The government will develop a new strategy to teach English to speakers of other languages (ESOL), which is aimed at improving integration.

The proposal is outlined in the Integrated Communities Strategy green paper, published this morning by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

“To boost English language skills – which are fundamental to being able to take advantage of the opportunities of living in modern Britain such as getting a job, mixing with people and playing a full part in community life – we will propose developing a new strategy for English language in England,” it said.

Sue Pember, director of policy at Holex, which has been calling for a national ESOL strategy since 2016, said she was “very pleased” the government had “finally listened”.

“We are delighted that they have recognised and want to build on our work to develop a new community-based English language programme, and support for local authorities to improve the provision of English language tuition for those who need it most,” she said.

The green paper follows the Casey Review, commissioned by former prime minister David Cameron and published in December 2016, which concluded that good English skills are “fundamental” to improving immigrants’ opportunities, but warned funding for ESOL courses had been heavily cut.

Its author Dame Louise Casey urged the government to carry out a national review of the provisions it makes for non-native English speakers, ensuring that “sufficient funding” is available.

Poor English language skills were found to result in lower wages and less community integration.

Despite this, she noted that funding for ESOL courses has been slashed by 50 per cent between 2008 and 2015.

The report also identified “a significant gap in funding for pre-entry and entry-level English language courses”.

Other initiatives outlined in the green paper include a “new community-based English language programme” and plans for a “new network of conversation clubs”.

Another idea is for more “support for local authorities to improve the provision of English language tuition for those who need it most”.

Five areas have also been chosen to pilot a new localised approach to integration, which will involve developing local strategies to target the challenges specific to them.

The proposals are backed with £50 million of government cash over two years, which includes funding for councils to “develop new infrastructure to improve the offer for English language learners”.

This could include “additional classes to help people in the early stages of learning English”.

But it’s not clear how much – if any – money will go towards the proposed new language strategy.

“To create clearer pathways for learners, improve outcomes and secure better value for the taxpayer by making best use of existing funding, we propose developing a new strategy for English language in England,” the document said.

It promised the government would “involve research and engagement with the sector” to “review and improve our strategic approach to English language provision to better support local decision makers”.

770,000 people in England over the age of 16 “say they cannot speak English well or at all”, and women are “disproportionately affected”.

In his foreword, the communities secretary Sajid Javid referred to his own childhood experiences of having to translate for his mother, who could not speak English even after 10 years in this country.

“For me, it was an early introduction to the way in which issues such as language skills create barriers to integration – and the very real impact that has on individuals,” he said.

The apprenticeship levy will generate £900 million less funding in its first four years than the government first claimed, according to economic forecasters.

A new “economic and fiscal outlook” report from the Office for Budget Responsibility estimates the tax will accumulate £10.7 billion by early 2021.

This represents a major downgrade – of £900 million, or eight per cent – in the body’s original forecast that the levy would generate £11.6 billion, which was made when it was announced in 2015.

“We have revised down receipts from the apprenticeship levy by £0.1 billion a year relative to November,” the report said.

Our latest forecast is that this will raise a cumulative £10.7 billion in its first four years

“Having only been introduced in April last year, the profile of monthly receipts is still uncertain. However, with 10 months of revenues received by HMRC, it seems likely that full-year receipts will be lower than expected when the measure was first costed.”

Expenditure on apprenticeships in the 2016-17 financial year was just over £1.6 billion, according to government accounts, split equally between 16- to 18-year-olds and adults.

So despite the downgrade, funding available for apprenticeship delivery is now around £1 billion higher than before the levy was introduced.

The apprenticeship levy is paid by employers with annual payrolls in excess of £3 million. It is charged at a rate of 0.5 per cent.

The OBR noted in 2015 that the levy is “economically equivalent to a payroll tax” and expected “the cost to be passed largely onto employees in lower wages”.

The original costing expected the measure to generate £2.7 billion in 2017-18, rising steadily thereafter.

“Since the original costing we have made regular downward adjustments to our earnings forecast and, though this has been partly offset by higher expected employment growth, the overall effect is to lower the apprenticeship levy forecast,” the OBR has now said.

“The levy came into force in April 2017 and HMRC statistics show that £1.8 billion of cash receipts have been received in the first nine months. Our latest forecast is that this will raise £2.6 billion in 2017-18 and a cumulative £10.7 billion in its first four years, an eight-per-cent drop from the original costing.”

The OBR’s report was published on the same day that the skills and apprenticeships minister, Anne Milton, told a House of Lords committee that she wants more money from the Treasury to expand the levy.

“I would like simply to expand the programme,” she said yesterday. “I would have to have that discussion with the chancellor as it is below my pay grade because we would probably have to have more money in the system.”

Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee and a former skills minister, also wants to see the programme widened and believes this should be done by making employers with annual payrolls of £2 million pay the levy.

“To fund more degree apprenticeships, we should increase and ring-fence funds from the apprenticeships levy,” he said at a Joseph Rowntree Foundation event in December.

“And we could do this by broadening the levy’s remit, so that employers with a salary roll of £2 million qualify.”

The OBR is an advisory non-departmental public body set up by the government to provide independent economic forecasts of public finances.

Dates have been set for a second walk-out by members of the University and College Union at a number of colleges in an ongoing dispute over pay.

Staff at the colleges – all in London except for one in the Midlands – will walk out on either March 27 or 28 for two or three days of strike.

More than 1,500 staff walked out earlier this month, over what UCU described as “a disappointing” pay offer of one per cent, made last September by the Association of Colleges, which represents the colleges on pay.

“UCU members at these colleges made it quite clear that they were prepared to take strike action in defence of their pay and conditions,” said the union’s general secretary Sally Hunt.

“They will be walking out again later this month unless the colleges properly address their concerns. Strike action is a last resort, but staff feel they have been left with no alternative.”

