FE champion Shakira Martin (pictured above) has survived a row over allegations of bullying to be re-elected as president of the National Union of Students.

The incumbent scored a comfortable victory over challengers Momin Saqib and Sahaya James at this year’s annual conference in Glasgow.

Ms Martin won in the first round with 50.9 per cent of the 694 votes cast.

She scored 352 votes, while Mr Saqib came second with 168 votes and Ms James received 104 votes. Sixty-six people voted to reopen the nominations, and one delegate spoiled their ballot paper.

Ms Martin said “I am honoured and humbled to have been elected as NUS’ national president for a second term. I was elected to listen, learn and lead, now it’s time to get real about what that means both for all forms of education, and what it means for NUS.”

In January this year Ms Martin was alleged to have bullied other NUS staff members.

All elected NUS officers – including its vice-president for FE Emily Chapman – were made to work from home for a week while the claims were investigated.

Ms Martin has been a strong advocate for the learner and apprentice voice since being elected VP for FE in April 2015, when she was president of the student union at Lewisham Southwark College. 

She became only the second national NUS president to have attended an FE college when she was elected last year, in a stunning victory over her predecessor Malia Bouattia.

Her successor as VP for FE, Emily Chapman, also successfully stood for re-election this year.

She won 61 per cent of the vote to retain her position as NUS vice-president (further education) until the end of 2018/19.

“When you elected me as your vice-president further education last year, I made a promise to get the FE and college voice loud and proud, both in NUS and across the sector,” Ms Chapman told delegates.

“That is exactly what I have been doing, and what I will continue to do in my second term. “I will continue to fight for all forms of further education to be free and accessible, I will campaign to reduce travel costs with the #MyFEJourney campaign, and lobby for FE maintenance grants to be introduced, and ensure FE is remembered whenever we talk of loans and fees.”

The Federation of Awarding Bodies has announced skills and enterprise policy expert Tom Bewick as its new chief executive today.

Mr Bewick (pictured above speaking at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeships Conference last week) will take up the helm from May 1, replacing John McNamara, who has led FAB on an interim basis since the departure of Stephen Wright in December.

“Following a robust and comprehensive recruitment process, the board decided on a candidate that brought the strongest possible experience in lobbying and policy influencing of the skills and qualifications agenda,” said FAB chair Paul Eeles.

Mr Bewick has an “exemplary track record” of “building solid representative industry organisations” and “working with government”, and has “influenced skills policy spanning a 25-year career both in the United Kingdom and internationally, most recently in the United States”, Mr Eeles said.

“I’m really looking forward to working with Tom over the coming months as we strive to put the value of our qualifications and assessment organisations at the heart of the UK’s rapidly evolving technical education, skills and apprenticeship systems.”

He added the board’s thanks to Mr McNamara for “his leadership of FAB through this interim period”.

Mr Bewick said he was “delighted” to have been appointed as the new FAB boss.  

“Throughout my career I have been passionate about leading and representing organisations committed to growing a highly-skilled and qualified workforce,” he said. “The fact is that strong qualifications, assessment and awarding organisations are the engine room of a 21st-century economy.

“Without good qualifications, people can’t get the rewards they deserve and our society will not succeed. I will be unrelenting in putting forward the positive case, representing FAB members’ interests, and explaining why the public should listen to what is a fantastically comprehensive and diverse industry.

“I’m proud to represent a sector that provides so many individuals, employers and communities with the means to succeed up and down the land. I can’t wait to get started.”

Mr Bewick is co-founder and board director of Franklin Apprenticeships in the US, and founded the Transatlantic Apprenticeship Exchange Forum in 2015 to promote opportunities for UK training providers in the US.

He led the International Skills Standards Organisation Ltd for four years, from 2011 to 2015, and prior to that was chief executive of Enterprise UK, a former government quango, from 2010 to 2011.

Other government roles include adviser to the minister for adult skills in the early 2000s.

He has also been a council member for Brighton and Hove City Council since May 2015.

A cash-strapped college that was forced to seek a merger after it became only the second institution to return to FE commissioner intervention has announced its new partner.

Guildford College will become the fifth college member of Activate Learning later this year.

John Denning, Guildford’s governing body chair, said the partnership was “very good news” and would secure the “future while protecting the heritage of our long-established colleges”.

“This new venture will secure a great future for the group and is an opportunity for a new lease of life that will benefit our learners, staff, local communities and employers we serve,” he added.

