The mayor of London plans to top-slice £3 million from the adult education budget to pay for over 50 new bureaucrats from next year, instead of using it for frontline learning.
The money will cover the annual wage costs of a new administration to handle the AEB for the capital when devolution kicks in, including a £140,000-a-year assistant director.
The 53-strong team will form a skills and employment unit to dish out the budget from 2019/20, which will amount to around £311 million per year for London.
However, many of the tasks this unit will carry out will simply duplicate the work that the Education and Skills Funding Agency already does.
The GLA told FE Week that the ESFA has refused to give a “service offer”, which includes procurement, audit, contract management, direct access to data and changes to the Individual learner record systems.
These costs will be top-sliced from the devolved annual budget
London’s Mayor, Sadiq Khan (pictured above), is asking the ESFA to reconsider, according to the GLA.
The Department for Education has been asked for comment.
Using AEB funding to pay for extra officials instead of learning will concern many in the sector.
However, a spokesperson for Mr Khan pointed out that “staff costs associated with this are less than one per cent of the budget being devolved to the mayor”.
The GLA is one of eight mayoral combined authorities with deals to take control of AEB spending in their regions from 2019/20.
In a document entitled ‘Proposed changes to the GLA establishment’ and released in March, the GLA explains how it will top-slice the AEB.
“The total annual gross cost of the creations is £3.245 million, for which £3.028 million is attributable to AEB and the balance of £0.217 million relating specifically to the core skills team,” it says.
“Going forward from 2019-20, once the programme has been devolved, these costs will be top-sliced from the devolved annual budget of circa £400 million per year.”
Among the staff will be one assistant director, whose annual pay packet will be £139,000. Four senior managers will be paid around £87,000 a year , while one other will be a senior project manager on £73,000.
The unit will also employ 16 principal policy officers, who will take home around £66,000 each, as well as 12 other principal project officers earning £61,000.
Ten officials will be senior policy and project officers with annual pay packets of £54,000, and eight people will hold support officer roles, paid £40,000.
The last person on the team will be an assistant administrator, who will earn £37,000 a year.
The GLA told FE Week this team will be focussed on implementing the mayor’s skills strategy, which includes a “digital talent programme” to find and develop the next generation of home-grown tech talent, and developing the mayor’s construction academy so Londoners can access jobs in the construction industry.
“The Mayor is determined that all Londoners have the opportunity to fulfil their potential and are able to enjoy the capital’s economic prosperity,” a spokesperson said.
The mayors from the eight regions with deals in place recently voiced concerns with the government over the impracticality of the process.
The seven other areas of the country to have devolution deals in place are the West Midlands, Liverpool City region, Greater Manchester, the West of England, Tees Valley, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and the Sheffield City region.
The skills minister has admitted to being “very aware of the funding pressures” that 16-to-19 providers are under, even though the government has today confirmed the rate will not change in 2018/19.
“We are looking at the resilience of the FE sector which includes sixth-form colleges,” Anne Milton told MPs at education questions in Parliament today. “I am very aware of the funding pressures, and I have to praise all those teaching in the sector because they’re doing an excellent job.”
She was replying to a question from shadow education secretary Angela Rayner, who asked her to confirm that the “real-terms” cut to the base rate for 18-year-olds amounted to more than £1,000 since 2013.
Ms Milton said she had “heard the points she makes”, and added that she was “very aware of the excellent job” that 16 to 19 providers do with “quite constrained finances”.
Angela Rayner
Gordon Marsden, her Labour shadow as skills minister, accused the government of “hiding behind reviews” while Ms Rayner highlighted “continuing lack of adequate funding for 16- to 19-year-olds”, in a tweet sent after today’s questions.
Funding for full-time learners aged 16 or 17 stands at £4,000 a year, while for 18-year-olds it’s just £3,300.
These rates were set in 2013 and have remained unchanged since –a real-terms cut for providers over that time.
Guidance setting out the funding formula for 2018/19 was published by the Department for Education this morning, although the actual rates were confirmed by letter in January.
In December last year Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, warned that the “sector will continue to struggle” without an increase in the base rate funding for 16- to 19-year-olds.
