Any former Carillion apprentice who is yet to find alternative employment following the collapse of the outsourcing giant will be paid after January, despite reports claiming this was not the case, the government has confirmed.

A story by the Huffington Post on Monday claimed that the apprenticeships and skills minister Anne Milton had said payments to the out-of-work construction trainees would stop at the end of January.

Her words were taken from an answer to a parliamentary question submitted by the shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, which was published on January 24.

“The ESFA can confirm that all affected apprentices will continue to be paid by the receiver until the end of January,” Ms Milton said last week.

The Department for Education has however now confirmed that pay will strech beyond January 31.

“At present all former Carillion apprentices will continue to be paid while alternative employers are being sought,” a DfE spokesperson told FE Week. “We have taken steps to protect learners by transferring the training of all Carillion apprentices to the Construction Industry Training Board.”

She added that the CITB has already secured new employment, with wages, for over half of the apprentices and is working “around the clock” to find alternative employers for the others.

This will be welcome news to the hundreds of former Carillion apprentices who are still out of work.

Ms Rayner described the decision as a “U-turn” and said she hopes the government now sticks to its word.

“If the Government has finally caved in to pressure from Labour and trade unions and agreed to continue paying the Carillion apprentices, that is welcome news for hundreds of people who had been left to face the prospect of their wages drying up by the end of the week,” she told FE Week.

“We hope that this is the final u-turn and that this time they stick to their promises.”

She added that the apprentices have done “nothing but work hard” for jobs and qualifications, yet they have “faced the threat of being abandoned without pay, work or continued training”.

Ministers have “caused them unnecessary fear and uncertainty by failing to give clear and simple guarantees”, Ms Rayner said.

Around 1,400 trainee bricklayers and carpenters have been left with uncertain futures ever since the UK’s largest employer of construction apprentices entered liquidation two weeks ago.

They were being taught at the company’s skills division, Carillion Training Services, which held a £6.5 million ESFA contract last year.

The new education secretary Damian Hinds promised last week that he would ensure every apprentice affected by the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion would be found new employment to complete their training.

Colleges must all have access to funding for apprenticeships with smaller employers, according to the latest MP to weigh in on the non-levy tender debate.

Jeremy Lefroy, the Conservative MP for Stafford, is the latest prominent voice to raise the issue in parliament after Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group, which is in his constituency, was denied a non-levy contract.

“Further education colleges such as Newcastle-under-Lyme College and Stafford College are vital to the provision of apprenticeships, both under the levy and non-levy,” he said in a written question.

“But just having the levy on its own is not necessarily sustainable. Will the minister ensure that all further education colleges have access to funding for non-levy apprenticeships?”

Just having the levy on its own is not necessarily sustainable

The universities minister Sam Gyimah insisted that the levy is in its “infancy” and needs to be given time to work.

“It is going to raise £2.6 billion to fund apprenticeships for young people,” he said. “We have to give it time to work, but I take his point on board.”

NSCG is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted and appealed the ESFA’s decision not to give it a non-levy contract before Christmas. It is understood that this complaint is still ongoing.

Its principal Karen Dobson told FE Week last week that she remained “hopeful that a satisfactory outcome will be reached in due course”.

It is one of many top training providers and colleges which have turned to influential MPs in an effort to squeeze the cash they need from the government after they were denied contracts in the procurement.

Exeter College, which FE Week rates as the best college in the country, is working with Ben Bradshaw, a former culture, media and sport secretary.

Meanwhile, HYA Training is liaising with its own MP, Emma Hardy, who sits on the education select committee.

Patrik Knowles, the managing director of HYA, has also sought legal advice, complaining that the non-levy tender was unfair and represented more of a lottery than a procurement process.

Mr Bradshaw, who described the situation as “inexplicable”, has written to Anne Milton about the damage the Exeter decision will cause if it is not overturned.

The much-delayed procurement process has plagued the sector all year and ended up causing huge controversy when results were released in December.

FE Week even found one organisation that had ceased trading in October which had been awarded a contract in the procurement.

A total of 714 providers were given allocations to use between January 2018 and March 2019, but 227, nearly a third, are on their first direct apprenticeships contract.

