An independent learning provider has boosted its grade to ‘outstanding’ – reversing a trend that has seen a number of providers lose the top accolade in recent weeks.
Ixion Holdings (Contracts) Limited received the highest grade overall and in five headline fields in a report published January 30, and based on an inspection in November.
Leaders and board members were found to have a “very clear strategic vision” for the Chelmsford-based not-for-profit provider, which delivers adult learning programmes, apprenticeships and traineeships.
“Senior leaders operate with great integrity; the organisation demonstrates substantial corporate and social responsibility through its work,” the report said.
“Excellent and fruitful partnerships” developed with a wide range of organisations had helped to “establish highly innovative learning programmes”, inspectors noted.
The “vast majority” of adult learners and trainees made “excellent progress”, thanks to “high-quality teaching and learning”.
Ixion’s apprenticeship provision was rated ‘good’ – the only area not to receive a grade one.
While the “vast majority” of apprentices “quickly develop excellent practical skills”, some had an “understanding of theoretical concepts” that was “less well developed”.
Skills Edge Training Ltd slipped a grade this week, from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’, in a report published February 2 and based on an inspection in December.
Leaders and managers were criticised for being “too slow” to take action on “all of the weaknesses identified at the previous inspection”, in 2015.
Apprentices – who make up the majority of the national provider’s learners – failed to make sufficiently good progress, with the result that “too few achieve within the timeframe allocated to them”.
Meanwhile, the small number of adult learners “make slow progress in developing their theoretical knowledge”, because teachers and assessors “do not plan and deploy effective teaching methods” in this area.
“Too many” learners and apprentices were also making “slow progress in developing the English and mathematical skills pertinent for their future prospects,” inspectors found.
In addition, the report noted: “Skills Edge managers do not assure the quality of training centres and do not routinely track and monitor learners’ progress.”
Cash incentives of £1,000 are being offered to every employer who takes on apprentices caught up in the collapse of Carillion.
The payments have been sourced by the Construction Industry Training Board in a £1.4 million package that sees firms receive £500 upfront, and a further £500 after six months if they’ve retained the displaced trainees.
Over 550 of the 1,400 affected apprentices have been given new job offers since the outsourcing giant ceased trading two weeks ago, according to the CITB.
If all the apprentices are found new employers, the board would pay £1.4 million over the next six months.
“To encourage employers to take on and retain Carillion apprentices, we will pay in-scope employers an encouragement grant of £500, with a further £500 retention grant after six months,” a CITB spokesperson explained.
“This is in addition to any apprenticeship grants an employer is entitled to.”
Meanwhile, the government this week confirmed that any former Carillion apprentice yet to find alternative employment will be paid beyond January, despite initial reports that they wouldn’t.
It’s a relief that the apprentices will at least get some pay
A story by The Huffington Post on January 29 claimed that Anne Milton had said payments to the out-of-work construction trainees would stop at the end of the month, in an answer to the shadow education secretary Angela Rayner.
“The ESFA can confirm that all affected apprentices will continue to be paid by the receiver until the end of January,” Ms Milton said.
The Department for Education later U-turned, and confirmed that pay would stretch beyond January 31.
“At present all former Carillion apprentices will continue to be paid while alternative employers are being sought,” a DfE spokesperson said.
She added that the CITB has already secured new employment, with wages, for nearly half of the apprentices and is working “around the clock” to sort out the others.
Liz Green, the mother of one former Carillion apprentice, called Alex, said it was a “relief” that the government stepped in to ensure that apprentices would still be paid.
She did however add that it “would have been nice” to have been personally informed on the Carillion “disaster”, rather than “relying on the press to tell us”.
Ms Rayner described the decision as a U-turn and said she hopes the government now sticks to its word.
Immediately after Carillion’s collapse, the CITB set up a project team to assist with the retention and redeployment of its apprentices.
Over 40,000 construction employers are said to have been contacted and encouraged to take on the trainees, who are mostly aged 16 to 18.
More than 850 employers have responded and offered job opportunities, the CITB said.
“I’m delighted that we’ve been able to help so many former Carillion apprentices; so many small firms have been critical in finding these roles but the job is not done,” said Gillian Cain, head of apprenticeships at CITB.
“I want to reassure those who have not yet received job offers that the team at CITB will continue to do everything they can to help apprentices find new employers and get on with their training. We are confident that with industry support we can get all apprentices back on track very soon.”
The Carillion apprentices were being taught at the company’s skills division, Carillion Training Services, which held a £6.5 million ESFA contract last year.
New education secretary Damian Hinds promised last week that he would ensure every apprentice affected by the collapse of the UK’s second biggest construction firm would be found new employment to complete their training.
