ESFA switches from intervention to prevention

The Education and Skills Funding Agency is switching its strategy from intervention to prevention, ahead of the introduction of the FE insolvency regime later this year.

The change has been revealed in series of job adverts for members of a new provider market oversight team at the agency, out today.

“The prevention strategy seeks to improve on the intervention model by identifying and preventing problems before they occur,” the adverts said.

Benefits of the new strategy include “the larger range of options available the earlier a problem is identified and the lower cost to the taxpayer, which is particularly important given the forthcoming FE insolvency regime”.

The insolvency regime, introduced as part of the Technical and Further Education Act in 2017, is expected to take effect towards the end of this year.

It will mean colleges will be allowed to go bust, although the government has said it expects this to only happen in rare occasions where a college is in “severe financial difficulties and there is no alternative viable solution for managing the college out of that situation”.

At the same time, exceptional financial support payments from the ESFA to colleges in dire financial straits will be phased out.

The ESFA’s current strategy focuses on intervening at providers where it has “evidence of under-performance”.

Triggers for the agency to take action include a provider receiving overall grade four rating from Ofsted, falling below national minimum standards, or being rated ‘inadequate’ for financial health or control.

It also has an early intervention approach, through which it supports colleges at risk of triggering formal intervention.

That approach is intended to work alongside the FE commissioner’s expanded role, which now includes more work with colleges at risk of failing, through measures such as diagnostic assessments and the strategic college improvement fund.

The provider market oversight team was formed on April 1 through the merger of two separate teams, the provider risk and assurance team and the transaction unit, according to published minutes of an ESFA management board meeting on March 29.

It’s led by Matthew Atkinson, who was formerly in charge of the transaction unit, and is described in the job adverts as having 120 members of staff.

The transaction unit handles applications to the restructuring facility, which is funding available for colleges to implement post-area review changes.

Roles being advertised in the new team include deputy director, delivery manager – restructuring facility post completion and monitoring and restructuring specialist.

20% funding uplift for 16-to-18 apprentices stays another year

Extra payments to providers training the youngest and most disadvantaged apprentices will remain in place from August, the Department for Education has confirmed.

The 20-per-cent uplift for 16- to 18-year-old apprentices on frameworks, with additional cash for those in disadvantaged areas, were introduced in 2016 as a transitional measure.

Today’s announcement confirms they will remain in place for another year.

“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,” the DfE’s guidance on apprenticeship funding in England from August 2018 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.”

The uplift was the result of FE Week’s successful #SaveOurApprenticeships campaign, which exposed damaging cuts to apprenticeship funding.

Our analysis of proposed changes to the funding system from May 2017, when the levy reforms came into effect, exposed potential cuts of up to 30 per cent for 16 to 18-year-olds on some popular frameworks – rising to 50 per cent in the most deprived areas.

The campaign was backed by more than 50 MPs and provoked a national outcry, after which the-then skills minister Robert Halfon introduced the uplift.

“Since announcing the proposals for apprenticeship funding, we have listened hard to all the feedback we have received to ensure people can gain the skills they need now and for the future,” he said at the time.

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

The upper limit 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 DfE announced in February that it would review the funding-band structure, because employers did not “feel able” to negotiate with providers on price.

HE has a HESA – why can’t FE have a FESA?

A “data deficit” is responsible for the persistent failure of UK skills policy, explains Andy Norman, who wants to establish a new FE statistics agency

While it may seem like the skills discourse is reaching a political crescendo, appreciation of its importance is really nothing new.

Researchers and politicians alike have waxed lyrical about the need to build an effective skills system for well over a century. Translating this into improved outcomes for learners, businesses and the wider economy, however, has too often been beyond the power of public policy.

Near-continuous policy attention and reform has yielded few noticeable gains in recent performance, and there must be something fundamental missing.

The first report from the Centre for Progressive Policy – entitled ‘The data deficit: Why a lack of information undermines the UK skill system’ – argues that the root cause of this persistent policy failure is the lack of information on a range of aspects of the post-16 education system, from course quality to expected salaries. This data deficit prevents optimal decision-making, leaving learners, providers and policymakers in the dark.

Take employment outcomes as one example. In terms of higher education graduates, we have a pretty good idea of what they are doing after they graduate.

