall shared her story of not being able to speak English when she started school, and how she excelled and went on to research childhood cancers before pursuing her teaching career.
Learners also heard from the college’s chair of governors, Cath Orange, who spoke about her work in the engineering industry. Fellow governor June Durrant explained that despite her struggles with dyslexia, she had a 31 year career in FE, holding a number of senior roles.
“Only you can limit yourself,” said social work lecturer Waheeda Azam during her moment in the spotlight. “You might have to take an alternative route but you will get there.”
The college will host a similar event in the next few weeks, when male members of staff will discuss their career experiences.
