College challenges local young people to make a water heating system as part of STEM campaign

In its campaign to get more people into STEM careers, Northampton College ran a competition challenging local young people to create a solar-powered water heating system from scratch, reports Samantha King.

The week-long Big Rig challenge, held at the college’s Booth Lane campus, pitched eight teams made up of apprentices and school pupils against each other to create a water-heating system on a specially constructed scaffold.

The winners

An all-female team emerged victorious, scoring highest in criteria including how effective they were as a team, how well they understood and executed the project, and their economical use of materials.

The teams were put together by the college after registering their interest in the challenge, and met for the first time on the day of the event.

“Each member was given a particular role, so there would have been a project manager, a health and safety lead and a couple of engineers,” explained Patrick Leavey, deputy principal of the college. “For many students, particularly school pupils, they would have heard about the different types of solar panel in their science lessons, but for many of them this was the first time they would have physically touched one, connected it to pipe work and positioned it to maximise its heating potential.”

There are plans to run the competition again next year but with a different task relating to another STEM area.

“Some departments in the college have seen the rig outside, and they’re coming up with innovative ideas about the different types of tasks we could develop to happen on the scaffold,” said Mr Leavey. “Our public services students and their teachers there are thinking about designing a forensic task exercise, with different clues in different areas of the rig.”

The Big Rig challenge was the latest activity the college has run in its ongoing ‘Igniting the Spark’ campaign, running workshops on the solar system for seven schools in Northamptonshire in conjunction with the UK Space Academy earlier this year.

Ofsted watch: An encouraging week for FE and skills

An adult and community learning provider has boosted its grade to ‘good’ in a positive week for the FE and skills sector, as two providers received glowing reports following monitoring visits of their apprenticeship provision.

Hackney London Borough Council was rated grade two across the board, up from its previous ‘requires improvement’ rating, in a report published May 16 and based on an inspection in mid March.

Learners, many of whom “experience social, emotional and health difficulties” make “good progress” and “benefit significantly from courses which reduce their isolation and dependency on other services”, inspectors noted.

Leaders and managers have “high aspirations” for learners, the report said, and have created a “nurturing and purposeful environment that supports learners well to take positive strides in their lives”.

They also “work very effectively” with subcontractors – of whom five are listed in the report – “to provide value for money and to achieve their mission to provide education to residents who experience disadvantage”.

Both employer provider Virgin Trains Sales Limited and independent learning provider ARC Academy Limited had monitoring visit reports of their apprenticeship provision published this week.

Leaders at Virgin, which began delivering level two and three apprenticeships in customer care and team leader in 2017, were found to being making ‘significant progress’ in ensuring it was meeting all the requirements of successful provision.

They were found to “share a vision” of providing high-quality training, and to “communicate very effectively their passion for apprentices to be ‘the best that they can be’”, according to the report published May 17 and based on a visit in late April.

“Well-organised training programmes ensure that when apprentices join their on-board crew members, they are able to participate in providing high-quality service,” the report said.

The provider was found to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in ensuring that apprentices benefit from high-quality training that leads to positive outcomes, and in ensuring that safeguarding was effective.

Managers had “implemented appropriate quality monitoring processes” to evaluate training, and were using these to “review effectively the standard of apprentices’ work”.

ARC, based in Wales, which delivers level two apprenticeships in construction and rail engineering, was a subcontractor before being a lead provider.

In a report published May 17 and based on a visit in early April, inspectors found them to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in all three themes.

Leaders were “committed and determined to deliver effective apprentice training” and “demonstrably keen to manage and further improve” provision.

“Leaders recognise that there is always more work to be done and have plans in place that demonstrate the potential to bring about any improvements necessary,” it said.

Staff were also found to “use their industry-specific expertise and insight very well”, and to “maintain very effective, close working relationships with a range of large employers”.

Where off-the-job training was “well-planned” it helped to enhance “apprentices’ understanding of the theoretical aspects of their day-to-day job”.