We have no systematic understanding of which FE courses lead to relevant employment, and which don’t

Detailed destinations data in the form of employment outcomes is available via the ‘Destination of leavers from higher education’ (DLHE) survey. We can gain a good understanding of which jobs graduates are doing six months later, right down to the lowest level of occupation classifications.

No such data exists for further education.

Essentially, we have no systematic understanding of which FE courses lead to relevant employment, and which don’t.

This matters for a whole host of reasons. It means policymakers struggle to understand which courses they should be incentivising and investing in. It means prospective learners choose courses based on hunches rather than reliable employment prospects. It means careers advisors lack the information they need to effectively guide their clients.

Improvements are being made – principally via the longitudinal educational outcomes dataset – and our understanding of what FE graduates are earning is improving. However, without combining this with detailed occupational employment data we are none the wiser about why earnings differ.

For example, are sports and fitness graduates earning less because they don’t find relevant jobs, or because they find relevant jobs which happen to pay badly? Do engineering technician graduates earn a lot because they move straight into relevant employment, or do these courses provide strong transferable skills that allow people to move into lucrative non-engineering roles? We just don’t know. And if we don’t know, you can be sure that the average 16-year-old thinking about what to do after their GCSEs doesn’t either.

The data deficit also includes basic earnings information for 16-to 18-year-olds completing technical courses. The DfE hopes to publish information about this group’s pathway out of school and into the labour market in the future.

However, compared to the level of detail already available for HE, these patchy, piecemeal efforts are clearly inadequate. HE data is currently collected, processed and published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). HESA was established after the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 identified a “need for a more aligned and coordinated approach to higher education statistics and information”.

Such a need now exists in FE and so perhaps the time has come for the establishment of a Further Education Statistics Authority, or “FESA”. This is something that the Centre for Progressive Policy wants to take forward in the next few months, so please do get in touch if this is of interest.

We should not pretend that improving the quality of the data available is the panacea to all the country’s skills problems. Yet it is difficult to see how systemic improvements can be made while decent data remains so scarce. A well-resourced FESA could be the catalyst for building the successful system this country so desperately needs.

Andy Norman is a Research Analyst at the Centre for Progressive Policy

‘Sector-leading’ 6% pay deal agreed at Sandwell College

A new “sector-leading”  pay agreement – amounting to more than six per cent over three years – has been reached between Sandwell College and its staff.

Members of the University and College Union had been meant to walk out for three days this week, having already been on strike for five days since February.

This action was stopped after an “agreement in principle” was reached – and details of the deal have now been released.

Staff pay will rise by 2.25 per cent in 2017/18 with additional two per cent rises in 2018/19 and 2019/20.

A further 0.25 per cent will be awarded in 2019/20 if student growth targets are met.

This agreement is a great outcome for all concerned

The deal will apply to all employees at the college and has been “endorsed by the other recognised trade unions at the college, Unison and AMiE, who have also signed the collective agreement”, the UCU said.

Sandwell College will also increase its minimum pay level to align with the Voluntary Foundation’s living wage recommendation.

As well as improving pay, the deal includes an agreement to establish a “joint working group” to look at working practices, with a focus on improving staff wellbeing and reducing sickness absence. 

The deal is huge for the FE sector, as colleges across the country continue to strike over pay disputes following a below-inflation pay offer of one per cent made by the Association of Colleges in September.

“This agreement is a great outcome for all concerned,” said Anne O’Sullivan, UCU’s west Midlands regional officer. “It ensures consistent salary growth for the coming years, and should set an example to other colleges currently in dispute over pay.

“The commitment on all sides to improving working practices and staff wellbeing is also positive, and staff are ready to play their part in ensuring the college continues to grow and flourish in the future.”

Sandwell College’s principal Graham Pennington said: “I am delighted to have reached agreement based on our local success factors, and that full support for our ongoing student growth programme has been given by trade unions.

“We are proud of the commitment shown by our employees and I am happy to be rewarding their hard work and achievements over recent years.”

Subcontracting shouldn’t be a master-servant relationship

With money tighter than ever, the further education community needs to find more ways to work together, writes Sam Parrett

In the constantly changing world of FE, new policies and ideas will affect the sector in different ways – and they often divide our community.