A row has erupted in the upper echelons of the National Union of Students, as its president wants to investigate claims made on social media that she has bullied staff members.

Every elected NUS officer, including its vice-president for FE Emily Chapman, will be working from home this week “to protect all parties”, a spokesperson said today.

The battle lines were drawn after president Shakira Martin posted a screenshot on Facebook of a tweet allegedly sent by Mark Crawford, the postgraduate officer at UCL’s student union.

In it, he accuses her of being a “scab”, a term unions use for colleagues who take the opposite side in industrial disputes.

She complained in response that “these people are as abusive as my ex was to me”.

The NUS women’s officer, Hareem Ghani, then announced on Twitter that she would be filing a complaint to the NUS, over what she feels is Ms Martin’s inappropriate comparison to domestic abuse.

She also claimed that the president “has threatened and bullied officers over the course of the last six months”.

 

and I’ll just be transparent here: I’ll be submitting an complaint against the president. not only bc of this horrendous comparison, but bc she has threatened and bullied officers over the course of the last 6 months.

— vain vixen (@hghani_) January 27, 2018

 

“As chair of the NUSUK board, Shakira Martin has called for the complaints on social media to be investigated,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

“These complaints and those about other full-time officers are now under investigation and as an interim measure to protect all parties, all officers will be working from home this week.

“All officers are still able to carry out the duties within their role while the allegations are being reviewed.

“While it is a not a situation the organisation wants to be in, there are a series of measures that have been put in place to ensure the safety and support of staff, officers and volunteers is made a top priority.

“We take the health and wellbeing of those that work for us seriously and any breaches of codes of conduct will be dealt with appropriately.”

Ms Martin published a statement on Facebook which she also tweeted yesterday, in which she claimed to have been the victim of “harassment and provocation”.

 

Please read my below statement on last night, and the last six months.

Ultimately:
The haters must not win. pic.twitter.com/Qh3X9xMfcZ

— Shakira Martin (@ShakiraSweet1) January 30, 2018

 

“I have been baited and provoked on purpose and recorded in my own workplace by those who claim to support working class black women like myself, but would happily push me to the limit and watch me break,” she said.

She claimed to have over the last six months “experienced some of the worst harassment and provocation”.

“This weekend has been one of the hardest of my life. Seeing those closest to me use personal defamation to get one up in the countdown to national conference was destroying me from the inside out,” Ms Martin, who also posted an impassioned video of her defending herself on Facebook, added.

“I made it clear when I was elected that I would kick the bullies out, that there was no space for those who wished to silence people.”

But Ms Martin, who was elected president last April after two years as VP for FE, vowed to stay on as president, in order to “leave this movement better than I found it”.

She has reportedly come under increasing pressure from the left wing of the union, who do not think she has been pushing hard enough for free university tuition fees, and has concentrated too hard on lobbying the government behind the scenes rather than through direct action like strikes.

“When I was elected, I promised to be the president that listens, learns and leads. I still intend to be that kind of president,” she said.

“I don’t feel comfortable nor safe however the desire to be your national president hasn’t died. Yes, I wanted to quit, yes I wanted to give up – but I realised that I must stay and finish the task at hand.”

A change to adult education funding rules that will put digital skills training on a par with English and maths won’t come into force until 2020.

The Department for Education confirmed the news, as previously announced by skills minister Anne Milton at the Bett Show in London on January 24, in a new advert searching for contractors to research and develop new basic digital skills standards.

“This will form part of the wider delivery of the basic digital skills entitlement which will be introduced from 2020,” it said.

Free digital skills training for adults was first announced by the government in October 2016 and became law in April 2017 as part of the Digital Economy Act.

According to the DfE’s expression-of-interest document, the new statutory entitlement will “mirror the current approach for literacy and numeracy”.

It wants contractors to develop new basic digital skills standards at entry level and levels one and two, following one of the recommendations from a 2016 review into publically funded digital skills qualifications by the Skills Funding Agency.

The DfE is looking for “clear standards” to “support the different stages of digital skills development”, as the existing standards are “out of date” and do “not reflect the pace of technological change which found”.