But the report noted “some variation in the quality of off-the-job training is evident” and that in some cases it was limited to “general advice and guidance”.

Independent learning provider Access Training Limited held onto its grade two rating, following a short inspection in late April.

No general FE or sixth form colleges had inspection reports published this week.

Adult and community learning Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Hackney London Borough Council 13/03/18 16/05/18 2 3

 

Employer providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Virgin Trains Sales Limited 24/04/18 17/05/18 Monitoring Monitoring

 

Independent learning providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
A R C Academy UK Limited 11/04/18 17/05/18 Monitoring Monitoring

 

Short inspection (remains grade 2) Inspected Published
Access Training Limited 24/04/18 16/05/18

 

Principals blast London’s £3m adult education budget top-slice

London college bosses have hit out at London’s mayor Sadiq Khan after FE week revealed he plans to top-slice £3 million from the adult education budget to pay over 50 new bureaucrats from next year.

The money will be siphoned from frontline learning to cover the wages of administrators managing AEB in the capital when devolution kicks in.

But the news hasn’t been taken well. The principal of the capital’s third largest college group, London South East Colleges, tweeted criticism within minutes of our story being published online on April 14.

“Shocking and hugely disappointing that this has been allowed to happen and divert £3 million from this underfunded sector to pay for administrative officers @MayorofLondon #accountability #valueformoney #skillsforlife ultimately hurting learners the most,” Sam Parrett (pictured above left) said.

“It is difficult to see how the devolution promise of better long-term economic and social outcomes and the reductions in social and economic inequalities can be achieved by spending up to £3 million on administration,” she told FE Week later.

The decision appeared to be “rebalancing the books” at the Greater London Authority, “not the local economy, or the FE sector which delivers most of this provision within an already underfunded system”.

“It was always a concern, and is no surprise, that devolution will require an extra layer of bureaucracy and administration,” said Andy Wilson (pictured above right), principal of Capital City College Group, the largest group in London.

“The hope now is it will also quickly provide colleges with new flexibilities and autonomy.”

The first comment posted on our website, from Terry Bentley, said: “And so the disaster begins to unfold. Devolution = 350 AEB managers popping up around the country when 20 were doing the job perfectly adequately at the ESFA. And that 350 is just in the devolved regions! Learners shafted by self-indulgent local bureaucrats yet again.”

The 53-strong team will form a skills and employment unit to dish out the AEB from 2019/20, which will amount to around £311 million per year for London.

Its total cost will be £3.245 million per year, for which £3.028 million will be top-sliced from the AEB because it is directly attributable to budget.

Among the staff will be one assistant director, whose annual pay packet will reach £139,000. The other 52 employees will earn similarly healthy wages [see table].

However, many of the tasks they will carry out will simply duplicate the work that the Education and Skills Funding Agency already does.

The GLA blamed the ESFA for the situation, claiming it refused to give a “service offer”, which includes procurement, audit, contract management, direct access to data and changes to the Individual learner record systems.

Mr Khan (pictured above centre) is asking the funding agency to reconsider.

The GLA maintains that this decision has been forced upon it by a government refusing to provide administration funding for the AEB, despite “lobbying consistently” for more cash.

“The mayor warmly welcomes control of these devolved funds – but it makes little sense to give him responsibility for more than £300 million a year without the resource that will allow him to spend it speedily and effectively,” a spokesperson said.

He pointed out that staff costs associated with the skills unit are less than one per cent of the budget being devolved.

The Department for Education told FE Week it has agreed to provide funding to support the GLA “to prepare effectively for taking on the AEB”.

“Once the AEB has been devolved, it will be for the mayoral authority to determine how best it spends the funding to help learners,” a spokesperson added.

The situation got a mention at this week’s education select committee meeting, where the chair Robert Halfon described the plan as a “waste of public money”.

In any organisation good management is crucial to good delivery

Skills minister Anne Milton said she “hates” money spent on management but “in any organisation good management is crucial to good delivery”.