However, I am sure that encouraging greater collaboration between colleges, independent training providers and the sector as a whole is something that everyone can see the value of.

As an AELP board member, I recently discussed this at our annual conference. It was well received and I was hugely encouraged to see such support for real partnership working across the sector.

One area in which the lack of collaboration is evident is subcontracting. Lax rules here mean funding is taken away from frontline training. Just last week a college was accused of “tactical subcontracting”, having previously charged up to 57 per cent in management fees – and they are not the only one.

Traditionally a lead provider will subcontract an organisation to deliver workplace training.

This will often end up creating a “master/servant” type of relationship, where the master calls all the shots. This is not conducive to effective delivery as the organisations are unlikely to have a common purpose. Fortunately the EFSA and the government recognise this, and there is now a review into subcontracting fees.

I am hopeful that in our bold new world of apprenticeship reform, we’ll begin to see a much more genuine collaboration between colleges and ITPs

Of course, we all run businesses which need to be financially viable – but taxpayers’ money must be spent in an appropriate and responsible way. In a sector that’s already being squeezed, it is crucial that funding is spent on learners.

I am hopeful that in our bold new world of apprenticeship reform, we’ll begin to see a much more genuine collaboration between colleges and ITPs – from initial joint funding bids, with clear advance agreement of terms.

This more equal relationship would create a number of benefits from adding value to the local community and enabling colleges to build capacity in specialist sectors, to offering a much wider mix of provision to meet the needs of both students and employers.

Expertise from smaller providers could help transform colleges and larger ITPs into more innovative organisations. Successful relationships would ultimately have a collective impact, addressing educational need across a much wider area.

A crackdown is certainly necessary, but we need to consider the much wider picture and look at the relationship between all providers, at all levels, across the sector.

There are many ways in which to work collaboratively on a much wider scale – from academy sponsorship and charitable trusts through to community interest companies and cooperative models.

At London South East Colleges, we work strategically with ITPs for mutual benefit, recognising the important role they play in ensuring we can offer a broad and flexible mix of provision. This helps us access learners in different settings, who many normally not be able to attend a large college.

We also have partnerships with a number of higher education institutions – which offers benefits to us, the universities and our students by supporting progression. And our multi-academy trust has facilitated partnerships with a number of local schools, offering supportive and alternative pathways for many young people.

Of course, not every relationship will be a match made in heaven. Recognising who wouldn’t be a suitable partner is important. For collective action to be effective, the strategic goals and aims of each organisation have to be complementary, with shared aspirations and moral purpose. Equality and fairness needs to run across participant organisations with a genuine focus on a coordinated approach.

We currently have a system where providers compete with one another, despite offering similar services and wanting the same things. Working in isolation will only ever have a limited impact, whereas working in a coordinated way will lead to a much wider collective result, benefiting learners within a community and improving outcomes.

Sam Parrett OBE is Principal and CEO of London South East Colleges

Extra £500 per learner through maths teaching pilot

Providers in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country will be given an extra £500 per learner for post-16 maths teaching, in a pilot announced today by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

It will test three different approaches to using the funding, to assess which is most effective at improving results for learners with the lowest prior attainment in maths.

The ESFA will contact all eligible institutions to ask if they would like to be included in the pilot.

The deadline to opt in is May 25.

“We will inform institutions about their funding structure allocation after they have opted in,” a spokesperson said.

It’s designed to boost achievement for learners with a grade three or lower at GCSE maths, and is open to post-16 providers in areas identified by the Department for Education as a category five or six area according to its ‘Achieving excellence areas’ methodology.

These are areas that have been identified as having low standards for learners and a poor capacity to improve.

The cash will be in addition to providers’ normal 16-to-19 allocations.

The pilot, which will run for two years, aims to “identify how the additional funding is used by institutions, and to build up an evidence base on which activities lead to improvements in teaching and learning” and to “support some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country with additional funding”.

It will test whether it’s more effective for institutions to be given all the cash upfront, or after a learner improves their maths grade to at least a grade four in the summer of 2020, or a combination of the two.

Providers will have “flexibility over how to spend the additional funding”, which could include more teaching hours, smaller class sizes, or use of technology.

