Two aspiring makeup artists have had work experience on a new comedy series starring Jonny Vegas, Mackenzie Crook and Emma Thompson.
Middlebrough College makeup artistry students Aimie Carr, 19, and Emma Dodds (pictured), 17, spent several days working on the set of the new production, which has not yet been revealed to the public, honing the skills acquired on their level three advanced technical diploma.
The pair also experienced the challenges of makeup continuity and a demanding filming schedule.
Following their placement, Benidorm star Johnny Vegas has requested their skills for another shoot taking place in the north-east.
“It’s very easy for students to get star struck in situations like this, particularly as the crew work, eat lunch and relax with the cast,” said Heather Ferguson, the college’s hair and media makeup course leader who organised the placement. “This didn’t phase Aimie and Emma, and they showed total professionalism at all times.”
Emma added: “It was a fantastic experience to be able to work on a real production, and it’s confirmed to me that a career in media makeup is exciting and rewarding.”
Delegates from the Ghanaian Ministry of Education and National Teaching Council visited New City College’s Hackney campus to learn more about vocational education.
The visit was organised by the British Council to aid the Ghanaian government in their drive to develop technical and vocational education in the country.
As part of the trip, the guests toured the campus, observed carpentry and hospitality training sessions, and took part in a round table with college managers, where they discussed how staff were recruited and trained, and the benefit of vocational training to students.
“We were delighted to welcome our visitors to the campus, and to share our experiences with the key people who will be able to impact the development of skills training and education in Ghana,” said Richard Surtees, New City College’s director of international.
“We were impressed with what we have seen and hope that through this visit we can improve technical and vocational educational training in Ghana,” added
Enoch Cobbinah, the director of Ghana’s Ministry of Education.
Bald hens at Reaseheath College are keeping warm with jumpers knitted for them by learners.
The 12 former battery hens had never been outside before and had poor feathering as a result, so animal behaviour students pulled together to knit the woolly outfits to keep them warm in the cold weather.
Free-range fashion
Since joining the college, the hens have already started to grow new feathers, and students are closely monitoring their progress and behaviour as they transition to free-range hens at the college’s onsite zoo.
The hens are just over a year old, and were adopted by the college from the British Hen Welfare Trust, a rehoming charity for commercial laying hens destined for slaughter.
“The hens responded very quickly by showing natural behaviour such as perching and scratching the ground, and will hopefully go on to enjoy long and happy lives with us,” said Lauren Lane, head keeper at the college.
“It looks like they’re being thoroughly spoilt which is the kind of life we want for all our ex-battery hens,” added Francesca Taffs, communications officer for the British Hen Welfare Trust. “While the jumpers are not something we would generally recommend for rehomer use, it’s clear these little ladies are being monitored and cared for closely.”
WATCH: The Reaseheath College hens get their jumpers fitted
The National College for Motorsport (NC4M) has been recognised for its services to the motorsport industry, reports Samantha King.
The college, which was established in 2003, was presented the MIA Service to Industry Award at the Motorsport Industry Association’s Business Excellence Awards in January, attended by representatives from across the motor industry, including people from Bentley, British Aerospace and Porsche.
Students get to work on Lewis Hamilton’s car
Categories at the awards included the ‘teamwork award’, ‘technology and innovation award’ and ‘business of the year with annual sales over £5 million award’. Winners in each category were voted for by industry professionals and MIA members.
The NC4M was up against Ginetta, a specialist builder of racing and sports cars, the service charity Mission Motorsport and the Warwick Manufacturing Group in the ‘service to the industry’ category, and was the only educational establishment to receive an award at the event.
The college won for its performance in training, guiding young people into apprenticeships as race mechanics, and its “dedication to the future of motorsport”, a spokesperson for MIA said.
“The MIA represents all aspects of the industry at the highest level so it is especially nice for them to recognise our work,” said Chris Weller, a motorsport apprenticeship assessor at NC4M, who accepted the award on behalf of the college. “The majority of our students go onto to work within the industry, some working in Formula One and in teams based all over the world.
“We provide specialist training and the feedback we receive from the industry is that we get it right – they want to employ our students.”
Based at the Silverstone Circuit, the college is part of Tresham College and the Bedford College Group, and was the first college in the UK to achieve the Motorsport Academy employer recognition scheme charter mark for training race mechanics.
New animal murals now festoon the walls of a hospital’s radiography department to help cheer up children who have to go in for X-rays.
Painted by Barnet and Southgate College’s level three art and design students, the two large murals depicting colourful jungle scenes are on display at Barnet Hospital, and formed part of a work experience module to come up with a creative distraction for patients.
Aoife Drummond (and panda)
The paintings took two weeks to complete, and pupils from nearby Brunswick Park Primary School raised £250 through cake sales and a school tuck shop to pay for paints and other materials.
“It has been a great experience working on the mural,” said 18-year-old student Aoife Drummond, who painted the panda in the mural. “It’s lovely to hear the positive comments from staff and the school children.”
“We are very grateful for their huge commitment,” added Dr Steve Shaw, chief executive of Barnet Hospital. “It will make the experience at hospital a hundred times better for the children who will need to come here for their X-rays.”