The DfE, she claimed, had “factored in” some money in the combined authorities’ budgets for administration”.

The GLA is one of eight mayoral combined authorities with deals to take control of AEB spending in their regions from 2019/20.

FE Week spoke to a number of the other combined authorities to find out about their expected bureaucracy costs when devolution rolls out, but none could provide exact figures as final budgets have not yet been agreed.

Tees Valley, the west Midlands and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough all said that they are working with the government to develop a service offer in the most cost efficient way possible to support learners.

The other areas of the country to have devolution deals in place for 2019/20 are the Liverpool City region, Greater Manchester, the West of England, and the Sheffield City region.

Nick Linford’s editorial: Devolution means cutting courses to pay for more pen-pushers

Ofsted: Apprenticeships are beginning to look like Train to Gain

The quality of apprenticeships is in decline, Ofsted has said, and the programmes are starting to resemble the doomed Train to Gain initiative from the mid 00s.

The inspectorate’s deputy director for FE and skills told MPs on the commons education select committee earlier this week that around half of inspections carried out so far this year have resulted in ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ ratings for apprenticeships.

Paul Joyce (pictured above) reiterated concern about the “very mixed picture of quality” at the Skills and Education Group’s conference, where he warned that the inspectorate is beginning to find traits of previous failed programmes creeping back in to delivery.

We want to avoid a Train to Gain-type programme being badged as an apprenticeship

“We are concerned and want to avoid a Train to Gain-type programme being badged as an apprenticeship,” he told delegates.

“We are finding that providers are struggling with the implementation of some of these reformed programmes. There are examples where off-the-job training is still not demanding enough.”

Ofsted is “particularly concerned” where it is starting to find “some issues where very little off-the-job training is taking place”, particularly with apprentices that are enrolled on programmes for the “older age demographic”.

Train to Gain was launched in 2006 to encourage employers to deliver vocational training to adult workers.

However, the business minister at the time, John Hayes, said the flagship training service was a “deadweight cost” that had no future because it gave money to highly profitable employers to train their staff when they were already willing to pick up the bill.

It was scrapped in 2010.

Mr Joyce said apprenticeships “must develop new and substantial skills and knowledge” in order for them to identify as an actual apprenticeship programme.

“If they are not and if providers aren’t enabling that to happen, then their apprenticeship programme is unlikely to be graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’,” he added.

FE Week’s analysis of the figures shows that the apprenticeship provision grade profile improved at the end of 2017, where 59 per cent of inspected providers were rated grade one or two for apprenticeships.

However, this dropped by three percentage points between January and May this year.

“It is a very mixed picture what we are seeing in terms of the implementation of the apprenticeship reforms and their impact on quality,” Mr Joyce told the committee.

“The quality we are generally seeing is certainly not a universally positive picture.”

During the hearing it came to light that there is much confusion over who is accountable for quality in apprenticeships, whether it is Ofsted or the ESFA.

MPs on the committee said the ESFA had recently “undermined” the inspectorate by allowing a provider described as “not fit for purpose” to continue training apprentices.

Skills minister Anne Milton admitted there is a lack of clarity over the accountability system which needs to be fixed.

Archbishop of Canterbury visits FE students

The archbishop of Canterbury has visited students at North Warwickshire and South Leicestershire College’s Nuneaton campus.

The Most Reverend Justin Welby, who married Prince Harry and Meghan Markle this weekend, visited the college as part of a four-day trip around Coventry and Warwickshire, and confessed to students he was “quite nervous” about his role in the wedding.

As well as finding out about learners’ experiences of college, the archbishop was privy to practical demonstrations in carpentry, hairdressing and catering, and even received a massage from a beauty therapy student.

“His visit was a fantastic opportunity for our students to showcase their talents, and to tell their stories to the archbishop,” said Marion Plant, the principal and chief executive of the college. “We hope that his visit has helped him to understand how well students at all levels can develop with the support of a strong college community. He certainly left us with a sense of deep encouragement and support.”

