The country’s largest FE provider didn’t get “anywhere near” quashing its now infamous ‘inadequate’ rating during its legal fight with Ofsted, the judge from the case has said.

After a seven month wait the Manchester Administrative Court has finally published the detailed judgement following Learndirect’s failed judicial review in early August last year.

Mr Justice King’s damning verdict exposes just how far away the provider was from winning the case against the inspectorate – as the challenge was backed up with little evidence and a weak fight in court.

One of the counts that Learndirect challenged on was that the lead inspectors, namely Paul Cocker and Charles Searle, had a “predetermined” negative view of its apprenticeship provision which was “procedurally unfair”.

There was no evidence of that whatsoever

However, the judge ruled that there was “no evidence of that whatsoever”.

“One of the problems with the claimant’s submissions is its reliance on the written evidence of Mr Palmer and Ms Wood [Learndirect’s bosses] to support many of the propositions put forward, but the court has to set against this, the written evidence of Mr Cocker and indeed Mr Searle,” he said.

“There has been no application to cross-examine the defendant’s witnesses.

“In these circumstances, where there is a conflict between the respective evidence on matters of fact, as I have already explained, the court is bound to accept that of the defendant’s witnesses, in this case that of Mr Cocker.”

Grounds two and three that Learndirect challenged on revolved around complaints that Ofsted’s sample size of apprentices was not large enough to reflect the size of the company, and that the watchdog should have gone back in to the provider to do more inspecting.

Mr Justice King said that although no “expert evidence” was called on behalf of the claimant to “counter the evidence of the expert regulator”, Learndirect submitted figures which it claimed “speak for themselves”.

For example, the claimant said there was only one scrutiny of a single apprentice at intermediate level in relation to some nearly 5,000 apprenticeships on health and social care.

“This was the equivalent, he suggested, of plucking just one child out of a school class for a year to determine overall educational progress in a given school,” the judge explained.

He said that the “simplicity” of this argument was “attractive” but he “cannot accept it”.

“In my judgment, none of these matters, not even the complaint as to sample size, go anywhere near to enabling this court to say that no rational decision maker could have made the decision it did on the evidence before it,” Mr Justice King added.

He then criticised Learndirect for claiming the sample size figures “speak for themselves”.

“Overall, I have no proper basis, in my judgment, upon which I could interfere with the expert judgment made by this expert regulator as to the sufficiency of the evidence base upon which the inspection’s findings and conclusions were based,” he said.

“The figures in my judgment, do not speak for themselves.”

The judge then concludes that all of Learndirect’s claims “must fail” based on the material presented before him.

The figures in my judgment, do not speak for themselves

“It is impossible for me to conclude on the material before me that no reasonable regulatory body would or could have been satisfied with the information before the defendant’s inspectors in this instance by the time of the writing of the report into the claimant activities.

“For all these reasons this claim must fail. The claim is dismissed.”

Learndirect’s battle against Ofsted has engrossed the sector ever since FE Week revealed the case in August after our lawyers successfully contested strict reporting restrictions.

The subsequent fallout led to the government singling the provider out for special treatment by allowing it to see through the end of their current contracts – instead of ending them within the usual three-month termination period.

It was then subject to investigations from the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee.

The PAC held a hearing on the saga in January, in which the NAO’s comptroller and auditor general, Sir Amyas Morse, told Learndirect boss Andy Palmer that the judicial review could be seen as a “hardnosed use of lawyers and quite hostile tactics to delay something for the purpose of improving your cashflow”.

“I do not approve of it, in fact I strongly disapprove of it,” he added.

Learndirect and Ofsted have been approached for comment.

Private providers fared best out of the whole FE sector this week as three achieved ‘good’ ratings.

There wasn’t any cause for celebration for colleges however, as two of them – Stoke-on-Trent and Moulton – were handed critical ‘requires improvement’ and ‘inadequate’ ratings respectively.