Every month, Anne Milton, the minister in charge of skills and apprenticeships, will write a column for FE Week, giving her perspective on the issues facing the sector. For her first outing, she tackles the non-levy procurement exercise
As a government we have made significant changes to the way our apprenticeship system will work – placing quality at the heart of this programme, with employers centre-stage. Our wider reforms have introduced a number of important changes, which will naturally present challenges for businesses, so this is a chance for me to explain some of those.
I want to use my first column to talk about the non-levy procurement process, which was undertaken to fund organisations who can provide training to smaller businesses. This has meant providers have faced important changes to the way they receive funding before the apprenticeship service becomes the norm for every employer in 2019.
This procurement has been all about ensuring and increasing access to apprenticeship training for small- and medium-sized employers
The procurement exercise was not a policy choice, but as a contracting authority we were under a legal obligation to run it in order to comply with the EU’s Public Contracts Regulations 2015.
Tender exercises like this are always tough, and I’ve been open about these challenges after we had to restart it when we saw that the outcomes would not have delivered our goals of stability and continuity. Throughout this process, we have wanted to be careful, to take the time to get this right for providers, apprentices and employers. I know it won’t have been an easy time for many.
So that we can help keep the supply of training as stable as possible, we introduced a number of elements. This included capping the amount of funding for which different providers could bid, and a minimum contract award of £200,000 to make sure all contracts awarded would be financially viable. That naturally has led to disappointment from some, and I understand the challenges this led to for those who did not win contracts.
We wanted all providers to do their best and published evaluation and scoring criteria to help them in this process. Unfortunately, this was still a competition and not every bid – and we received over 1,000 of them – could be successful in such a highly competitive bidding process.
We were mindful of the uncertainty, and took steps to extend the contracts of all current providers that were unsuccessful by a further three months. Of course, we will also make sure all existing apprenticeships continue to be funded until they are completed.
This procurement has been all about ensuring and increasing access to apprenticeship training for small- and medium-sized employers. We are encouraging them to take on apprentices and to take advantage of support available, including the joint investment of 90 per cent of training and assessment costs for apprenticeships provided by the government.
The awards have maintained the same proportion of funding across each of the nine regions as is currently delivered, and allow providers to meet the demand across all of the sectors apprenticeships currently support.
Although its contracts are coming to an end, the government singled it out for special treatment by allowing it to retain its contracts for almost a year – much more than the usual three-month termination period.
Learndirect, which was subject to a recent National Audit Office investigation and Public Accounts Committee inquiry, was given £95 million from the ESFA for 2017/18.
The government’s wrong-headed performance measures do not work for 14-to-16 provision, and cannot give vocational learning the credit it deserves, writes Sam Parrett
Over two years ago, I wrote to what was then the EFA to express my concerns around the new Progress 8 performance measures and how they would be applied to our cohort of learners at 14 to 16.
Sadly these worries were not unfounded, as we have seen with the publication of the government’s latest school league tables. FE colleges offering 14-to-16 provision are languishing at the bottom, ranked as underperforming. This is disappointing and an unfair reflection of the very hard work done by students and staff across the FE sector.
Even more disappointing is the fact that we and others were assured that this would not happen. It is yet another reputational blow for an embattled sector which constantly has to fight for survival.
Is this really what “underperforming” looks like?
Progress 8 is based on a five-year secondary school model, in which pupils start at the end of key stage 2 and their progress is measured during KS3 and KS4. This isn’t how schooling works for those attending 14-to-16 provision at FE Colleges, as they typically join at the beginning of KS4.
The government’s own press release detailing GCSE results for 2016/17 clearly states that this fundamental difference between schools and colleges should be “taken into account when comparing [FE colleges’] results with those schools that start educating their pupils from the beginning of key stage 3”.
The DfE should surely admit that putting schools and colleges together in the same league tables is nonsensical and unfair. Apples are being compared to oranges and the real story behind the numbers is not being told.
With only 18 FE colleges in the country offering this unique alternative to mainstream school, the profile of their students will of course be different. Any student moving to college for the start of year 10 will usually be doing so due to interrupted schooling, permanent exclusion or disengagement from school.
Yet despite these difficult situations, many thrive in a college environment, achieving well and progressing onto level two and three courses or into apprenticeships. Most importantly they are not becoming NEET (of which they are at high risk) and have re-engaged with education.
In fact, every single student in our own year 11 cohort (61 in total) progressed successfully into employment, further education or training. Ninety-nine per cent achieved an English qualification and 97 per cent a maths qualification alongside their vocational programme. Is this really what “underperforming” looks like?