Start date: December 2017 Previous job: Operations director, Your Housing Group Interesting fact: Louise is an identical twin, which she says can come in handy at times. She won’t reveal why.
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Alison Munro, Chair, the National College for High Speed Rail
Start date: November 2017 Previous job: Advisor to HS2 and non-executive director, Ofwat (ongoing) Interesting fact: Alison previously led the strategy and implementation plans for a £6 billion programme for advanced management of motorways, working for the Department for Transport.
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Altaf Hussain, Principal, Luton Sixth Form College
Start date: September 2018 Previous job: Vice-principal for students and quality, Luton Sixth Form College Interesting fact: One of Altaf’s earliest childhood memories is washing his Action Man and hanging him out to dry on the washing line. He can still vividly see him clinging on for dear life as the wind blew.
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Fay Gibbin, CEO, BB Training Academy
Start date: January 2018 Previous job: Training manager, BB Training Academy Interesting fact: As a new year’s resolution, Fay began learning to ski, and hopes by next year she’ll be able to keep up with her children on the slopes.
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Seb Schmoller, Chair of governors, the Sheffield College
Start date: January 2018 Previous job: Chief executive, Association for Learning Technology Interesting fact: Seb is an avid Nordic ski-tourer and cyclist, previously winning a Brompton world championship team event in 2010.
Ifyou 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
The government increased the size of the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP) by 354 today, pushing the total to 2,187 organisations with direct access to funding and in scope for Ofsted inspection.
The number of apprenticeship providers now in scope for Ofsted inspection, assuming the vast majority recruit level two and three apprentices, has now more than doubled since the levy reforms were introduced last year.
The majority of successful organisations in this third official application window are private companies, 12 of which have yet to file their first set of accounts with Companies House.
In addition, 15 universities, including the University of Cambridge, join the register taking the total number of universities on RoATP to just over 100. Under current arrangements, degree level apprenticeships will be inspected by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and where there is a prescribed HE qualification contained within an apprenticeship at Levels 4 to 5, this will be done jointly with Ofsted.
Funding allocations for 2016/17 suggest that prior to the introduction of RoAPT there were 837 providers in scope for inspection and in the same year Ofsted inspected 189 providers on the delivery of their apprenticeships.
In a wide ranging FE Week interview last March, the Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman was asked about the impact of RoATP, which Ms Spielman said included “a lot of people with very limited experience and potentially quite a lot of fragmentation,”
When pressed on a prediction that the number of providers would exceed 2000, against a backdrop of ongoing budget reductions at Ofsted, Ms Spielman said she and Paul Joyce, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills, were “worried”.
Earlier this month, at a recent Public Accounts Committee hearing, Ms Spielman said: “This is something that I raised last year with Jonathan Slater [the permanent secretary at the Department for Education], that if the levy policy was a success then a lot of these new providers are going to come on stream and start having learners and we expect to have more work and need more resource to do that,” she said.
“We had the acknowledgement that the more work we had the greater resource we would need,” she added.
“We haven’t got a specific resource increase because we don’t know how many of these [new providers] will come on stream with a volume of learners. But we have the acknowledgement in principle that this will be required.”
The following day the issue was also raised during an Education Select Committee session as part of the inquiry into apprenticeship quality.
Joe Dromey, a senior research fellow for the policy think-tank IPPR, warned apprenticeship numbers and Ofsted resource was “going in opposite directions”.
Of the 354 additions, 61 are employer providers that can now directly access their own levy funding and include household names such as the Salvation Army, Greggs, British Airways, River Island and Lloyds Bank.
And the 2,187 total does not include the 114 organisations added to the 276 with ‘supporting provider’ status taking their total to 390 on RoATP.
Providers catagorised as ‘supporting’ cannot access funding directly. They can only subcontract from one of the main providers up to the value of £500,000 per year and are not directly in scope for Ofsted inspection.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency has so far completed three official RoAPT application windows, and as reported by FE Week last September, is currently reviewing the process.
For more information and analysis see the next edition of FE Week.
Financially struggling colleges should seek bailouts from the restructuring fund while they still can, the FE commissioner has said in his annual report.
“There remains an opportunity for colleges, while the restructuring facility is available, to access support to put them in a strong position ahead of the introduction of the insolvency regime and the end of exceptional financial support,” said Richard Atkins.
“There remain a number of colleges that need to improve their financial health, including some that remained standalone following the area reviews,” he wrote. “It is vital that colleges carefully review forward financial plans – including testing income assumptions.”
The annual report – Mr Atkins’ first since being appointed FE commissioner in November 2016 – covers his work over the year from September 2016 to August 2017.
It gives an overview of colleges’ health, and identifies any challenges facing the sector – as well as detailing Mr Atkins’ expanded role in supporting colleges.
The report doesn’t mention any colleges which have been successful in their applications to the fund.
A number of colleges in financial difficulty have applied for cash from the fund, which is designed to support changes recommended in the area reviews that are too expensive for the institutions in question.
During a Commons education committee hearing last week, Mr Atkins dodged claims by the chair Robert Halfon that the restructuring fund was being used to prop up failing colleges.