Starting with the private providers: CSM Consulting Limited rose from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ and Eden College of Human Resource Development and Management Studies Limited achieved a grade two in its first ever visit from the inspectorate.

CSM mainly provides apprenticeship training in the south west, Yorkshire and London for teaching assistants in school, health and social care, and business administration and team leading.

Ofsted said a “large majority” of apprentices gain their qualifications as a result of good teaching, learning and assessment.

“Apprentices improve their confidence and workplace skills as a result of effective coaching and good support for their learning by assessors,” inspectors added, and also noted that apprentices’ attitudes to their work in schools, offices or healthcare settings are “very professional”.

Eden College, based in Essex, provides training for adults with advanced learner loans, mainly in business administration, childcare, health and social care, hairdressing and beauty.

“Working in close partnership with employers and local communities, managers have developed a very relevant programme to widen the participation of adult learners and to meet the particular needs of those already employed,” Ofsted said.

“Managers and staff create an inclusive, safe and welcoming environment for learners, where they behave well, and in which they and staff treat one another with care and respect.”

The inspectorate added that learners’ achievement of their qualifications is “high, with good pass and retention rates”.

One other private provider, Apprenticeships & Training Services Consortium Limited, based in London, was subject to a short inspection where it maintained its grade two.

Another independent learning provider’s report, for London College of Apprenticeship Training, was the second of a new wave of Ofsted early-monitoring visits keeping a close eye on newcomers to directly funded apprenticeship provision, and it returned with largely positive findings.

The report rates it as making significant progress in one area and reasonable progress in two.

Meanwhile, cash-strapped Stoke-on-Trent College received its second grade three report since being downgraded from ‘good’ in 2016.

“Governors and senior leaders were slow to make the improvements recommended in the previous inspection report,” Ofsted said.

“This coincided with a period of significant turbulence in leadership and governance.”

Too few teachers provide learners with “sufficiently helpful feedback or challenging targets” to help them improve their work further, inspectors added.

However, Ofsted did point out that the recent appointments of an “experienced principal”, senior post holders and governors have “stabilised and strengthened the capacity of leadership within the college to improve the quality of provision and experience of learners”.

Moulton College, which has campus’ across Northamptonshire, was slammed with an ‘inadequate’ report for delivering “unsafe” training in “highly dangerous vocational areas” such as construction and equine studies (read the full story on the report here).

“Inspectors identified a number of serious breaches to health and safety regulations and a number of instances where practice was unsafe or sloppy,” Ofsted said.

“Not all managers with responsibility for health and safety have undertaken appropriate training.”

The only other report to be published this week was a short inspection for Enham Trust, an adult and community learning provider based in Hampshire, which maintained a grade two.

 

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Stoke-on-Trent College	27/02/2018	05/04/2018	3	3
Moulton College	27/02/2018	03/04/2018	4	3

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
CSM Consulting Limited	07/03/2018	05/04/2018	2	3
Eden College of Human Resource Development and Management Studies Limited	30/01/2018	03/04/2018	2	–
London College of Apprenticeship Training Limited	27/02/2018	05/04/2018	M	M

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2)	Inspected	Published
Enham Trust	06/03/2018	05/04/2018
Apprenticeships & Training Services Consortium Limited	27/02/2018	06/04/2018

The second of a new wave of Ofsted early-monitoring visit reports keeping a close eye on newcomers to directly funded apprenticeship provision has returned with largely positive findings.

The report into London College of Apprenticeship Training rates it as making significant progress in one area and reasonable progress in two. This is far more positive than the first report published on March 15 into Key6 Group, which heavily criticised “not fit for purpose” provision.

Both are part of a series of visits to companies on the register of apprenticeship training providers, which are trying to sniff out “scandalous” attempts to waste public money by newcomers to the market for directly funded apprenticeship provision.

But where Key6Group is new to delivering apprenticeships, LCAT has a longer track record: it was set up in 2014, and was operating as a subcontractor until the introduction of the apprenticeship levy last May.