Being treated as an adult and focusing on a particular interest or talent made a huge difference to these children
However, rather than being able to celebrate this success, our board had to take the decision last year to close our 14-to-16 provision. Even though these young people make up less than one per cent of our total student community, the effect of these league tables on the reputation of our wider college is a risk we can’t afford to take.
This is a travesty for young people in Bromley who wanted and indeed needed a technical alternative to mainstream school. Being treated as an adult and focusing on a particular interest or talent made a huge difference to these children – and now they have little choice but to struggle on in an environment that doesn’t suit them or to drop out and become NEET.
We are not alone in our disappointment and I am sure others will sadly have to follow suit.
It is encouraging to see that the FE community, headed up by the AoC, has come out fighting, making a case for alternative accountability measures. They highlight the unique student profile that makes up 14-to-16 provision, the challenges faced and the very different measures of success that need to be considered.
I find it hard to understand why politicians and policymakers are failing to understand this issue. I would like to see DfE officials visiting 14-to-16 FE colleges, to observe the good work and devise less brutal ways of judging this innovative provision.
Ultimately the government must ensure that vocational learning – and the success it brings – is represented fairly and given the credit it absolutely deserves.
Sam Parrett is principal and CEO of London South East Colleges
32-year-old Jo Maher was recently appointed principal and CEO of Lincolnshire’s Boston College, so how is she coping with the pressure of such a high-profile job? FE Week went to find out.
When leading an institution of tens of thousands of students through a massive, systemic overhaul, there are a variety of attitudes one can take.
The stance adopted by the principal of Boston College reminds me of an elite sailor in an ocean race, watching the weather to predict the next squall, bringing her sails to optimal tension at the precise moment it hits.
“If they hold back the proliferation of apprenticeship standards to harmonise the T-levels behind them,” she says, when I suggest the skills minister’s attention might be divided between T-levels and apprenticeships, “then it’s good to have a handle on both. Because the initial concept was this 20-per-cent difference…”
Firing her words fast and with precision – weaving talk of FE college strategy with the language of high-performance – it’s not long before Jo Maher loses me. And since I get the feeling she’s too generous to notice, I help us both out by professing an ardent interest in something more concrete: the trajectory that brought her to be principal of the Lincolnshire FE college, barely 10 years after graduating from university.
I’d like to be judged on my competence, not my age
“I’d like to be judged on my competence, not my age,” she declares. “For me, it’s about building that credibility, based on my actions.”
Ofsted gave her just that opportunity last November: as she was preparing to pack up for the Association of Colleges’ annual conference in Birmingham, she got ‘the call’. But the 32-year-old insists she wasn’t fazed.
“I’m very calm in my style,” she explains. “I’ve been through that many Ofsted inspections now, that having one eight weeks into post… my staff team were confident, calm and controlled.”
The sports psychology graduate has been working in colleges since she was a student, initially as a sessional lecturer at Loughborough College and running their netball academy while studying for her masters at Loughborough University. She applied for a full-time job as she was finishing her degree.
“The day I handed in my thesis, I started my full time contract the next day … I’ve always been busy and had a lot of energy,” she says – aware she isn’t the norm.
In her capacity as a sports psychologist, she has supported Olympic athletes, professional golfers and rugby players, worked with Crewe Alexandra football club and WorldSkills Team UK, all the while working her way up steadily through the ranks of the college world.
“I was very passionate early on in my career that I wanted to go through every single level,” she insists, “so I progressed naturally through.”
Maher attributes her incredible work ethic to this background in sports.
“I think my competitiveness within my career is because I had to retire from sport young,” she admits, recalling an injury sustained at Loughborough, a stress fracture in her back. “I should still be playing football, really. I’m only 32, I should be still playing at the level I retired at.”
The ex-club footballer’s backstory is somehow mundane and remarkable at the same time.
I should still be playing football, really
At the age of seven, she used to jog two and half miles to get a lift to the stables on the weekend to earn herself free horse rides: “I’ve always been fit, I’ve always been into horses, and that was the work ethic; if you can muck out 12 horses at seven in the morning in minus two, you just develop it.”
A love of horses – and animals in general – runs in the family; her mum joined the mounted police immediately after school, and she traces her lifelong obsession back to her grandad’s work with shire horses on the milk floats in Liverpool. Her dad, also from a working class family in the centre of the port city, wasn’t sporty, but she has a fond early memory of him helping her mum prepare for the fitness bleep tests, post-maternity, in a car park.
“He put the cones two metres wider so she thought it was really hard,” she says. “And he knew on the day she’d breeze it.”