But, the guidance warns, “you should only use programmes and approaches that are known to be effective”.

The pilot is being run on an opt-in basis, and the ESFA will contact all eligible institutions to invite them to take part.

Since 2013, all 16- to 19-year-olds without at least a grade C in GCSE maths or English have had to enrol in courses alongside their main programme of study.

This requirement was tightened in 2015 to require all of those with a grade D – now a 3 – in those subjects to sit a GCSE course, rather than an equivalent stepping-stone course such as functional skills.

But after GCSE results showed huge numbers of learners aged 17 and older failed to improve their grades in resits, many in the sector renewed calls on the government to scrap the policy.

FE colleges have struggled to fund the extra maths teaching requirements.

The Treasury announced last November that £8.5 million had been set aside to pilot “innovative approaches” to improving the controversial GCSE maths resit policy.

The budget statement revealed the government wants to find ways to improve resit outcomes for learners, by launching a new pilot scheme.

“The budget announces support for maths, given its crucial role in preparing the next generation for jobs in the new economy,” the document said.

“The government will test innovative approaches to improve GCSE maths resit outcomes by launching a £8.5 million pilot, alongside £40 million to establish Further Education Centres of Excellence across the country to train maths teachers and spread best practice.”

Careers and Enterprise Company begs ‘friends’ for positive tweets following criticism from MPs

Supporters of the Careers and Enterprise Company have been urged to tweet their backing for the under-fire organisation after MPs questioned its impact and transparency.

In an email sent to “friends” of the organisation and seen by FE Week, Claudia Harris, the company’s chief executive, asks supporters to “join us on twitter tomorrow to celebrate the success and fantastic work being done to make a real difference to the futures of young people”.

Yesterday, Ms Harris (pictured above) and CEC chair Christine Hodgson faced tough questions from the parliamentary education committee over the CEC’s “giant and confusing” structure and a lack of transparency over its spending of public money.

In particular, MPs are concerned about the organisation’s £2 million research budget, its staffing structure and the lack of evidence the organisation is making a difference.

In her email, Harris encourages supporters to tweet that they “support the work” of the company, “making important connections for young people with the world of work”, along with the hashtag “#impact”.

So far eight accounts have tweeted about the company using the hashtag.

 

Athol Hendry, the CEC’s director of marketing and communications, defended the move. “We are immensely proud of the hard work done by so many people across our network, including volunteer business advisers, to support young people. We think that it’s really important to share these successes and recognise their dedication and commitment.”

But Jon Richards, head of education at the trade union Unison, which represents school support staff and others in the education sector, said the Careers and Enterprise Company should focus on improving its work, rather than public relations

“After taking a kicking at the commons select committee yesterday they are desperately trying to get their supporters to send positive messages out about them,” he said.

“Seems to me that they ought to be concentrating on doing a better job and amending their profligacy rather than trying to prop up their bloated underperforming gravy train.”

 

The full text of the email

Dear friend,

As you may know, Christine and I were questioned by the Education Select Committee this morning.

We’re extremely proud of the amazing work going on in the network and the impact our funding is having on young people across the country.

We’d love it if you could join us on twitter tomorrow to celebrate the success and fantastic work being done to make a real difference to the futures of young people.

We’ve drafted the below tweet for you, please feel free to use it as is, or edit, but do join us and help us celebrate.

I support the work of @careerent making important connections for young people with the world of work #impact

All the best,

Claudia

Stop tinkering with the skills system!

The English system is suffering from innovation fatigue. We need to stop chopping and changing it, writes Tom Bewick

Coming back into the UK’s skills system after a seven-year absence working internationally feels like returning to another planet. In England, some of the major reforms have taken place; the sector has weathered a new policy announcement or different skills initiative – on average – every 16 weeks since 2010.

We’ve welcomed and said our farewells to no fewer than 12 different skills ministers since 1997. Indeed, if you look at the average tenure of an English skills minister it is just 17 months, less even than the average tenure of a premier league football manager – who last an average of 18 months.

Meanwhile, you have to admire the people and organisations that work in the sector for their sheer resilience. Despite the merry-go-round of changing institutional structures and competing policy wheezes, people at the sharp end have still managed to carry on with the day job of transforming working lives.