According to the most recent Education and Skills Funding Agency list of declared subcontractors, it held two subcontracts in 2016/17: one, with Hull College, worth £1.1 million, and a second, with the College of North West London, worth £171,600.

A spokesperson for Ofsted explained that the monitoring visits included “totally new providers, those who have previously been subcontractors, and those who have provided other forms of education and training in the past but ceased to be directly-funded”.

Graham Howe, LCAT’s executive director for business development, quality and human resources, said he was “very proud” that the watchdog had recognised “the significant progress we have made to deliver successful apprenticeship provision”.

In particular he said the provider had “worked hard to ensure our employers and apprentices understand the commitment to spend 20 per cent of their time off-the-job in training, and this is reflected in the report as a result of direct feedback from employers and apprentices”.

LCAT had “previously provided apprenticeship training under subcontracted arrangements, but this is the first time they have been a directly-funded provider,” she said.

It delivers training for around 360 apprentices on level two, three and five courses in team leading, customer service, business improvement and management, according to today’s report.

Inspectors found that leaders had made “significant progress” in ensuring it was meeting all the requirements of successful apprenticeship provision.

LCAT’s managers “spend time with employers prior to enrolling apprentices” which helps them to “understand the employers’ priorities for training and also the culture of the employer in order to adapt training materials appropriately”, the report said.

“Employers understand clearly the requirements of apprenticeship standards for on- and off-the-job training and most support their apprentices well to meet these requirements.”

The provider is making ‘reasonable progress’ in ensuring that apprentices benefit from high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes for apprentices, and putting in place effective safeguarding arrangements.

Most apprentices make “at least good progress and achieve milestones” set for them, thanks to “well-organised teaching, training and assessment”.

“Apprentices make good progress in acquiring important practical and vocational skills which are relevant to their qualification and job role; their skills coaches support them in doing this effectively.”

It noted occasional problems with apprentices’ “poor” attendance at training sessions, as they are “not given the time away from their job role to attend”.

But attendance is improving, after managers noticed the issue and took action, the report said.

The Key6 report slammed its apprenticeship provision, which included high-profile contracts with Liverpool Football Club and charity giant Mencap, as “not fit for purpose”.

Ofsted chief inspection Amanda Spielman referred to the damning report during her speech at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference last week.

While admitting that the findings were “worrying”, she expressed hope that, following further monitoring visits, “positive results will significantly outnumber the disappointments”.

The government should do more to boost the number of 16- to 18-year-olds doing apprenticeships due to the “overwhelming” benefits to both employers and apprentices, a new report has urged.

‘Apprenticeship training in England – a cost-effective model for firms?’, published today by the Education Policy Institute, looked at the potential costs and benefits for businesses and individuals if England adopted a Swiss-style apprenticeship model.

The report, by education economist Professor Dr Stefan C Wolter and Eva Joho, concluded that the benefits for both apprentices and employers were greatest for the youngest apprentices.

While the main benefit for employers came through the lower wages paid to apprentices under the age of 19, the report found that – despite the lower wages – “the returns to apprentices are higher if they start their apprenticeship at a younger age”.

“This is a concern for England, where 60 per cent of new apprentices in 2017/18 are aged 19 or older,” it said.

“Given the overwhelming benefits to both firms and apprentices” the report urged the government to “consider the case for expanding apprenticeships in England among 16- to 18-year-olds, in line with other advanced economies”.

Today’s report, produced in partnership with German think-tank Bertelsmann Stiftung and supported by JP Morgan, analysed whether English employers could expect a net benefit when training apprentices in a similar manner to Swiss firms.

Features of the Swiss model included longer training programmes, normally a minimum of three years, and more off-the-job training.

The authors looked at three potential costs or benefits to employers: costs during the apprenticeship, benefits of an apprentice doing work that would otherwise be done by a more highly-paid worker, and any further benefits to the employer after the apprentice has completed their apprenticeship.