Staff at the affected colleges had voted overwhelmingly in favour of further strike action, the union said.

Average turnout across all 12 colleges was 63 per cent, with 91 per cent of those who voted backing a second walk-out.

UCU said in a statement that staff were taking action over pay, but at some colleges the disputes also included concerns over working conditions such as workload.

The National Joint Forum, made up of the unions representing college staff, had submitted a claim for an across-the-board rise of around six per cent in April.

But the final offer from the AoC last September was just one per cent, or the sum of £250 “where this is more beneficial”.

AoC boss David Hughes expressed regret at the time that it was unable to offer more.

“We wish we were in a position to make a better recommendation today, but current funding levels for colleges do not allow us to do so,” he said.

But teachers at sixth-form colleges, which are not included in the AoC’s negotiations, will get a two-per-cent rise, backdated to last September, it was announced at the end of February.

The government needs to get a grip on the “outrageous and unjustifiable” subcontracting market which has become a “money-maker” for training providers, a panel of FE experts has urged MPs.

Robert Halfon (pictured above), the chair of the education select committee, asked witnesses during a parliamentary hearing this morning about the extent the delivery model, and the hefty management fees that go with it, affects the quality of apprenticeships.

“You will always need some level of subcontracting but it has been too high and some of the behaviour has been outrageous and unjustifiable,” said Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute.

FE providers coming together last week to set a voluntary cap of 20 per cent on management fees “was a start”, he added, but more action is needed.

Graham Hasting-Evans, the managing director of awarding organisation NOCN, agreed with Mr Evans.

“I don’t think the high degree of subcontracting we have lived with makes sense so I would like to see that reduced progressively,” he said.

FE Week’s editor Nick Linford was also called as a witness today, and he explained that the “reality on the ground” regarding subcontracting was that it had become a “money-maker” for many training providers.

“There is a large college which has £17 million of subcontracting, £4 million worth of management fees and I’d love you to have the principal in here explaining how they’re spending that £4 million,” he said.

“Their own board minutes say ‘we are doing more subcontracting which will increase our surplus’. That worries me a great deal, as subcontracting seems to be a way of supporting quite a fragile market.”

Mr Linford added that the ESFA needs to do “a lot more” around transparency because it “feels like subcontracting is a hidden market that nobody wants to talk about, and it is huge”.

Dr Alison Birkinshaw, the president of the Association of Colleges, said later in the session and that subcontracting can be “positive” for “niche and well thought-out relationships”, but she agreed that it needs to be “managed properly”.

Mr Halfon, a former apprenticeships and skills minister, echoed the concerns of the witnesses, giving the example of the nation’s biggest FE provider, Learndirect, where management fees have reached 40 per cent.

“Surely if the taxpayer is paying a provider to do something then the provider should do that job not just get a management fee for passing that job on to somebody else, unless it is a genuine niche area such as in special needs,” he said.

“The extent of it seems to be extraordinary, and the Learndirect example shows just how much of a money-maker it has become – and there’s the fact they face much less regulation than other providers.”

Under current rules, Ofsted does not inspect subcontractors.

It announced last month that it would “increase its focus on management and quality in subcontracting” through a couple of pilots.

However, these will not be full visits in their own right, and the subcontractors will not be given a grade.

Later in the hearing, the panel agreed on the need for a “coherent” skills strategy.

Addressing Mr Hasting-Evans, the chair said: “You actually said something very important, that we don’t have a skills strategy as a country. What do you think we should do as a government in terms of having a skills strategy to meet the needs of a fourth industrial revolution?”

“It has got to cover everything, schools, colleges, universities, and skills development in the workforce and adult education,” said Mr Hasting-Evans. “We need a strategy right across the piece that deals with some of the legacy issues we have – the six-and-half million people in the workforce who can’t read or write for example.”

Mr Evans agreed a strategy was needed.

“It can’t be a DfE document,” he stressed. “It needs to be about the learning benefits to health – a whole bunch of different departments – very much a cross government thing.”

Fears of a “middle-class grab” on apprenticeships are “valid”, the skills minister has admitted.

Anne Milton told a House of Lords inquiry into the economics of further, higher and technical education that she was “watching and waiting” to see what happened – and would take action if necessary.

“Fears of a middle-class grab on apprenticeships are valid,” she said. “The majority of apprenticeships are at level two and level three. I think they still make up 90 per cent of it.

“But if you look at the starts, the one area where starts have gone up is at degree level. I feel quite strongly that an apprenticeship can offer social mobility, so I sit and wait and watch.

“And there are levers that I can – that we can as a government – pull at various times. We could distort the market.”

She admitted it would be “unwise” for the government to pull any of those levers yet, as there is “an awful lot of change in a short amount of time”.

Ms Milton said she would like to “expand the programme”, which would entail discussions with the Chancellor “as we would have to have more money in the system”.

She was responding to a question posed by Lord Lamont, who referred to concerns raised by the AELP that the focus on higher-cost, higher-level apprenticeships would squeeze out opportunities for young people at lower levels.

The management apprenticeship framework soared in popularity in 2016/17 to become the second most popular, according to Department for Education statistics.

And levy-funded apprenticeships at higher or degree level jumped by a massive 424 per cent on the previous month in September, according to experimental statistics, although it’s not clear which standards or frameworks these relate to.

Degree apprenticeships were first launched in September 2015, but have only been eligible for funding since May last year.

AELP boss Mark Dawe has argued that the seemingly inexorable rise in higher- and degree-level apprenticeships puts the government’s social mobility commitment at risk.

“Someone having access to level two and moving on to a level three, that to me is what social mobility is about,” he said at an event last November.

Without changes to the current funding system “you can say bye bye to level two”, he warned.