The Support our Sixth Formers campaign, backed by major players including the Association of Colleges and SFCA as well as FE Week, wants a £200 “SOS uplift” in 16-to-18 per-pupil funding rates.
The SFCA claimed in November that sixth-form colleges were at “tipping point” after their overall Ofsted ratings fell for a third year running, largely as a result of funding pressures.
But just two days later, on March 21, Damian Hinds denied that such a review had been announced – and the DfE itself later confirmed it was an internal review within the department.
Other topics raised during today’s questions included the government’s promise, made in last year’s Conservative party election manifesto, to introduce significantly reduced bus and train for apprentices.
Robert Halfon asked Mr Hinds to “confirm that this is still a commitment and when will it happen?”
Mr Hinds’ response did not give any details.
“My right honourable friend rightly identifies the importance of making sure that apprenticeships are fully inclusive, and we do continue to look at making sure that such facilitation is available,” he said.
Parents are still sceptical about high-quality technical education. The entire FE sector has a duty to change their minds, writes Anne Milton
As exam time approaches and lots of young people will be thinking about their futures, I want to talk directly to colleges and providers about what they should be letting parents know about apprenticeships.
I’ve spoken to lots of fantastic and talented apprentices who said the support from their parents was really important in helping them make the decision to do an apprenticeship.
For lots of parents, a university education is still seen as the Holy Grail for their children, and apprenticeships as the second-class option to a traditional academic qualification. Perhaps that’s down to the fact that apprenticeships suffer from a long-held PR problem; if you ask most people about an apprenticeship they still think of plumbers and electricians.
This is exactly what needs to change.
Many parents don’t know that apprenticeships can lead to lots of different jobs in a wide range of industries – from cybersecurity, to banking, fashion and more. You can also now do an apprenticeship to become a teacher or even a solicitor.
Parents need to know that an apprenticeship is a real, paid job
So I want to change the way apprenticeships are seen in the eyes of parents for good. And to do that I need your help, because as providers and colleges you play a fundamental role in letting parents know about the various options and routes that are out there for their children.
Parents need to know that an apprenticeship is a real, paid job, and a young person on an apprenticeship will receive at least the national apprentice wage of £3.70 per hour.
Most employers pay more than the minimum – the latest pay survey estimates the average gross hourly pay received by apprentices in England was £6.70 an hour at level two and three, and £9.83 for higher level apprentices.
We are also rolling out more and more degree apprenticeships, combining a high-quality degree with an apprenticeship.
These degree apprenticeships are a great way to earn while you learn at some of the UK’s top universities and get a head start in long-term careers. And with the training completely paid for, no student loan is needed. Degree-level apprenticeships are available in a variety of sectors, such as engineering, digital, aerospace and nuclear.
They are also available across England, with universities including Newcastle, Salford, Derby, Birmingham, Bristol, Plymouth, London and Bournemouth offering them.
The lifetime benefits associated with gaining an apprenticeship at levels two and three are very significant, standing at between £48,000 and £74,000 for level two and between £77,000 and £117,000 for level three.
Those who gain a higher-level apprenticeship could earn £150,000 more on average over their lifetime compared to those with level three vocational qualifications.
These are really important messages that we need to get across to parents, so I’m calling on you as providers and colleges to reach out to them to help them navigate and understand the options available to their children.
To help with this the Education and Skills Funding Agency is investing £2m in the Apprenticeship Support and Knowledge in Schools programme which provides schools and colleges with material on apprenticeships.
Providers and colleges can also point parents towards the National Careers Service’s job profiles, which can help their child consider what sort of career they’d like to pursue. There’s also the ‘Find an apprenticeship’ service on gov.uk, where up to 28,000 apprenticeship vacancies from employers across England are advertised. And there’s also the ‘Amazing apprenticeships vacancy snapshot’, where they can find out when applications open for apprenticeships at top companies and view employer profiles. The National Apprenticeship Service has also produced a guide: ‘How to write an award-winning apprenticeship application’.
It’s so important that we all do everything we can to make parents aware of the amazing opportunities that apprenticeships can bring their children, and encourage them to see apprenticeships as a first class option.
If you have any questions then do get in touch with the National Apprenticeship Service by clicking here and here.