They used data from Switzerland, alongside UK wage data, to simulate the costs and benefits to both employers and apprentices in 10 occupations.

The report concluded that employers with apprentices under the age of 19 for the duration of their apprenticeship had the highest chance of “breaking even at the end of the training period” because “minimum wages increase substantially afterwards”.

Apprentices under 19 can be paid the national minimum apprenticeship wage, now £3.70 an hour, for the duration of their apprenticeship. Those over 19 must be paid at least the national minimum wage – which is higher – after they’ve completed their first year.

But “from the perspective of apprentices” programmes that started “at an early age, even at a very low pay, would in most cases also generate the highest private rates of return” compared with starting later.

Longer apprenticeships were “likely to bring higher returns for both employers and apprentices”, the report said, “due to productivity increases over the course of training”.

In a three-year apprenticeship, similar to the Swiss model, an employer’s “costs usually surpass benefits” in the first year, but by the third year “a net benefit arises”.

Other recommendations from the report include targeted support for small companies “especially in sectors or regions dominated by small- and medium-sized enterprises”.

This was because “big companies may be more likely to experience net benefits from hiring apprentices than SMEs, due to economies of scale and a different salary structure”.

“This report brings some much needed evidence to debates on the future of apprenticeships policy,” said David Laws, the EPI’s executive chairman.

“In learning from countries with successful training programmes, England can ensure that a sustained expansion in apprenticeships sees positive returns for both employers and young people.”

The FE commissioner’s performance will be judged by the number of colleges falling into intervention among other measures, according to a letter from the skills minister published today.

The missive from Anne Milton, dated March 27, sets out a number of objectives and outcome measures for Richard Atkins to achieve in 2017/18.

“Given that you have a wide remit, and your knowledge and expertise gained through your extensive experience in further education is constantly in demand, I felt that it would be helpful to write to you to set out my expectations formally,” she wrote.

Mr Atkins’ “overarching goal” is to “help the government improve the quality of education provided by FE colleges, and reduce the risk of colleges failing”.

For each of his six objectives there are a number of outcome measures that she “will take into consideration when reflecting on the success of your work”.

The first of these is “time colleges spend in formal intervention”, with the objective being to shorten this time.

The success of the FE commissioner’s diagnostic assessments will be judged by the “number of colleges meeting formal intervention triggers” – with the intention that this will drop.

The same two measures will also be used to judge his leadership of a team of deputies and advisers.

Meanwhile, the “performance of colleges post-merger” and “the number of colleges that have remained standalone after area reviews falling into financial difficulty” are the markers of Mr Atkins’ objective to improve the financial performance of colleges.

The success of his efforts to provide system leadership to the sector will be judged by the “proportion of Ofsted ‘Good’ and ‘Outstanding’ colleges” as well as feedback from the college improvement board, the Principals’ Reference Group – aka Atkins’ Aides – and the National Leaders of FE.

Feedback, this time from “minister and policy officials”, will be used to measure the quality of Mr Atkins’ advice on policy development.

“I hope this helps provide clarity and focus to your continued work as the FE Commissioner, for which I am especially grateful,” Ms Milton wrote.

“It has been a pleasure working with you since I became Skills Minister and I hope we can both see our efforts bring the college education that people rightly expect and deserve.”

A college that was told a year ago that it couldn’t survive on its own has announced plans to merge, following a second hunt for a partner.

Grade three Epping Forest College, which has been in administered status since March last year, is set to join forces with New City College from August 1, according to an announcement on its website.

It will become the fourth member of the group, alongside Hackney Community College, Tower Hamlets College and Redbridge College.

Neither college has yet responded to FE Week’s request for a comment. It’s not yet clear when consultation on the proposed merger is set to take place.

FE commissioner Richard Atkins and his team visited Epping Forest in January last year after it was rated ‘inadequate’ across the board by Ofsted in November 2016.

