Council accused of SEND transport discrimination

A local authority has been accused of breaking government guidelines on college transport charges, and parents of children with special educational needs or disabilities are worried about discrimination.

St Helens council provoked an angry response from local families, after it announced that 16- to 19-year-old SEND learners will have to pay over £1,700 every year for transport to their colleges or the special-needs sixth-form where many will study from September.

Natspec, which represents specialist further education providers, believes this contravenes a requirement on local authorities to ensure special-needs learners have reasonable choice over where they study.

“The DfE post-16 transport guidance is clear that LA policies must act reasonably and take into account the needs of different groups, particularly young people with SEND,” said its chief executive Clare Howard.

“While we accept budgets are stretched and councils may not be able to provide free transport, elements of the St Helens policy do not appear to follow the guidance, in particular the requirement to give young people reasonable choice of education provision.”

The DfE’s post-16 transport to education and training guidance calls on local authorities to “ensure” young people have “reasonable opportunities” to choose the most suitable education establishment, taking into account SEND requirements.

An investigation last year by FE Week found that two thirds of councils now charge post-16 SEND learners for transport. It is feared this is deterring many from travelling longer distances to attend courses that would better suited to their needs.

The annual charge by St Helens – a metropolitan borough council – is £300 higher than the costliest county council, Hertfordshire, and is among the highest charges in the country.

Liz Maudsley, a senior policy manager at the Association of Colleges, is unhappy at the figures involved.

“We are very concerned to see the exceptionally high travel costs for SEND learners being charged by some. In our view, this contravenes DfE guidance that SEN learners should have a choice in where they study,” she said.

“We will continue to raise this issue with DfE.”

Chris Valentine-Smith has a 16-year-old son Ethan with Down’s Syndrome and autism. He is supposed to be transferring from September to Mill Green Special Needs Sixth-Form College in St Helens.

“I can understand that the council needs to make a charge, but the amount they’re asking is totally unreasonable. There is no way we can afford to pay, so it’s going to jeopardise his future education. It really feels like SEN learners are being heavily discriminated against,” she said.

“Most neighbouring authorities charge nothing, including Wigan council, which has a far more humane approach. It seems like there’s a postcode lottery going on.”

Wigan council does not charge and FE Week understands it is currently funding transport for a post-16 SEND learner to attend Mill Green.

A letter sent to the council by parents of St Helens SEND learners, including Mr Valentine-Smith, claims they are being discriminated against.

It said the £1,700 charge they face “compares to public transport charges for a non-SEN student of approximately £250 for a bus pass for a year”.

“So a SEN student is being asked to pay approximately £1,450 more than a non-SEN student directly as a result of their disability in these cases.”

“Many students and families will not pay the full charge, as there is a 75-per-cent discount for families entitled to free school meals, who are in receipt of universal credit / income support, or the highest level of working tax credit,” a St Helens spokesperson said.

“The public consultation noted that the average cost of a place on authority provided post-16 transport is over £5,100 per student. As such, even following the introduction of charges, the authority will continue to provide a significant subsidy (on average £3,400 per place) towards the overall cost.”

The DfE has been approached for comment.

Hull College’s vast debts exposed

An impoverished college which took a £54 million bailout did so after declaring a deficit of close to £13 million in a single year.

The revelation emerged from Hull College’s long-delayed 2015/16 accounts, which were finally published this week following pressure from FE Week.

There have widespread demands for greater transparency on the college’s dire financial situation, and last year’s accounts are still firmly under wraps.

The college “generated a deficit in the year of £9,329,000 before taxation” in 2015/16, compared with a much smaller loss of £492,000 the previous year. In addition to pension liabilities this left it with an overall deficit of £12.8 million.

As a result, its reserves had plummeted to negative £7,827,000 over the year, according to the accounts.

The college did not comment on the situation before FE Week went to press.

“How did they get in this mess? That’s something I’d really like to know,” asked Emma Hardy, one of three local MPs and a member of the influential commons education select committee.

“What safeguards or checks were not in place to allow the college to get into such financial difficulties? Why weren’t things identified earlier or problems dealt with earlier?”

Information about the college’s finances has been thin on the ground since the FE commissioner began his intervention 18 months ago.

His report, published last January, said the college had a “cumulative deficit of around £10 million over the past four years”, and a “further deficit in excess of £1 million” was forecast for 2016/17.

FE Week learned of the £54 million bailout from a member of staff from the college attending last week’s University and College Union congress in Manchester, as previously reported in the Hull Daily Mail.

It’s believed to be the highest single payout from the restructuring facility, but neither the college nor the government would confirm the figure, citing a confidentiality agreement.