After taking her GCSEs at a comprehensive in her home town of Widnes, near Liverpool, Maher took five full A-levels at a local sixth-form college.
With referee Howard Webb
Desperate to get the two As and a B required for Loughborough University’s prestigious sports science course, she took PE, “obviously”, biology, which was required for the course, adding English literature and language as her strongest subject, and then to hedge her bets she threw in psychology and general studies, just to increase her chances of getting enough top grades.
She stayed at Loughborough College for nine years after graduation, progressing from sessional lecturer right the way through to head of department, during which time she taught “the whole suite of FE, higher education and apprenticeships”. This was followed by two years as assistant principal at Reaseheath College, a specialist land-based college in Cheshire.
WorldSkills came calling in 2012, because of the work she was doing with an Olympic athlete, and her first global tournament was in Leipzig. Since Maher was the first psychologist used by Team UK at WorldSkills, she found herself building a programme from scratch, including a whole series of boot camps to prepare the competitors both physically and psychologically.
With Peter Lauener and Theo Paphitis at WorldSkills
“It doesn’t matter if you’re a welder or a beauty therapist. We’re looking at high performance, how they cope under pressure.”
While there was plenty that could be transferred from the world of elite sport, some challenges were intense in a different way: “If you’re a 100-metre sprinter, you’re performing five times potentially for 10 seconds. Some of these are 16-hour competitions. It’s brutal.”
Sustaining that over three or four days, psychologically, can be draining, and Maher accompanies the student competitors to the venues and is available for them throughout.
“I’m their 24/7 psychological support. If they ring me at three in the morning in my hotel room because they’re having an anxiety attack, guess who’s there?” she says.
Despite taking the top job at Boston, she still went to WorldSkills in AbuDhabi last October as the team’s practitioner psychologist. As well as an ethical commitment to the mission, she explains that after supporting the team for two years, “to withdraw three weeks before wouldn’t be the right thing”. She has donated the money from WorldSkills to a charitable fund, supporting learners from her college with aspirations – whether they need travel to an international sports competition or simply access to a food bank.
If you’re doing a good job, any auditor, any inspector can come in on any day, because that should be the level that you are performing at
A sports evangelist, she points out that “if physical activity was bottled as a tablet and people just had to take it, it would be bigger than antidepressants”. The trick is getting people to make the lifestyle change before the platform is burning, which is why she’s big on wellbeing initiatives, such as coffee-and-chat breaks, or “getting staff to own physical activity and invite their peers along, because it builds self-efficacy”.
Having attended university with elite athletes and future England football players, Maher doesn’t seem to question the premise that one should aim for excellence in every aspect of life.
“I’ve come out of the world of sport,” she says, “Olympic-standard, where we talk about marginal gains and one-per-cents, and we want reflective practitioners who are always aspiring to get that extra second.”
She applies the same philosophy to her college, which, despite having just received its second ‘good’ Ofsted rating, she insists is “really on that journey to ‘outstanding’”.
It is not uncommon for leaders of educational establishments to admit, when pressed on whether there is really a difference between ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’, that the distinction is moot, inspectors’ judgments are unreliable, there’s unconscious bias, and it’s always going to be something of a fluke whether you get a grade two or one.
But the idea doesn’t seem to compute: “My clear message to the staff is that if we have no external quality-assurance tomorrow, what does excellence and high performance look like for Boston?” she responds. “If you’re doing a good job, any auditor, any inspector can come in on any day, because that should be the level that you are performing at. And I really believe in the staff team to do that.”
It’s a personal thing
Best work trip?
Jo and her dog, Dolly
It has to be Turkmenistan. We went with Loughborough University to consult on building their capacity to host the Asian indoor martial arts games. I went in as a sport educationalist to see how they would train their coaches, infrastructure and staff to improve in the world rankings.
Best memory of a sports tour?
Playing netball against the Trinidad and Tobago under-21 national team in Barbados. I dislocated my shoulder, put it back in my socket and carried on, but it was an unbelievable experience. We did yoga on the beach every morning.
Ideal gift?
An experience. Either to a different country – I love travelling – or to a fine dining restaurant, but I don’t really like opening things.
Favourite book?
Sue Grafton’s alphabet crime series. She wrote the books all the way up to Y, then she died this Christmas – I was gutted.
What motto would you like your staff to see every morning?
Wake up every morning with energy, enthusiasm and resilience.
This article was corrected on 05/02/18 to reflect the fact that Maher worked at Loughborough College, not Loughborough University.
It states that colleges are expected to begin to work towards these standards, which have been designed over the past three years to ensure they succeed in a post-16 setting, now and meet them by the end of 2020.