Anne Milton is Minister for skills and apprenticeships
The Education and Skills Funding Agency is beefing up its audit team amid mounting concerns about new providers entering the sector.
It has launched a recruitment drive for a “newly created market oversight unit”, including an advert for four auditor vacancies posted on the civil service jobs website.
They will operate directly under the leadership of Matt Atkinson, the ESFA’s director of provider market oversight.
The newcomers will not be replacing departing staff, and the recruitment drive is part of wider plans to plough more resources into audit and oversight.
Considerable numbers of untried and untested providers have hit the market recently, for example through the register of apprenticeship training providers.
“Matt Atkinson is leading a newly created market oversight unit,” a Department for Education spokesperson said.
“This highlights the critical role the agency plays in oversight of the education and skills landscape.”
I am worried about the number of providers that we may have to inspect
The advert for “assurance officers” states that the agency is looking for candidates with a “background in audit and financial assurance – to support the delivery of assurance activity at providers of education and training”.
Their team is expected to review “financial statements and management reports to ensure funds are used for the proper purposes and potential areas of irregular expenditure is identified”.
RoATP has been controversial since its launch just over a year ago.
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Amongst the initially accepted providers, FE Week reported on three new companies with no track record on government apprenticeships, all run by one man from a rented office in Cheshire.
The proliferation of new providers has been criticised by Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman, who spoke to FE Week about the impact that this would have on the inspection service.
Paul Joyce
“It is clear there are a lot of would be new entrants, a lot of people with very limited experience and potentially quite a lot of fragmentation,” she said.
She and Paul Joyce, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills, both admitted to being concerned about how they would keep tabs on everyone.
“I am worried about the number of providers that we may have to inspect,” admitted Mr Joyce. “I’ve had conversations with the DfE about our resource.”
Ofsted subsequently embarked on a drive to keep more careful tabs on such newcomers to the apprenticeships market, through a series of early-monitoring visit reports.
The first of these published in March was brutally critical of training that is “not fit for purpose” at Key 6 Group.
The National Audit Office also expressed concern at the potential for abuse of the apprenticeship system back in 2016.
“DfE and the SFA are yet to establish what information they will need to monitor key behavioural risks and spot signals that these risks may be maturing,” its report said.
“While they might reasonably expect the vast majority of employers, training providers and assessment bodies to act properly in response to apprenticeship reforms, a small minority may behave in unintended ways”.
Staff at a college who had been due to go on strike for four days this week have called the walkout off following “positive discussions” with management for a new pay “agreement”.
University and College Union members at Sandwell College have already been on strike for five days since February, and were due to return to the pickets from tomorrow.
However, the UCU has said that positive discussions with the college management on pay have led to an “agreement in principle”, which is expected to be signed by both sides tomorrow.
“Following positive discussions on pay in recent days which have led to an agreement in principle, we have decided to call off the planned strike action for this week,” said Anne O’Sullivan, a UCU regional official.
“We expect to formalise the agreement with management in our meeting with them tomorrow.”
The UCU was unable to show FE Week details of the agreement before tomorrow’s meeting.
Now that Sandwell has called off its industrial action, all of the remaining colleges planning to strike in the coming weeks are in London.
The pay disputes follow a below-inflation pay offer of one per cent made by the Association of Colleges in September.
UCU general secretary Sally Hunt has said that her members were “resolute” in their fight for better pay and conditions.
The argument between the unions and the AoC worsened last week, after the latter refused to enter negotiations while industrial action is ongoing.
The various FE teaching unions insist that the body which represents the sector has told them it is “not minded to consider” a pay claim for 2018/19 while UCU members “remained in dispute over the 2017/18 round at any AoC member college”.
This is “unacceptable” to the trade unions – which include the National Education Union, Unite, Unison and GMB as well as UCU – which have claimed in a letter to the AoC’s boss that he is “attempting to put pressure on some members of one union”.
In response, Mr Hughes said: “While a small number of local UCU branches are taking action on the national pay claim, it would not be appropriate to open negotiations on the 2018/19 claim.
“We have written to all the unions to explain our position and we are optimistic that these few remaining disputes will be resolved soon, allowing us to begin negotiations for the next pay round.”