The new standards, which will be “adopted as national standards” and should have “strong employer and sector buy-in”, will form the basis of new digital qualifications.

The DfE will now lead a consultation on the standards between October and December this year, and the final standards will be in place by the end of February 2019.

FE Week reported in October 2016 that funding for these courses was expected to come from the adult education budget – although a promised consultation on the final details, including funding arrangements, has yet to materialise.

In July last year, the skills minister Anne Milton said in Parliament that the department would “set out the plans to support the implementation of this entitlement in due course”.

And in October, Matt Hancock, then a digital minister and now the digital, culture and media secretary, told a technology conference that he was “developing the detail of the policy” with the DfE.

A struggling studio school with low pupil numbers and “significant financial challenges” will close this summer, it has been confirmed.

Manchester Creative Studio in Ancoats, which specialises in the digital and creative industries, and currently teaches around 40 pupils, will close at the end of the academic year, becoming the 18th studio school to close down since the project began.

The closure will go ahead despite an injection of over £400,000 in emergency government funding.

Martin Shevill, the chair of the school’s trustees, said the board agreed with the Department for Education that “it is right for the school to close”.

The school, which employs 14 staff, did not take on new students last September, and Shevill said all learners will finish their GCSEs or level three qualifications before it closes.

“All concerned will continue to ensure that the students who are at the school get the best possible education for the remainder of their studies,” he said.

A spokesperson added the impact on students had been kept to a minimum, because the institution’s board “took the decision mid last year that the school would not take in any new year 10 or 12 students because they knew that closure was likely”.

The board also knew they couldn’t guarantee a “good standard of education” and wanted to focus efforts on existing learners.

Year 10 and 12 are the usual recruitment ages for studio schools, ahead of GCSE and A-levels respectively.

The schools are an alternative to mainstream education for 14- to 19-year-olds, taking on cohorts of up to 300 pupils.

They provide a work-related curriculum with pupils receiving vocational and academic qualifications, as well as work experience, and like the similarly-troubled university technical colleges, are seen by many in FE as unwelcome competition.

Opened in 2014 by former charity boss Raja Miah, and focusing on vocational education, Manchester Creative Studio has faced a turbulent few years.

It received a financial notice to improve in June 2016 after misjudging pupil numbers, and announced it would be rebrokered to a new sponsor in January last year.

A consultation on the school’s future started in December, and pupils have today been informed of the planned closure.

The school entered special measures last year after it was rated ‘inadequate’ in every category by Ofsted in March.

Inspectors criticised “serious and widespread failures” in safeguarding, poor leadership, inadequate attendance and behaviour, poor teaching and low pupil achievement.

They also noted the school was in the lowest one per cent nationally for pupils’ progress in maths and English in 2016.

The Laurus Trust, who stepped in to help the school after the Ofsted inspection, were praised in October for leaving “no stone unturned in their quest to improve provision”.

But it was reported two months later that the local regional schools commissioner, Vicky Beer, had written to everyone involved with the Manchester Creative Studio to inform them of a consultation on whether it should be closed or passed to another sponsor.

It was one of 29 schools found to be “in danger of imminent failure” that received emergency government funding last year, with three grants totalling £403,875 channelled to the nearby Cheadle Hulme High School – part of the Laurus Trust –  to support it. However, the school’s leaders ultimately decided it was “not realistic or viable” to keep it open.

Despite significant government investment, many studio schools have struggled to attract enough pupils to be financially viable. Just 34 will be left open when Manchester Creative School closes this summer.

The AoC wants colleges to be excluded from the government’s published progress data claiming it is based on school models and unfairly represents the delivery of FE.

It has written to Damian Hinds asking him to intervene.

On Thursday, the new Progress 8 results showed that the 17 colleges which offered direct entry last year – taking students on from 14 – scored -2.10 on average, the lowest of any type of educational institution (see table below).

The measure looks at the progress a pupil has made between the end of primary school and follows their results across eight GCSEs, comparing their achievement with other students of similar ability.

But FE colleges only recruit their key stage 4 students from year 10, and thus only have learners for two of the five years that Progress 8 measures.