Julie Kelley, UCU’s regional official, told FE Week that the college has refused to say where the money was going or what strings were attached.

“The only thing they will say is that a condition of the grant is that they have to get their staff costs under control,” she said.

“But because we don’t know what the underlying financial issues are we have no clear picture of how the college has gotten into the state that it’s gotten into.”

In addition to the as-yet-unpublished 2016/17 accounts, there is no sign of governing board meeting minutes on the college’s website.

It took three days to respond to a request from FE Week to see those minutes, and when the documents arrived they were heavily redacted.

Whole sections, including the CEO’s update, were marked “closed, commercially sensitive”.

A spokesperson defended the secrecy, insisting it “takes an honest and open approach to all our communications”.

“However, the terms of our grant agreement imposes certain restrictions on the disclosure of any information deemed not for public release at this point in time,” he said.

Any redactions were made “to minimise any breach of the agreement” or to its legal obligations on redundancy consultations.

Staff at the college are currently fighting leaders over plans to slash more than 200 full-time staff, and seven days of strike are planned for later this month.

Meanwhile, Mark Dawe, the boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, hit out at the government over the lack of transparency surrounding this and other similar deals.

“How can it be that government funding of £54 million to a public body isn’t fully in the public domain?” he asked.

However, a spokesperson for the Department for Education defended the need for confidentiality over funds awarded to colleges from the restructuring facility.

“Publishing this information before the end of the programme could prejudice commercial interest,” she said.

Only a quarter of prospective T-level pioneers were successful

Only a quarter of the providers which applied to offer T-levels in 2020 were successful, and many of those left off the list are confused about why.

Names of the 52 providers that will pilot the prestigious new technical qualifications were announced by the Department for Education late last month.

A spokesperson told FE Week they had selected from more than 200 expressions of interest.

But while 26 colleges made the cut, many – including New City College in London – were told they weren’t eligible as they had grade two ratings from Ofsted.

Published criteria had stated that providers rated either ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ were eligible to apply.

Gerry McDonald, the college’s group principal and chief executive, said the decision “contradicts the policy messages we had been given”.

The college had been “very active in the development of T-levels”, with both the college and employer partners “getting prepared” and “keen to move forward”.

“I am confused by this decision and I will be following this up with the department,” he said.

Other big college groups to have missed out include NCG and Capital City College Group, both of which applied.

Only three of the 21 providers involved in the T-level work placement pilot will be offering new the courses in 2020.

These are Blackpool and the Fylde College, Truro and Penwith College, and Access to Music, an independent training provider.

Among those to have missed out was grade two Bolton College. Its director of curriculum Sharon Marriott described the decision-making criteria as “utterly flawed”.

By using ‘outstanding’ as a yardstick, she said, the DfE had “virtually excluded the sector who are expected to deliver the T-levels”.

Peter Mayhew-Smith, principal of grade two South Thames College, was “disappointed” not to have been chosen.

In January this year the Education and Skills Funding Agency invited expressions of interest from providers which wanted to become the first to offer T-levels.

As well as the ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ criterion, applicants needed at least ‘satisfactory’ financial health to be eligible.

If there was “significant interest”, however, the agency said it would apply additional checks to reach a “manageable number” of candidates, including giving priority to grade one providers.

It would also take steps to ensure there were providers across the range of types, and from the DfE’s opportunity areas, as set out in the government’s social mobility action plan published last December.

Of the 52 providers chosen, 32 are ‘outstanding’ and 14 are ‘good’, while a further six don’t have a current Ofsted rating.

Five of these are academies that were rated ‘outstanding’ before they converted, and the sixth is a university technical college that has yet to be inspected.

“The 52 colleges and providers were picked to deliver the first wave of the new T-levels based on published criteria set out earlier this year,” a DfE spokesperson said.

“This set out that successful colleges must, among other things, be ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.”

Just three T-levels will be launched for teaching in 2020/21, in digital, construction, and education and childcare.

Full roll-out has been delayed until 2023, amid concerns about the planned pace of implementation.

But education secretary Damian Hinds has refused a request from his permanent secretary to delay the pilot to 2021 and is “convinced of the case to press ahead”.

Let’s not be so quick to plan a raid on the levy pot

Readers of FE Week will be familiar with the excruciatingly slow start to the apprenticeship levy reforms since last May.

According to the Department for Education, employers spent just 10 per cent (£200 million out of £2 billion) of their levy contributions in the first year. Each month that three million starts target slips further away.