Strike action at all other colleges is continuing as planned. Here’s the schedule:
According to that invitation, all successful providers had been supposed to receive notification on April 27, along with confirmation of how many students would qualify for teaching that year.
Guidance subsequently published by the ESFA in early March said providers would be informed by early May if their application had been successful.
But providers have now been told the information will be released in due course, according to a spokesperson for the Department for Education.
During a parliamentary debate on Tuesday the former skills minister, and now chair of the education select committee, asked whether 16 was too young for people to decide between an academic and a technical route.
The number of new apprenticeship standards approved for delivery declined dramatically in March and April, FE Week analysis has revealed.
The Institute for Apprenticeships only cleared four standards in April and 10 in March, down from 21 in February.
The agency’s chief executive Sir Gerry Berragan (pictured) only launched its Faster and Better initiative in December to “streamline the approvals process”.
A spokesperson claimed the figures are not surprising, as the IfA expected recent reforms to slow things down temporarily ahead of an anticipated upturn.
“The Faster and Better programme is made up of a number of different initiatives that are being introduced over time,” she said.
“The impact of such initiatives will take time to be fully felt. However, we anticipate they will help to speed up the development process and improve the overall customer experience significantly in the second half of this year.”
The impact of such initiatives will take time to be fully felt
She explained standards applications are “reviewed on a six-week cycle”, and a “range of factors can affect how many are approved for delivery in a particular month, such as fluctuations in the volume of submissions”.
“We piloted our new online template for proposals and standards in February and rolled it out for all submissions in March, and we published completely overhauled and simplified guidance in March.”
The number of standards approved in total so far this year was said to be “a marked improvement”, as “between July and December 2017, we approved 37 apprenticeship standards for delivery”.
Apprenticeship standards, which are developed by groups of employers, are gradually replacing the old frameworks. Each contains a list of the skills, knowledge and behaviours an apprentice will need to have learned by the end of their apprenticeship.
The IfA website showed 271 had been approved at the time FE Week went to press.
There are, however, 268 more in development, of which 29 have assessment plans that haven’t been approved for delivery.
Sir Gerry launched Faster and Better to address complaints from employers and providers that the approvals process was far too slow and bureaucratic.
The Confederation of British Industry’s head of education and skills John Cope described the March and April figures as “disappointing”, but backed efforts to speed things up.
“Businesses support the IfA’s strategy to speed up the standards process and improve support for trailblazer groups – something the CBI has long called for,” he said.
“We need more rapid progress, but it’s also crucial we get them right,” added Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute. The IfA needs to set out when they expect numbers to pick up so we can see if it’s on track.”
Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden pledged to monitor progress over the rest of 2018 “very carefully”.
“It is of course concerning that the approval of standards has slowed down. However I have personally spoken to the chief executive of the IfA who is confident the process will speed up in the second half of the year.
“This is a situation we will be monitoring very closely, not least because of the government’s track record in failing to deliver the resources and capacity the Institute has needed from day one.”
Lord Baker has mounted a robust defence of university technical colleges, despite the growing list of setbacks to befall the 14-to-19 programme he helped build. In an exclusive interview with FE Week’s Billy Camden, he refutes claims from other major players who once backed it, including George Osborne, that the movement is in serious trouble.
Lord Baker has come out fighting.
“Neither of my main critics have ever even visited a UTC,” he claims, when asked what he thinks about George Osborne and Michael Gove’s recent condemnations.
Of the former chancellor, he adds: “He is not in the picture any more. He has no idea what has happened.”
In fact, this week Lord Baker has even written to Mr Osborne, inviting him to visit a UTC to “show him their success”.
The latter told the Commons education committee last week that he would consider scrapping the UTC starting age of 14 if he were still in charge at the Treasury, after coming to the conclusion that they are in need of radical reform.
Many people from across FE agree that the model “clearly hasn’t worked”, given that eight have so far closed and six of the 30 inspected by Ofsted are rated ‘inadequate’.
But Lord Baker refuses to accept any of this. The former education secretary has also invited Mr Gove, who in fact visted at least one with him in 2014, to check what they are like now. He doubts he will take up the offer though. Mr Gove, himself a former education secretary, was always “against” the movement because he was “dug in his own philosophy” of academic education and “did not like or understand” technical education.