The guidance then warns that colleges risk losing their grant funding if the demands are not met in that timescale.
“Colleges are expected to comply with this guidance and this forms part of the conditions of grant funding,” it said.
“In the event of non-compliance it is open to the ESFA to take action in accordance with the provisions of its grant agreement.”
The careers strategy includes £4 million to support every school and college to have a careers leader, and a further £5 million funding to develop 20 careers hubs.
One of the benchmarks is called “encounters with employers and employees”. The DfE said it expects every college to begin to offer every learner at least two “meaningful encounters” with an employer each year and should meet this in full by the end of 2020.
This could, for example, involve students attending careers events, participating in CV workshops and mock interviews, mentoring, employer-delivered employability workshops, or business games and enterprise competitions.
At least one of these “encounters” should be related to learners’ fields of study.
From September 2018, every college should appoint a named person to the role of “careers leader” to lead the programme. Every college should also publish the careers programme on its website.
The DfE said it “recognises” that the work needed to meet all eight Benchmarks will vary for each college, but in any case they should be met by the end of 2020.
An online self-evaluation tool, Compass, will be available in September 2018 for colleges to “assess” how their careers support compares against the Gatsby Benchmarks and the national average.
The Careers and Enterprise Company has also said it will provide external support to colleges.
The eight benchmarks are:
A stable careers programme
Learning from career and labour market information
Regulating the quality of training in this proliferation of actors will be mission impossible for Ofsted.
But however hard monitoring and reporting on the apprenticeship delivery taking place across England is going to be, there needs to be a solid plan with substantial and additional resource.
Against a backdrop of public funding cuts, it is still vital that the Department for Education invests substantially in the inspectorate.
Failure to do so will be to fail to protect the apprenticeship brand along with any of the apprentices participating.
Unless there’s the space for young people to transfer the skills they learn onto another route, we risk locking them into careers they no longer want to follow, writes Julie Hyde
With just under a week to go until the Institute for Apprenticeships closes its consultation on the occupational maps for the new T-levels, there are many problems that need to be addressed.
Some are basic errors and easy to fix, but others are larger structural problems requiring thought, which I hope organisations across the sector will highlight in their responses, and decision-makers will recognise.
The maps set out the skilled occupations in the 15 new vocational education routes. Each map has pathways for possible career progression, and clusters that group together occupations with similar training requirements: shared skills, knowledge or behaviours. The core content of T-levels will be based on the chosen route and pathway, with more specialised content based on the specific occupation.
These maps will form the basis for a “coherent curriculum” and are designed to offer clear and credible routes into employment. However, as they stand, they demonstrate a lack of understanding of the occupations they cover, and the realities for young people making decisions about future careers.
How many of us are in exactly the job that we thought we would end up in at 16?
It is vital that the new qualifications have flexibility built in, and are portable. This is particularly evident in our specialist areas: education and childcare, and health and social care. In the current system, many learners start down one of these routes and end up choosing a career in another. Crucially, they can do so without having to start from scratch.
The routes do not divide as neatly in practice as they will in the new system. Occupations in these sectors require many of the same skills and attract similar personalities and learners, who know they want to work in a caring profession, but may not know exactly where their strengths and interests lie.
If the qualifications are not portable from day one, we risk closing options off – and choices made at 16 could limit career options long term. We are in danger of oversimplifying the system and forcing learners to specialise too early on.
This is unlikely to be a recipe for success. How many of us are in exactly the job that we thought we would end up in at 16? Can we really expect a 16-year-old who has an interest in working in the care sector to know confidently that they want to work with adults in a social care setting until they have experienced the work first-hand?
We know that many of our learners currently move freely between childcare, education, health, and adult social care, as their interests and priorities change.
This is important to ensure that they find a career that suits them and gives them job satisfaction – which in turn is vital to delivering the skilled, motivated workforce that these sectors require.
Under the current proposals, the social care route would be apprenticeship only, arguably a mistake.
Many of the qualifications that learners currently take to pursue occupations within the route are delivered successfully in classroom settings and there is no reason that a credible T-level route cannot be created – either as a distinct path or within the health and science route. After all, integrating health and social care is also a government priority, and the workforce is crucial to delivering this shift and will need transferable skills to make it work.
This would also allow learners to choose the mode of learning that suits them best, ensuring that they have a better chance of completing the qualification and succeeding.
If the new system does not work for learners in practice, it will ultimately fail to deliver for employers. It is vital that decision-makers ensure that learners’ needs and experiences are taken into account. We need the system to be flexible enough to allow young people to find the right path, otherwise some will fall through the cracks, and the government’s ambition to create world-class vocational education will flounder.