Devolution means cutting courses to pay for more pen-pushers

There’s a degree of inevitability about watching local government top-slicing FE funding as part of the devolution agenda.

The DfE’s “protection” of the adult education budget at £1.5 billion per year will end when the mayoral combined authorities get their hands on the money from August 2019.

We now know the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, plans to raid this budget for adult courses to fund dozens of new, highly-paid Greater London Authority policy officers, at a cost of over £3 million per year.

Raids like this on the education budget are inevitable and likely to rise because, to put it plainly, the DfE is removing the ring-fence.

The GLA blames the DfE for forcing it to dip into the education budget, and the DfE sheepishly admits it will do nothing to stop the mayor.

The skills minister should step in and only agree devolution deals which include a clause which enforces the ringfence and forbids any raid on the adult education budget.

Failing that, the mayor will have to answer to the London electorate on why he’s cutting investment in adult education.

Read more: Principals blast London’s £3m adult education budget top-slice

More support for disadvantaged apprentices is needed

With the latest figures on apprenticeship starts published today, its easy to get pulled into the debate about whether or not government will hit its three million target, and indeed whether or not it matters.

The Learning and Work Institute has welcomed efforts to expand apprenticeships, but we’re clear that as numbers increase, it is vital that each apprenticeship is high-quality with genuine outcomes, and that no one who is able to undertake an apprenticeships is prevented from doing so. Put simply, our mantra is quality and access.

As today’s levy stats show, funding is key to both of these.

And this applies as much to the wider funding and support model, as it does to the use of the levy. If we want more people of all backgrounds to succeed through an apprenticeship, then we need to ensure that funding models are fit for purpose, and that providers and employers understand how funding can be accessed and used to provide support to all who need it.

If we want more people of all backgrounds to succeed through an apprenticeship, then we need to ensure that funding models are fit for purpose

We were delighted therefore to be asked by the Department for Education to explore the effectiveness of funding to support apprentices with a learning difficulty or disability and/or apprentices from a disadvantaged background – research which has been published today alongside the government’s apprenticeship funding policy.

In May 2017, the new apprenticeships funding model introduced additional support for apprentices with learning difficulties and disabilities, including payments of £1,000 per year for providers and employers working with 19- to 24-year old care leavers or those with an education health and care plan (EHCP), alongside additional learning support, excess learning support and exceptional learning support funds. Disadvantage uplift payments within frameworks were continued as a transitional measure, with a commitment to review support for apprentices from disadvantaged areas in due course.

Our research looked in particular at how support needs are defined, identified and met – and how effective current funding arrangements in ensuring that this happens.

Across the board, providers and employers recognised that some apprentices need additional support to help them access and progress in their apprenticeship. They agreed that this is broadly consistent with the areas where additional funding is made available. However providers also argued that support funding should be more widely available – in particular to cover apprentices who have learning support needs but don’t have an EHCP and those with a range of social and safeguarding needs, perhaps as a result of poor mental health, caring responsibilities, being homeless, or facing financial hardship.

While additional learning support (ALS) and the disadvantage uplift were shown to be well known and used by providers, awareness and understanding of other forms of support were much lower – with very few having claimed funding for 19- to 24-year-olds with EHCPs and care leavers.

In explaining this difference, providers point to a lack of clarity around eligibility and process for claiming ALS as potentially off-putting, suggesting that this has encouraged risk aversion, leading some to only claim for a small proportion for the support they provide.

In contrast, providers were much more positive about the disadvantage uplift, recognising both the stability and flexibility that this provides them with, enabling them to plan provision on a longer term basis.

We are therefore pleased that the funding guidance published today, informed by our research, has confirmed the continuation of the disadvantage uplift and includes a commitment to make the funding rules more clear.

We are also delighted that care leavers will now also receive a £1,000 bursary when they begin their apprenticeships, in recognition of the heightened financial pressures that these young people can face in living independently.