That intervention led to it being placed it into ‘administered’ status, as a result of “emerging financial challenges” and “serious governance problems”.

This was followed by a structure and prospects appraisal “owing to the significant instability still facing the college”.

According to the college’s 2016/17 accounts, the process concluded with a firm recommendation that the college merge as “its prospect as an independent corporation was not sustainable”.

Epping Forest has three notices of concern from the Education and Skills Funding Agency and a financial notice to improve, all issued last year.

The first notice of concern, for inspection, was issued January 9, and the second and third arrived in March, for ‘administered’ status and for its apprenticeship minimum standards.

The fourth notice, for financial health, was issued in December after the college was rated ‘inadequate’ for its financial health in 2016/17. It ruled that the college must agree a plan to “achieve a merger by August 1”.

The college had announced plans to merge with Barnet and Southgate College last summer, but that proposal fell through in the autumn, according to a college spokesperson.

Ofsted recently returned to the college and rated it as ‘requires improvement’ overall and in seven out of eight headline fields, in a report published March 29.

Hackney Community College and Tower Hamlets College joined forces in August 2016.

The merged college formally changed its name to New City College in February the following year, ahead of the merger with Redbridge College on April 1.

The group had an income of £57 million in 2016/17, according to its accounts.

If the planned merger with Epping Forest College goes ahead it will have a combined turnover of £70 million, and 11,750 learners.

The Labour Party has today launched a consultation on its plans for a National Education Service.

Running for 12 weeks, the England-wide consultation is seeking views on the party’s education policies which were officially launched during the general election campaign last year.

The NES is Labour’s umbrella term for a raft of pledged reforms, including free adult education and the return of the Education Maintenance Allowance for 16 to 19 year-olds.

However, the new seven page consultation document is light on detail and doesn’t include any costings for how these policies would be implemented.

Instead, it simply states that Labours “ambition” is of a “National Education Service providing an excellent education for all those who need it, available from cradle to grave”.

The values that will underpin the NES were outlined at Labour Party Conference last year by Angela Rayner (pictured above), the shadow education secretary, during which she also pledged to invest one billion pounds to deliver T-levels.

These principles now form the basis of the wider consultation on how this policy will be developed.

It asks for any amendments that should be made to the principles outlined in the draft charter, and asks what Labour can do to “reduce the fragmentation of the education system” and move towards an approach that is “integrated and promotes lifelong learning”.

It also asks how “genuine parity of esteem” between academic and vocational education can be achieved, as well as how to improve outcomes for those young people who do not choose to follow what is seen as the traditional academic route.

Beyond the official education reforms announced by Labour during its election campaign, there have been a couple of big hints at other areas relating to FE that the party would change.

At the Association of College’s conference in November, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told FE Week that colleges’ status as independent corporations could be at risk under his plan for free lifelong learning.

“We feel there’s a danger with the independent model of college education that they get too far away from local communities and local education authorities,” he said.

“And what we’re looking to is a model that will bring them closer to that, but not removing the important connection with local industry.”

Labour’s proposed NES would also look seriously at devolving apprenticeships and other skills funding, and not just the adult education budget – a pledge made by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference last month.

The party’s consultation document says the NES is needed because the Conservatives have “created an education system that is increasingly fragmented and, for too many, inaccessible”.

“The drive towards academisation since 2010; an early years and childcare system divided into a complex series of both demand and supply side entitlements and subsidies; and a system of both higher and adult education that is increasingly reliant on personal debt, has made it harder for learners and their families to navigate the system and to access it whenever they need to,” it adds.

Labour has set up a website where those in education and others can submit their views. The consultation closes on June 24, 2018.

A college that was recently rated ‘inadequate’ for the third time in five years has finally completed a merger.

Stockport College, which has also had a notice of concern for financial health since 2010, formally joined forces with grade two Trafford College today to form the Trafford College Group.

“Our aim is for our learners to be ahead of the competition in terms of successfully securing meaningful employment and progression to higher level study,” said Lesley Davies, group principal and chief executive.