He said that 17 out of 35 area review-recommended mergers had “benefitted from restructuring funds”, but wouldn’t be drawn on transparency questions.
“I don’t have responsibility for allocating those funds,” he said, acknowledging that “openness and transparency is really important in running any organisation”.
He also described funding for FE as “unfair”, and told MPs that financial pressures could be at least partly to blame for falling standards within the sector.
His annual report revealed that just four colleges subject to intervention because of financial problems had managed to lift themselves away from his oversight over the past year – and that all four had merged with a stronger institution.
According to information published by the DfE in November, 10 applications to the fund worth a total of £120 million had been approved to date.
But skills minister Anne Milton told parliament on Monday that “we have approved £300 million of restructuring money”.
Information on the number of applications that covers is due to be published shortly, according to the DfE.
A spokesperson previously said: “The restructuring facility is not being used to prop up failing colleges.
“The restructuring facility is designed to help colleges make major changes following an area review recommendation that they cannot fund themselves and that will result in high quality provision for the local community.”
The Northern Powerhouse Partnership has today published a major report on how the region can close the education and skills attainment gap with the south.
Chaired by former chancellor George Osborne, the organisation has a number of recommendations for improving FE.
FE Week has pulled out the eight main findings.
1. “Bureaucracy” is to blame for the apprenticeship levy’s slow start
The “slow and over bureaucratic” process of approving apprenticeship standards at the Institute for Apprenticeships is to blame for the levy’s poor take-up.
Mr Osborne, who first introduced the levy, admitted disappointment with recent apprenticeship starts numbers, and believes funds are “not being fully utilised”.
Government data released last week revealed there were 114,400 starts in the first quarter of 2017, covering the months of August, September and October, a fall of 26.5 per cent on the same period for the previous year.
“This is disappointing given that the majority of starts take place in the first quarter of the academic year and suggests that apprenticeship levy funds are not being fully utilised,” the report said.
The NPP claimed there is “extensive evidence” to suggest this poor uptake is due to the “slow and overly bureaucratic” process of approving apprenticeship standards.
FE Week has reported extensively on how employer groups have complained about the “inordinately long time” it has taken to develop the new standards, some of which were first published over two years ago but are still unready for delivery.
George Osborne
2. Focus funding on disadvantaged people to increase starts
To turn the poor apprenticeship numbers around, the NPP wants more investment in people currently “unable to access” apprenticeships and higher-level skills.
These groups should be “prioritised” when allocating any current and medium-term underspends in the levy until its take-up increases.
“There is a significant need to help people who have missed out on access to the right skills when leaving school to move on from low-paid jobs – apprenticeships with their existing employer can be a viable route,” the NPP said.
3. Measure learner success at age 25
All FE providers, alongside schools and universities, should be measured for the “employability and eventual success” of their learners at age 25 compared to their previous attainment.
This would “shift the focus” to long-term achievement “rather than short-term measures of success”.
As recently reported by FE Week, colleges are frustrated by the government’s current and ‘misleading’ progress measures.
4. T-level work placements will prove “challenging”
The report describes the government’s new technical qualifications as a “great opportunity” despite difficulties in “identifying high-quality placements for those studying towards them”.
The DfE has said that all T-level students will have to take part in these work placements, which should last between 45 and 60 days and last a minimum of 315 hours, a feat described as “impossible” by the Association of Colleges.
The NPP said employers, which may have offered some type of work experience in the past, should be “encouraged to prioritise this group to gain the benefit for both parties from applied learning, although more flexible approaches than a three-month placement may need to be considered to maximise the quality of opportunities available”.
5. Devolve nearly all FE funding
It is recommended that metro mayors and areas receiving further devolution deals should control the adult education budget, as well as overall vocational education spending from 16 to 18.
This, a spokesperson told FE Week, would mean “close collaboration and co-decision making” with the government on things like new Institutes of Technologies and the technical pathways associated with the Sainsbury Review.
6. Make the north the “world-leading centre” for degree apprenticeships
The NPP wants to establish the north as the “world’s leading centre” for degree and higher-level apprenticeships, seeing up to one in five of its learners pursuing them in the future.
“This would allow our brightest and best students to pursue a mix of work and applied learning, with new Institutes of Technology established to focus on the Northern Powerhouse leading the fourth industrial revolution,” the report says.
7. Every northern business to become mentors for skills
The report asks employers of all sizes across the north to pledge to “mentor or provide high-quality experience of the workplace” to at least the same number of young people as they have employees.
This will include sole traders and SMEs with only a handful of staff to global brands such as Barclays, which would “expect to work with a number of young people far in excess of the 12,000 staff they employ in the north”.
8. Deploy national retraining funds “effectively”
November’s autumn budget saw Mr Osborne’s successor as chancellor Philip Hammond unveil plans to invest £76 million into retraining adults who want to work in the digital and construction sectors.
The NPP said this new scheme will go “some way” in addressing the north’s issue of upskilling.
“Given the importance of the digital sector to the economy of the north, we must ensure that this funding is deployed effectively,” it said.