Lord Baker believes there is outstanding evidence that UTCs are successful, and reveals that two new ones are in the pipeline, to be based in Newcastle and Doncaster.
“Our recruitment went up last year by 20 per cent,” he claims, adding: “Our destination data is incredible. Last year we had 2,000 leavers and only 23 NEETs. That is an unemployment rate of one per cent whereas nationally it is 12.2 per cent.”
He also claims that UTCs were only slightly below the national average for year 13 leavers attending university (46 per cent compared to 51 per cent). “Yet”, he adds, “78 per cent of these entered a STEM course, helping to address skills shortages in sectors that are key to economic growth, compared to just 22 per cent nationally”.
He puts recent recruitment success down to two factors: the new legal requirement on local authorities to write to all parents of year 9 students telling them about other types of education providers, and the Baker Clause, named for the intervention he made in the passage of the recent education bill, which forces schools to open their doors to colleges, training providers and UTCs.
But not all councils and schools are complying, and Lord Baker wants strict action enforced on them.
The department appears to have listened.
On May 10, a senior DfE official travelled to Cumbria to have face-to-face showdowns with headteachers who are not letting the Energy Coast UTC speak with pupils.
There is such good evidence that we are successful
“Some schools postpone and are awkward, which is outrageous,” he said, though the academies minister Lord Agnew is “prepared to instruct them to comply”.
“The DfE needs to make a physical presence and ministers need to instruct specific schools.”
What action would he like to see taken against these rogue schools? It would be “a very good idea”, he says, for Ofsted to “condemn them” in inspection reports.
In terms of local authorities, the Baker Dearing Trust, which oversees UTCs, is compiling evidence of non-compliance to show the DfE. Once passed on, ministers are expected to write to rebel councils to demand they comply with the law.
If at this point the LAs still do not play ball, Lord Baker says the whole weight of the DfE “should descend upon them”.
Regarding the historic low Ofsted grades at UTCs, Lord Baker believes the inspectorate’s current regime is unfair.
“A UTC is not a school or a college, it is a hybrid animal,” he says. “Ofsted takes no account of employability in inspections and that is a big test for us.”
He hopes that the watchdog’s new common inspection framework, expected in 18 months’ time, will go some way to taking into account “the special nature of our offer”.
Some leading FE figures, namely former skills minister Nick Boles, have suggested that UTCs should function as part of multi-academy trusts to make them “stronger”.
Some UTCs have started to recruit at 13 – a year earlier than the standard recruitment age of 14 – because schools in local areas are beginning key stage 4 learning at year 9.
Lord Baker is a fan of this idea, and says if the whole country evolves to this model, then so will UTCs.
There ought to be a statue of me in every FE college
“We would absolutely be happy to change to starting at 13 instead of 14,” he confirms.
In terms of closures, the peer confesses that he knew starting the movement was a “high-risk strategy and any entrepreneur will tell you that you always lose 10 per cent, which we have lost”.
He realises that every child “only has one education”, but for those at UTCs that have closed, he claims that not one of them became a NEET, “so we gave them something”.
Asked if he would send his own child to a UTC, even if it was severely under capacity like many currently are, Lord Baker says he “certainly would” if they were technically inclined.
Many critics of the UTC movement have labelled it as a “failed Baker pet-project”. He refutes this.
“My last pet project was academies, so I want this pet project to be as successful as that,” he remarks. “It might not happen in my lifetime but I am sure it will eventually.”
In the Conservative Party manifesto there was commitment to have a UTC “within reach of every city”. Lord Baker believes this was a “rather strange objective”, but one that has mostly been fulfilled as “we have them scattered around all the big cities”.
He finishes with a joke and a smile: “I have a high regard for FE Colleges and there ought to be a statue of me in every college because I was the minister who removed them from local authority control and gave them the chance to grow.”
The chequered history of UTCs
Since the first wave of university technical colleges launched in 2010, FE Week has been there to report on their troubles.
The first and most pronounced sticking point has been the constant battle to convince students to transfer school at the tricky age 14.