Inevitably, there are more demands for a change of course, anything from scrapping the target to scrapping the Institute for Apprenticeships, but as I’ve explained before and won’t repeat now, it is far too soon to panic.

But this does raise questions about what will happen to any unspent funding, particularly when public finances are tight.

This week the eight metro mayors signed a joint statement asking the government to let them raid unspent funds to boost devolved education budgets from August 2019.

It is an attractive pitch, but there are at least five compelling reasons why it would be a mistake.

1. The apprenticeship reforms have been designed on the basis that many employers will fail to use all of the levy. Why? Because without unspent levy there would be no funding for small, non-levy-paying employers, English and maths qualifications, employer and provider incentives, and the 10-per-cent levy account top-ups.

2. Apprenticeship providers say they have demand from small employers but not enough nonlevy funding, so they should be first in the queue when large employers choose not to use their funds.

3. Unspent funding could be used to incentive the growth of apprenticeships where a market intervention is needed. For example, the government will pay £1,000 to care leavers who start an apprenticeship from this August. They could also increase incentives to recruit 16- to 18-year-olds, either fully-funding them or increasing the £1,000 employer incentive.

4. Many employers are waiting for standards to become available for delivery (over 280 are currently in development according the IfA) and have 24 months to spend their levy money before losing access to it. Raiding it now would likely result in a significant overspend in a year’s time.

5. The government is making it easier for large employers to use their levy, by allowing them to transfer up to 10 per cent to those in their supply chain.

So although I’m sure the mayors won’t be alone in eyeing up a slice of levy pie, long term underspend may not even be crumbs.

Fresh trouble for NCG as its flagship free school is forced to close

A free school sponsored by England’s largest college group, and which is led by some of its top people, is closing down.

The Discovery School in Newcastle, which cost £9 million to set up, opened in 2014.

It will shut this year over “capability and capacity issues” that have concerned ministers.

Last July, the school was rated ‘inadequate’ at its first inspection by Ofsted, while it expects to receive another in its next, imminent visit from the watchdog.

Three high-ranking NCG employees have been “members” of Discovery ever since it opened. Their responsibilities included appointing the school’s board of trustees – who ultimately oversaw its collapse and failed to turn it around.

These include NCG’s current chief executive Joseph Docherty, its group director of strategic partnerships Chris Payne, and its director of property services Jeff McCall.

Joseph Docherty

On top of this, Discovery’s chair of trustees, is Gerard Garvey – the principal of Newcastle Sixth-Form College, which is part of NCG.

The group has attempted to distance itself from criticism and lay blame with the trustees.

“As sponsor NCG is only responsible for the appointment of the board and has no further powers to interfere in the running of the school,” a spokesperson said.

“It is the board of directors of Discovery Learning Ltd that has total responsibility for all aspects of running Discovery School, including the design of the curriculum, the quality of provision, safeguarding of students, and the appointment or dismissal of all staff, including the principal.

“This is a very clear and deliberate legal separation of responsibilities.”

Mr Garvey’s roles at Discovery and as principal of Newcastle Sixth-Form College are meanwhile “completely separate”, she added.

Discovery was heavily criticised by Ofsted, has suffered from low student numbers, and was forced to launch an urgent review of its safeguarding procedures after a pupil was left in London following a school trip to the capital.

The 14-year-old was left at King’s Cross station when the rest of his group boarded the train two months ago.

Mr Garvey helped appoint a new headteacher last July, Gareth Rowe, even though he knew he didn’t have the full capabilities for the role.

“Governors asked if the newly appointed headteacher had the experience to deal with the current issues faced by the Discovery School,” read minutes from an NCG meeting in June, attended by Mr Docherty and Mr Payne.

“The Newcastle Sixth-Form College principal explained that he did not but they were confident that he had the ambition and capabilities to undertake the role effectively.”

It added that Mr Docherty was “confident that he would be able to deliver”.

This is a crunch time for the nation’s biggest college group, which is cutting staff and had Ofsted breathing down its neck during a full inspection last month over poor achievement rates.

The watchdog took the highly unusual decision to extend its visit, suggesting not all went well.

Discovery is a specialist science and technology free school.

In a statement, the school said the decision to close had been taken “based on well-documented issues at the school including safeguarding problems, poor teaching and leadership and the results of a recent Ofsted which is expected to deem the school ‘inadequate’”.

Year 11 or 12 students are being offered places at Newcastle Sixth-Form College or Newcastle College – both members of NCG.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said the school had “let down” pupils, parents and teachers.

Highbury College tumbles two grades from ‘outstanding’

Highbury College has dropped two grades from ‘outstanding’ in an Ofsted report that brands its teaching “uninspiring” and raises concern over low attendance.