On top of that, the AoC argues that their cohorts are far too small to draw robust conclusions from, as the Department for Education has itself acknowledged.

This is extremely misleading to the public and detracts from the excellent achievements of so many of our students

The AoC has now asked the new education secretary to intervene, explaining that direct-entry provision, which was set up in September 2013, provides an alternative to the school-based curriculum, with a focus on core skills and technical education.

“It most often caters for young people who have not thrived in a mainstream school setting and should therefore not be judged in the same way,” a spokesperson said.

“Colleges report that their 14-to-16 cohort often have complex learning and pastoral needs, with students often at risk of exclusion or at risk of becoming NEET.

“If you look behind the numbers, college data shows incredible added value, high levels of post-16 progression to level two and three programmes and apprenticeships, improved progress from entry point, better attendance and increased engagement.”

One college using direct-entry provision is East Durham. It had a key stage 4 cohort of 44 students last year with an average score of -2.51. It was therefore listed as falling below the floor standard and branded as one of the “worst-performing” in the country.

Suzanne Duncan, the college’s principal, said that for the DfE to present “the performance of East Durham College’s near-4,000 learners in this way is extremely misleading to the public and detracts from the excellent achievements of so many of our students”.

“We feel passionately that these young people, who are amongst some of the most vulnerable in our local community, should be supported – aiding social cohesion, mobility and improving their life chances,” she added.

Schools are judged against Progress 8 every year. A school is considered to be below the floor standard if, on average, pupils score half a grade less (-0.5) across these eight GCSEs.

Individual data on every institution that offers key stage 4 provision was also published on Thursday, and showed that each college was below the standard.

National media ran stories listing “the worst schools in the country”, on which all the colleges were included. Several have complained that it has unfairly damaged their reputation.

Apprentices left jobless following the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion will not be paid after January, it has been claimed.

Around 1,400 trainee bricklayers and carpenters have been left with uncertain futures ever since the UK’s largest employer of construction apprentices entered liquidation two weeks ago.

They were being taught at the company’s skills division, Carillion Training Services, which held a £6.5 million ESFA contract last year.

But ministers have now confirmed that they will stop receiving money from the official receiver after Wednesday, according to a report in the Huffington Post.

All affected apprentices will continue to be paid by the receiver until the end of January

This flies in the face of reassurances from the cabinet office minister David Lidington, who has previously claimed that those working for Carillion full-time would be paid and trainees would not lose out.

The skills and apprenticeships minister Anne Milton was quoted as saying: “The ESFA can confirm that all affected apprentices will continue to be paid by the receiver until the end of January.

“Following the announcement on the January 15, regarding the collapse of Carillion, the ESFA has enacted robust contingency plans and identified the Construction Industry Training Board as the best-placed alternative provider.

“The CITB is currently utilising its existing employer contacts in the sector and the grant incentives it has available in order to secure existing employers or find alternative employers for the apprentices to complete their frameworks or standards.

“Once alternative employment has been secured, it will be the responsibility of these individual employers to determine the frequency of payments to their apprentices.”

Unless the former Carillion apprentices have managed to secure new employment during the two weeks since the firm’s collapse, they will have no income from next month.

Jonathan Slater, the Department for Education’s permanent secretary, said during a Public Accounts Committee hearing this afternoon that around 440 of those apprentices have so far been found new employment.

This simply isn’t good enough

The new education secretary Damian Hinds had promised last week that he would ensure every apprentice affected by the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion would be found new employment to complete their training.

Shadow education Secretary Angela Rayner described the situation “simply isn’t good enough”.

“Ministers had promised that these apprentices were being taken back in house and that they were doing everything to keep them in training,” she said. “But now they admit that they could stop being paid within a week.

“On their watch, Carillion was handed millions of pounds of public money and allowed to become the country’s biggest provider of construction apprenticeships. They cannot now just stand by and allow thousands of apprentices who have done nothing but work hard for their qualifications to be abandoned, without pay, work or continued training.

“Only months after the collapse of Learndirect highlighted the risks of over-reliance on private companies for the provision of adult training, it’s high time the Tory government started learning the lessons of their previous failures.”

More to follow