At this age pupils are not only just about to enter the critical GCSE learning period, but they’re also embedded in their school community and friendship groups. UTCs are also still a relatively new concept, and most parents are put off taking a punt on them for fear of ruining their child’s education with the unknown.
Most UTCs have severely struggled with recruitment as a result. As FE Week revealed earlier this year, almost every UTC missed their recruitment targets and were overpaid by the government in 2016/17, leaving them with a combined debt of over £11 million.
They’ve also struggled to retain students. Learner numbers dropped at around two thirds of the colleges that had been open for three or more years in 2016/17. Further to this, in April 2017 over half revealed they were still at less than half capacity.
On top of this, schools have come out fighting whenever a UTC has attempted to poach their technically gifted pupils, creating unhealthy competition in the education sector.
Established general FE and sixth-form colleges, which consistently return a much higher proportion of better Ofsted grades, also view UTCs as unwelcome.
Many have become financially unviable due to low student numbers, and eight have closed as a result.
Most of the 14-to-19 technical providers have also run into trouble with Ofsted. A grade four report into South Wiltshire UTC published last month brought the total number of UTCs inspected so far to 30 and the number rated ‘inadequate’ to six.
Eight others are rated ‘requires improvement’. Just one is ‘outstanding’.
What has made matters worse is that the government has continued to judge UTCs by school standards, despite being totally different.
UTCs have attempted numerous different ways of improving Ofsted results and easing recruitment woes.
Some have rebranded after opting to join multi-academy trusts, and others have lowered the recruitment age to 13 to fit in with local schools who start the key stage 4 period in year 9.
Despite the mounting list of setbacks, the man behind them, Lord Baker, is convinced they will be a success. Only time will tell if his dream comes true.
A college in Hertford will be kicking itself this week after Ofsted praised it for “much improvement” since its last inspection, but not enough to boost it up to a grade two.
Hertford Regional College received ‘requires improvement’ ratings across the board in 2016.
Ofsted went back in for a full re-inspection two months ago and gave it ‘good’ ratings in four of the eight headline fields, including for apprenticeships.
But “despite much improvement since the previous inspection, not enough teaching is good,” inspectors said, who subsequently gave it an overall grade three again.
Ofsted praised the college’s leadership which has “strengthened since the previous inspection”, and as a result, managers have “comprehensive knowledge of the progress of current learners, which they use effectively to improve provision”.
Inspectors added that leaders now implement “robust performance management and quality assurance processes” that are “ensuring that underperforming areas are improving quickly”.
Most apprentices at the college “improve their technical skills, make good progress in their job roles and are valued highly for their contribution to their employers’ businesses”.
However, “too many teachers do not expect enough from learners; target-setting is not ambitious enough and learning activities do not challenge learners to excel.
“Not enough learners following study programmes make good progress from their starting points, and achieve as well as they could, although results are improving.”
And although leaders “ensure that the majority of learners” attend their lessons regularly, “too many do not”.
To make that jump to a grade two, the college needs to continue to “improve teaching, learning and assessment so all learners benefit from a high-quality experience during their time at college”.
Meanwhile, another independent training provider received an early apprenticeship monitoring visit this week which resulted in a positive report.
Quest Vocational Training Ltd, which was formed in 2012 and is based in Dorset, was found to be making reasonable progress in all three themed areas.
The inspection was undertaken as part of a series of monitoring visits that are taking place with a sample of new apprenticeship training providers directly funded through the apprenticeship levy.
Directors and senior managers have “ambitious and clear plans to become a high-quality provider to the health and social care sector,” inspectors said.
“They are increasing the number of apprentices on the prime contract as part of a sustainable strategic plan to meet the requirements of a range of different employers in this sector.”
Almost all apprentices interviewed during the monitoring visit said they receive “appropriate time and support from their employers to complete off-the-job training at work”.
And all employers interviewed were “clear about how their apprentices have improved their skills and behaviours as a result of undertaking their apprenticeship”.
Ofsted also noted that senior managers ensure that safeguarding arrangements are “effective”.
The only other Ofsted report to be published for the FE sector this week was a short inspection for Cheshire West and Chester Council, which retained its ‘good’ rating.