All of this is a great start, though we believe much more still needs to be done. And of course none of this will make any difference unless apprentices and their providers are aware of the changes and confident that they can use these funds to provide support for all who need it, making a positive difference to their apprenticeship experience.

Fiona Aldridge is assistant director for research and development at the Learning and Work Institute

Care leavers earn £1,000 apprenticeship bursary

Young care leavers starting an apprenticeship from August will receive a one-off bursary of £1,000.

It’s one of a number of “minor adjustments” to guidance on apprenticeship funding from August 1, announced by the Department for Education on Thursday.

Other changes include a doubling in the number of funding bands from 15 to 30, and the retention of extra cash payments to providers training the youngest and most disadvantaged apprentices.

“At this time, we have looked to prioritise stability for the market, and these are minor adjustments to support employers, providers and apprentices,” the document said.

The one-off £1,000 payment for care leavers aged 16 to 24 is intended to help them with the “extra barriers” they face in the transition to the world of work.

The cash, which will come from the DfE’s existing apprenticeships budget, will be paid “once to each care leaver in the eligible age range” via their training provider.

Matthew Reed, the chief executive of The Children’s Society, has long urged the government to introduce a similar bursary.

“Care leavers have told us how they have struggled to make ends meet and pay the bills after taking up an apprenticeship on low rates of pay when they cannot rely on additional support from parents such as being able to continue living in the family home,” he said.

“We hope this grant will make apprenticeships a more viable option for young people looking to find work after leaving care and help set them on the path to a brighter future.”

The 20-per-cent uplift for 16- to 18-year-old apprentices on frameworks, and additional payments for those in disadvantaged areas, first introduced in 2016 as a transitional measure, will continue for at least another year, the new guidance revealed.

“We have seen starts on standards grow, which are generally funded at higher rates, but we know that many providers are still delivering substantial numbers of frameworks, including to 16- to 18-year-olds,” it said.

“It is important that apprentices are still able to undertake these frameworks until the relevant standards are available.”

“As such, we will be continuing to provide a payment equivalent to 20 per cent of the funding band maximum to providers training 16- to 18-year-olds on frameworks, and additional payments to providers training individuals from disadvantaged areas on frameworks.”

 

There will be 30 funding bands in place from August – up from the current 15.

The upper limit of those bands will range from £1,500 to £27,000, with the expectation that employers will negotiate with providers over price.

“All existing apprenticeship frameworks and standards will be placed into a band within the new structure that has the same upper limit as under the 15 funding band structure,” it said.

The new guidance follows the DfE’s announcement in February that it would review the funding band structure, because employers did not “feel able” to negotiate with providers on price.

Movers and Shakers: Edition 245

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving

David Gartland, Principal, Abbeygate Sixth Form College

Start date: September 2018
Previous job: Principal, Lowestoft Sixth-Form College
Interesting fact: David is a keen Newcastle United supporter.

____________________________________________

Tim Hulme, Executive director resources and organisational development, East Sussex College Group

Start date: May 2018
Previous job: Interim chief executive, Rye Academy Trust
Interesting fact: Tim once scored two goals in the FA Cup for Crawley Town during a second-round tie in the 1991-92 season.

____________________________________________

Rebecca Conroy, Principal, Eastbourne and Lewes Professional and Technical College

Start date: May 2018
Previous job: Vice-principal, Greater Brighton Metropolitan College
Interesting fact: Rebecca is a trained harpist and has performed widely as a soloist and in orchestras.  

____________________________________________

Tom Arrand, Principal, Padworth College

Start date: September 2018
Previous job: Acting head, Monmouth School for Girls
Interesting fact: Outside of work, Tom loves the great outdoors, music and sport and is a keen photographer.

____________________________________________

Steve Barker, Sales director, SEETEC

Start date: February 2018
Previous job: Director, People Plus
Interesting fact: Steve is a descendant of Charles Dickens.

 

If you want to let us know of any new faces at the top of your college, training provider or awarding organisation please let us know by emailing news@feweek.co.uk