“We are putting at the core of our programmes employability and professional skills development, underpinned practically with: a digital entitlement; a values-driven curriculum; an emphasis on professional behaviours; and setting the standards and aspirations for our students at a high level, working with them.”

The merged institution will have a turnover of £37 million and over 14,000 learners and apprentices, according to today’s announcement.

Stockport College received its first grade four rating in September 2013, followed by a ‘requires improvement’ in December 2014.

But in October 2016 it had slipped to ‘inadequate’ again – a grade it held onto in a report published this March, following re-inspection in January.

The college has also been struggling financially and has had a notice of concern for financial health since December 2010 – longer than any other college currently.

According to Trafford College’s 2016/17 financial statements the merger was dependent on “the successful outcome to the application for Restructuring Funds” to “address Stockport College’s significant legacy liabilities”.

Stockport was also slapped with notice of concern for inspection in November 2016, with a further notice for apprenticeship minimum standards the following March.

The college was placed in administered status by former FE commissioner David Collins in 2013, and it’s not clear if this was ever lifted.

It had emerged from the troubled Greater Manchester area review with a plan for a three-way merger involving Oldham and Tameside colleges.

But this was scrapped following intervention by current FE commissioner Richard Atkins in early 2017.

Trafford College, which had an income of £22.2 million in 2016/17, had been set to join the LTE Group on the same basis as the Manchester College, but “decided not to formalise this through structural change or merger”, according to its financial statements.

The government must “urgently” design a successor programme to the European Social Fund to avoid a “disastrous” post-Brexit funding gap, an influential group of MPs has said.

The work and pensions committee, chaired by Birkenhead MP Frank Field, made the call in its report, published today, which looked at what would happen if the UK government did not replace the £500 million provided through the fund every year for people in disadvantaged circumstances.

Leaving the European Union gave the UK a “historic opportunity” to “design a truly world-class successor” programme that was “entirely in its national interests: plugging skills gaps, boosting productivity and lifting up disadvantaged communities,” the report said.

But it warned the government “must act now to guarantee certainty for providers and communities and avoid a potentially disastrous interruption in funding”.

“We recommend the government proceed urgently with detailed design of a successor to the ESF so that there is no gap between existing and new funding streams,” it said.

The ESF was cash that the UK received, as a member state of the EU, to increase job opportunities and help people to improve their skill levels, particularly those who find it difficult to get work.

The current funding round is worth about €3bn (£2.3bn) across England over the period from 2014 to 2020.

ESF funding for this country is administered through the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Big Lottery Fund, which each provide match funding.

Many projects co-funded by ESFA, delivered with the involvement of local enterprise partnerships, focused on young people not in education, employment or training.

According to the 2016/17 ESFA allocations, 87 providers had ESF contracts worth a combined total of £456 million.

But, unlike contracts co-financed by the other agencies, all ESFA match-funded projects have to be delivered by July 2018.

It’s not clear what will happen to those projects once the contracts come to an end.

The government has committed to introducing a UK Shared Prosperity Fund once the current ESF funding streams end in 2020.

The 2017 Conservative party general election manifesto promised the new fund would be “cheap to administer, low in bureaucracy and targeted where it is needed most”.

According to today’s report, the Department for Work and Pensions plans to consult on a replacement for ESF at a yet-to-be decided date “later this year”.

“Effective reform here offers the government an important new chance to begin to fill our skills gap from the community upwards, instead of having a top-down approach,” Mr Field said.

“The government must act quickly so that those excellent existing suppliers are not bankrupted.”

Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, which last year ran a campaign calling on the government to commit to replacing ESF funding, backed the report’s findings.

A proposed consultation on the shared prosperity fund “has been pushed back and back”, he said.

“It’s vital that the new fund is of at least the same value as ESF, that there is no delay in its starting, and that it is better targeted and less bureaucratic than ESF.”