The verdict was a serious blow to a heavily criticised leadership team led by Stella Mbubaegbu (pictured above), who maintains that the college has “already embarked on our journey back to ‘outstanding’”.

In addition to her role as principal of the Portsmouth provider, she is also a director of several high-profile FE bodies: Collab Group and the notorious Gazelle Colleges Group.

Ofsted rated the college ‘requires improvement’ overall, in a report that gives grade threes in headline fields including effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, 16-to-19 study programmes, and apprenticeships.

It was ‘outstanding’ when Ofsted last inspected in 2011.

“Leaders and governors have been slow to reverse the college’s decline in performance,” the new report warned.

Leaders’ and managers’ “evaluation of the quality of provision, particularly teaching, learning and assessment” is “overoptimistic”, though governors were recognised for having a “good oversight” of most areas of the college.

Inspectors warned that “overall performance has declined and they have not been effective in challenging and supporting senior leaders to stem this decline”.

“Too much teaching is uninspiring and attendance at most lessons is low.”

Too few teachers and assessors “encourage students on study programmes and apprentices to gain the skills and knowledge they need to achieve well”.

The report recognised that the college, which taught almost 7,000 learners last year, was “undergoing a period of some turbulence” at the time of the inspection.

“Leaders were tackling significant financial challenges but had yet to reverse the decline in performance of the past few years,” it said.

The college declined to comment on its current financial position, but according to the 2016/17 ESFA accounts, it had a deficit of £1,663,190.

Ms Mbubaegbu preferred to focus on the more positive elements of the report.

“We are enormously proud of our students and pleased that Ofsted recognises their motivation, work-related skills and their enjoyment of learning,” she said.

“The improvements outlined in the report are well underway and we have already embarked on our journey back to ‘outstanding’. Our focus will remain on enabling all our students to succeed.”

Inspectors did recognise that “students and apprentices are well behaved, confident and respectful, and a strong culture of safety permeates the college”.

Managers “maintain a strong focus on promoting equality of opportunity and creating a culture that welcomes diversity”, resulting in a “respectful and harmonious college community”.

But efforts to improve the quality of teaching “have had limited success”.

Ms Mbubaegbu is listed as a director of Gazelle Colleges Group, which is still active according to Companies House.

The group, registered at Highbury College Portsmouth, was subject to an FE Week investigation in 2014 which revealed how the five founding member colleges had each paid more than £530,000 to the group since it was launched.

But it had drastically scaled down its operations by January last year, when we reported that its membership numbers had fallen from 23 colleges to six.

Despite its problems, the college still describes itself on its website as “a key member” of Gazelle.

Colleges recognised for outstanding higher education provision

Two colleges have received gold medals recognising their outstanding higher education provision in the latest Teaching Excellence Framework ratings.

Sparsholt College and Myerscough College both received the highest possible rating, meaning they deliver “consistently outstanding teaching, learning and outcomes”.

They are among 46 colleges to have received recognition for the quality of their HE provision in this year’s ratings.

“Outstanding teaching, excellent support and progression to further study or employment are the cornerstones

“Outstanding teaching, excellent support and progression to further study or employment are the cornerstones of Sparsholt and these are the criteria we are proud to be judged against,” said Sparsholt principal Tim Jackson (pictured above left).

The Hampshire college offers land-based HE provision accredited by the University of Portsmouth.

The TEF award “demonstrates that the expert teaching teams, outstanding resources and facilities deliver outstanding outcomes for our students,” Mr Jackson added.

Alison Robinson (pictured above right), Myerscough’s principal, said its rating was a “testament to the quality of our talented teaching staff and the excellent programmes we offer”.

The college, in Preston, offers degrees in the land-based and sports sectors, accredited by the University of Central Lancashire.

‘’Our students graduate not only with a qualification that is highly industry relevant, but with the skills they need to forge a successful career in their chosen field,” Ms Robinson said.

David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the results “confirm what we already knew, that colleges up and down the country are delivering high-quality higher education which matches the best”.

The TEF awards were introduced by the government to measure the quality of teaching and learning at HE institutes. Fourteen FE colleges have achieved gold status last year.

Institutions can be ranked gold, silver or bronze, based on an independent panel’s assessment of official data, including retention rates, employment outcomes and student satisfaction, along with a detailed statement from the provider.

In addition to the two gold medals, 24 colleges received silver medals and 15 received bronze medals.

A further five received provisional awards, meaning they meet national quality requirements but don’t yet have enough data to be fully assessed.