Sally Dicketts, the chief executive of Activate Learning, said the merged college would be “stronger and more sustainable, providing benefits to learners, staff, businesses and the community through its greater scale and negotiating power, sharing of expertise and resources, greater combined expertise around teaching, learning and assessment and combined group services”.

The merger is expected to go ahead “towards the end of the year” subject to consultation, according to today’s announcement.

Guildford College, currently rated grade three by Ofsted and with a turnover of £27.9 million in 2016/17, was visited by the FE commissioner last November.

It’s the second time it experienced intervention, having previously been in through the process between March 2014 and September 2015.

Richard Atkins’ recent intervention was “a result of the college’s uncertain financial position” according to his report, which came out in February.

The college had “faced financial difficulties for a number years” which meant its “financial position has been weak and is likely to continue to be so for the medium term”.

Mr Atkins’ main recommendation was for the college to “fully engage with and support” a structure and prospects appraisal to “identify a merger partner for the college, with a merger to be completed by the end of calendar year 2018 at the latest”.

Guildford had come out of the Surrey area review with a recommendation to merge with Farnborough College of Technology, but progress had stalled.

“Fresh impetus is now required,” the FE commissioner’s report said.

Activate Learning, rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in January, currently has three college members: Reading College, City of Oxford College and Bicester College.

The group also includes three university technical colleges in Didcot, Reading and Swindon, a studio school in Bicester, its own apprenticeships arm in the form of Activate Apprenticeships and ATG Training, and an HE business school, along with colleges in Saudi Arabia.

Its turnover, excluding the schools and UTCs, was £53.9 million in 2016/17.

Consultation on a proposal for grade two Bracknell and Wokingham College to become the fourth college member of the group opened earlier this month, with an anticipated merger date of August 1.

An ex-chief executive of a training provider and two of her former colleagues have been sentenced to a total of more than 10 years in prison for defrauding a college and a private provider out of almost £460,000.

Joanne Mounter, Paula Bolan, Kym Adrian Norman, who all worked for Team Wearside, were each convicted for their part in a scheme in which they created large numbers of fictitious learners to fraudulently invoice funding providers.

Ms Mounter and Ms Bolan were both sentenced to four years and four months at Newcastle Crown Court, while Mr Norman received a term of two years and eight months.

The two women admitted to one charge that they – along with Mr Norman – had “dishonestly and intending thereby to make a gain for themselves or another” invoiced Sunderland College for a total of £304,858 between July 2014 and December 2015.

The pair also pleaded guilty to “making representations to Springboard through invoices presented, namely that a total of £154,674.01 was payable, which was and which they knew was untrue”.

Ms Mounter was also convicted of a third charge of fraudulently obtaining a hire purchase agreement through Mercedes Benz finance.

The charges related to their former roles at Team Wearside, a training provider and charity based in Sunderland, where Ms Mounter was chief executive, Ms Bolan was quality and compliance manager, and Mr Norman was an assessor.

Ms Mounter and Ms Bolan were both “actively involved in using false data to claim funding with Springboard and Sunderland College”.

Mr Norman, as assessor for waste management training, signed off a number of these false registered learners and therefore “must have been aware of these multiple irregularities”.

Ellen Thinnesen, principal and chief executive of Sunderland College, said: “We are deeply disappointed by the actions of individuals we had grown to trust. These were people we had worked with for a number of years, whose work was regularly appraised – as all of our subcontractors work is – but who had, between them, devised a well-orchestrated scheme that sought to purposely deceive and defraud a number of organisations they worked with.”

Team Wearside, a training charity, provides apprenticeships and traineeships to a range of sectors including health and social care, and hospitality and catering.

David Barker, the chief executive of Springboard, said he “welcomes the outcome of today’s legal proceedings against the people who betrayed our trust and fraudulently claimed funds from our charity”.

“Springboard will continue to support the development of sustainable communities, where people have the skills they need for work and life. The selfish acts of a few individuals will not deter us from our mission,” he added.

“At the time of these offences, each of these defendants held trusted positions within a respected organisation, providing vital assistance to those seeking employment. They exploited that trust for their own personal gain, with no thought to the consequences of their selfish actions,” said Lynsey Colling of the CPS.

“Once their fraud came to light, the reputation of the Team Wearside was irreparably tarnished. The victims of this fraud were left with little choice but to cease working with the organisation.