The average tenure of an English skills minister it is just 17 months, less than the average tenure of a premier league football manager

Without a strong awarding sector, for example, planes would drop out of the sky, construction sites would be unsafe and our A&E units would be even more overstretched.

In the last year, according to Ofqual’s market assessment report, the largest growth in certifications came in the form of a level one in ‘health and safety in a construction environment’ and a level two in ‘emergency first aid at work’.

These types of qualifications may not feature highly in the government’s ambitions around improving technical education, but it is vital that they are not lost sight of in the current debate.

Very few would disagree that in some ways this is one of the most challenging and exciting times to be working in the vocational skills arena.

Despite a few jeremiads, there is much to celebrate: a record number of young people are learning in good or outstanding further education colleges and training providers, and youth unemployment has declined by 40 per cent in recent years against the backdrop of the highest adult employment rate since 1975.

The government is right to focus relentlessly on the fact that we are ranked in the lower quartile of OECD countries for our technical level skills. All this has been exacerbated by a collapse in workplace productivity over the past decade as wage incomes have stagnated and public investment has been reigned in.

The big challenge seven years after the Wolf Review was published is to learn from those other world-class systems that we rightly wish to emulate. We need to understand, in particular, what has made our main competitors so institutionally successful. The overriding observation is one of stability.

England has only recently established a dedicated Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. It needs to be given support and proper resources, including a sensible timeframe on which to successfully implement the post-16 skills plan reforms.

Take Switzerland, often referred to as the world’s best for technical and vocational training: it has had the same institution looking after apprenticeships and technical education since 1972. The SFI-VET responds to change, not by the Maoist tendency of tearing up the old to reinvent the new, but by incrementally and progressively building on success while weeding out failure. The Swiss system last embarked on reform in 2007.

Germany established its equivalent of the IFA as far back as the 1970 Vocational Training Act. For over 45 years, despite an overhaul of its vocational training model in 2005, BIBB has remained a constant in the institutional landscape. In addition, the employer-led chambers of commerce help anchor a really strong sense of stability on which 331 apprenticeship standards have evolved.

After a period advising overseas governments on their own skills strategies, it feels to me like returning to a domestic system that is showing all the signs of innovation fatigue. A top-down command-and-control approach is used when reforms would benefit from much greater collaboration and openness. The essential foundations for success are now in place. The point is to stick with them.

Tom Bewick is Chief Executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies

Apprenticeship starts show biggest drop in six months

Apprenticeship starts were down a massive 40 per cent in February on the same period in 2017, the latest provisional government statistics have revealed.

There were 21,800 starts reported for the month, compared with February 2017’s provisional total of 36,400, according to the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s monthly apprenticeship statistics update, published this morning.

This represents this biggest year-on-year percentage drop since last August.

Mark Dawe, the chief executive of the AELP, claimed that the apprenticeship levy itself isn’t the problem, but that the “the manner of its implementation is letting down thousands of SMEs and young people across the country”.  

“Our simple solution has been sitting on the minister’s desk for months, namely that for the time being the government should stop charging small employers for taking on young apprentices at levels two and three,” he said. Action must be taken now if the government wants to achieve its manifesto target.”

But skills minister Anne Milton insisted the government is “unapologetic” about its ambition for “high-quality apprenticeship opportunities” that are available to “everyone, regardless of their background”.

“The number of people starting on the old-style apprenticeships has fallen, but the number of people starting on our new, higher-quality apprenticeships are increasing well beyond our expectations. We won’t sacrifice that quality to increase quantity,” she said.

The latest figures come in the same week that education secretary Damian Hinds was quizzed by MPs on the fall in starts in Parliament on Monday.

He said there had been 242,100 starts since the levy was introduced last April.

“We are in a period of change, and some employers are taking longer to bed down what they are going to do with their apprenticeship levy money,” he conceded.

“We must bear in mind that they have two years to do that with each month’s money, but we are seeing a shift to longer, higher-quality apprenticeships, and that trend is to be welcomed.”

Mr Hinds added that the apprenticeship levy is an “important structural reform to the way we do training provision in this country” intended to “make sure that all sizeable firms are contributing to upskilling the nation”.