Movers and Shakers: Edition 247

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

Paul Rolfe, Commerical director, Chichester College Group
Start Date: May 2018
Previous Job: Managing director, Highbury Commercial, Highbury College
Interesting Fact: Paul is a keen gym goer and has recently discovered spin classes.

____________________________________________

Nathan Runnicles, Chief financial officer, QA Group
Start date: May 2018
Previous job: Chief financial officer, Research Now Group Inc.
Interesting fact: Nathan’s first job was selling washing machines and televisions in Rumbelows.

____________________________________________

Andrew Cropley, Principal and CEO, Craven College
Start date: November 2018
Previous job: Interim principal, Cadbury Sixth-Form College
Interesting fact: Prior to working in FE, Andrew held a number of roles in the Royal Navy.

____________________________________________

Nicola Carcone, Assistant Principal, Barton Peveril Sixth-Form College
Start date: June 2018
Previous job: Director of English and foreign languages, Barton Peveril Sixth-Form College
Interesting fact: Nicola taught in Australia for two years. Teaching Wuthering Heights in blistering heat felt a bit odd, but the experience was brilliant.

____________________________________________

Sunita Auger, Assistant principal, Barton Peveril Sixth-Form College
Start date: June 2018
Previous job: Quality manager, Barton Peveril Sixth-Form College
Interesting fact: Sunita also teaches modern calligraphy workshops and leads calligraphy retreats.

 

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

Stop fighting over the crumbs of the adult education budget!

There’s no point in principals squabbling over the crumbs of the AEB, writes Ewart Keep, who wants the sector to take devolution much more seriously

It has not taken long for some in FE to fall into the trap that central government set for localities when it decided to “devolve” the adult education budget (AEB). In an era of austerity and massive cuts, devolution always means passing the buck on hard choices and blame.

The current spat between some FE colleges and the Greater London Authority (GLA) over its decision to top-slice less than a per cent of its devolved AEB to pay for local administration illustrates this point, but also suggests that FE may not be thinking hard enough about the long-term potential of devolution.

I have to declare an interest – I was a member of the GLA’s task and finish group that supported the development of the now-published skills strategy for London.

That said, the intemperate language used by some of those quoted on this issue is striking (“raid”, “pen-pusher”, “self-indulgent local bureaucrats” and “shocking” – to quote just some of the comments in FE Week). The government has provided no funding for any devolved infrastructure, so the money to organise the devolved budgets has to come from somewhere, and a one-per-cent top-slice is not a lavish administrative overhead (look at apprenticeship sub-contracting for a contrast). Moreover, without local capacity, there can be no localised AEB.

More broadly, is it the case that we do not want any element of local control? Should all decisions and funding allocations to be made at national level?

There are very few other developed nations in which the lead “world city” (and indeed all other cities and localities) would not have a major role in planning and administering educational spending and their own more broadly defined skills agenda. In England we have become used to massive levels of centralisation, and if FE does not exactly love this arrangement, the sector is at least familiar with it. In part, perhaps it is a case of better the ESFA you know, than the combined authority (CA) you don’t.

What is missing in the current devolution debate is any acknowledgement that there are bigger prizes to be had than the remains of an AEB which the government has already massively reduced. The tide of centralisation has finally, arguably begun to turn, and the long-term prospects for more power and better decision-making within localities are becoming apparent. As the CBI recently argued in its report ‘In perfect harmony’, “local leadership within a stable national framework is the key”.

One opportunity is the space to develop new approaches and funding models. In the current national set-up, centralisation means standardisation and almost no room for bottom-up experimentation. Colleges are meant to be fleet-of-foot responders to market forces, not innovative thinkers. Devolution, and local agendas and ambitions that outstrip what the AEB will support, generates experimentation, not least with co-funding models of the type piloted by Unionlearn in the early 2000s.

More broadly, what is emerging in some of the CAs is a new policy agenda that seeks to integrate economic development, a local industrial strategy, business development and support, innovation, inclusive growth, fair work, improved pay and job quality, progression and skills. This joined-up model, utterly lacking at national level, offers opportunities for FE colleges to play to their natural strengths and lead the delivery. Colleges bring together vocational skills and second chance, social inclusion provision in a way that plays perfectly into local strategies that aim to boost inclusive growth. Their links to local communities and small firms could also be invaluable, not least in relation to building business improvement support services, where infrastructure is often almost wholly lacking at the moment.

Put bluntly, FE in the CAs faces some significant choices. It can expend time and energy fighting over crumbs and small slices of the local AEB cake, or it can contribute to a broader agenda that helps make the cake bigger.

Ewart Keep is Director of SKOPE at Oxford University