“The effects of this fraud on Team Wearside were devastating, leading to the loss of over 40 jobs and the now imminent closure of the charity.”

According to the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s most recent list of declared subcontractors, Team Wearside’s 2016/17 subcontract for Springboard Sunderland was worth £182,000, while its subcontract for Sunderland College was worth a much smaller £29,146.

However, both lead providers told FE Week in October that Team Wearside was no longer subcontracting for them.

Team Wearside has been approached for a comment.

The second monitoring visit report on crisis-hit Learndirect has been published by Ofsted.

This was the second reinspection monitoring visit to Learndirect Ltd following publication of the inspection report last August, which found the provider to be ‘inadequate’ overall.

Learndirect Ltd is “winding down its contracts to deliver apprenticeships and adult learning”. These will finish at the end of July, though at the time of this latest visit, the provider still had 9,556 apprentices and 7,823 adult learners on programmes.

The findings were a very mixed bag. FE Week has found 15 main points – both positive and negative – that we have learned from the report:

Positive findings:

• The most “significant improvement” was the increasing proportion of apprentices and adult learners who now achieve their qualifications. “Managers now have effective systems with which to monitor the progress of apprentices, both on directly delivered provision and at subcontractors, and are better able to identify and support those apprentices at risk of not completing their programmes”.
• The number of apprentices who successfully complete their programmes is now greater than the number who withdraw, which was not the case at the time of the inspection.
• Senior managers have made “reasonable progress” in addressing weaknesses identified at the previous inspection. Directors and senior managers “have increased the pace of improvement” since the first monitoring visit in October last year.
• Managers now use a set of “challenging but realistic targets” to evaluate the performance of their directly delivered provision and the provision delivered by the large number of subcontractors.
• The proportion of adult learners who achieve their qualifications continues to “increase steadily”, with the in-year achievement of learners on short courses now at the same level as that of similar providers.
• Contract managers of the remaining nine apprenticeship subcontractors were said to now “scrutinise in great detail and on a regular basis the individual progress of each apprentice at these subcontractors”. They intervene swiftly when they identify that apprentices are failing to make expected progress, and “support subcontractors to tackle the causes of the lack of progress”. If subcontractors fail to respond to this support, managers “impose proportionate sanctions”.
• The managers of adult learning subcontractors now “apply the same rigour to the 34 providers of adult learning, and monitor progress closely against a set of challenging targets”. Subcontractors are prevented from enrolling new adult learners onto underperforming courses and can only restart courses when they have taken agreed quality-improvement actions. This closer monitoring is credited for increases in the proportions of adults and apprentices achieving their qualifications “at the great majority of subcontractors”.
• Directors and senior managers have “well-advanced plans to transfer apprentices to alternative providers by the contract end date of July 31, 2018″. Negotiations are taking place to transfer subcontractors’ apprentices who have not completed their programmes by this date “to other prime contract holders with which the subcontractors already work”.

But there were also a number of negative points.

• Learndirect Ltd’s own management information confirmed that “not enough” apprentices are still receiving good-quality off-the-job training. Frequent changes to assessors that employers and apprentices experience has resulted in too much off-the-job training being poorly planned or of limited value.
• “Too many” apprentices are still receiving insufficient off-the-job training or support to improve their English, mathematical and information and communication technology skills, except through the completion of past examination papers or referrals to websites.
• Overall attendance “remains too low”. Inspectors recognised that the attendance of learners at centres has improved slightly since the last monitoring visit, but “there is still too much variation between centres”.
• A “small number” of subcontractors were found to persistently underperform “without sufficient action being taken against them”. Inspectors warned that these subcontractors have not improved since the first monitoring visit, and their apprentices and learners continue to make slow progress.
• Too many employers do not participate or contribute to reviews of their apprentices’ progress. This lack of participation has been exacerbated by the frequent changes in assessors that employers and apprentices have experienced, as assessors provide the main source of communication with employers about their apprentices’ training needs.
• A “high number” of apprentices, many of whom have experienced one or more changes to their allocated assessor, “remain in learning beyond their planned completion date”. Inspectors warned that many of these apprentices are being put under “considerable pressure to complete large volumes of additional work” to catch up and complete their programmes within “a very short space of time”.
• “A small number” of apprentices are “unclear about how they will complete their programmes once contracts with Learndirect Ltd comes to an end”. As a result, inspectors warned they feel anxious and demotivated, as do their employers.