‘Inadequate’ employer provider still on apprenticeship register

A FTSE 100 employer-provider has not been kicked off the register of apprenticeship training providers, even though Ofsted gave it a grade four nearly six months ago.

The Compass Group is still permitted to take on new apprentices in its capacity as a subcontractor, and has only stopped recruiting them on a voluntary basis.

According to an Ofsted monitoring report, the group has “secured the services” of a new partner, Creative Learning Partnership, and is in the “advanced stages” of hiring two new subcontractors to deliver apprenticeships in hospitality and management.

Compass had 460 apprentices on its books at the time when Ofsted visited in June, but declined to clarify whether it planned to operate as a prime or subcontractor.

“The levy-funded apprenticeships we deliver are through preferred providers,” a spokesperson said.

“In line with the ESFA’s rules regarding apprenticeship delivery, the apprenticeships we offer to colleagues are provided through approved third-party providers.”

The apprenticeships we offer to colleagues are provided through approved third-party providers

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said Compass is “no longer able to take on any new apprentices for direct delivery” and that it would be removed from the register once it had been “issued a letter telling it that it’s going to be removed”.

“It doesn’t have permission to take on and be funded for new apprentices, but it is a large levy-paying employer so it has two different routes open to it,” she said.

“It can procure new apprentices through its levy fund, and it’s also still eligible to subcontract from existing register-approved providers with a value of up to £100,000.”

Compass would have been compelled to stop recruiting apprentices had it not agreed to do so voluntarily, she added.

The company provides contract catering and support services, employing around 60,000 people at 10,000 client sites across numerous sectors.

It was rated ‘good’ in November 2014, but the latest full inspection report warned that “few line managers are engaged in the apprenticeship programme” and too few manage the subcontractor’s performance “rigorously enough” or have “sufficiently accurate or detailed awareness” of the quality of learning provided.

Learners made slow progress due to “operational restructuring, changes of assessors, poorly planned learning and a lack of time at work to devote to their apprenticeship”, and too many were left to teach themselves from workbooks.

Although the report accepted that UK directors had a “clear vision” for apprenticeships, it warned that they did not have a “clear understanding” of the performance of the programme and were not holding senior leaders to account for poor quality.

The company was allocated over £200,000 for 2017/18 for apprenticeships as of November. It was working with one subcontractor at the time of the monitoring visit; Jigsaw Training provided teaching, learning and assessment for apprentices in security services, hospitality and catering and administration.

The monitoring report said that Compass would now be focusing its “direct delivery” on providing apprenticeships in culinary programmes and chef leadership programmes.

It had also appointed, or were in the process of appointing, a new head of apprenticeships, a quality manager and an apprenticeship delivery manager.

ESFA to delay non-levy tender contracts as complaints mount up

The ESFA is extending the non-levy tender’s 10-day standstill period to December 28, meaning no contracts will be given to successful providers next week, FE Week understands.

Results of the procurement, which has frustrated the sector all year after being plagued with delays and an aborted first attempt, were finally released on December 7.

The outcome has been seriously questioned by many, after an FE Week investigation found that a contract was awarded to a provider that went bust two months ago – even while several high-profile colleges ranked ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ missed out.

One provider with over 30 years’ experience in delivering apprenticeships even threatened legal action after being denied allocations.

A 10-day standstill period immediately got underway after the release of results, which is standard in procurement processes, and meant that providers could contest the allocation they got, or appeal the decision not to award them a contract.

Providers that won contracts, however, were expecting them to be handed out on December 18.

But the ESFA has decided to extend this by a further 10 days, and will now only hand out contracts after December 28.

Responding to the delay, AELP boss Mark Dawe said: “While FE Week deserves congratulations on its scoop, is this a transparent process or not?  It’s clear that the procurement is damaging the whole of the programme reforms and the social mobility agenda.

“AELP’s legal advice suggests that all providers who have passed the tender criteria can be given at least a minimum contract without breaching the existing tender rules. If the extension allows the ESFA to sort this mess out, it is welcome.”

The decision, which is expected to be announced on the Bravo tendering site later today, is likely to have been made following the catastrophic fallout of the tender.

A total of 714 training providers won contracts in the £650 million procurement, but nearly a third of did not have an apprenticeships allocation last year.

One ‘outstanding’ provider now faces a significant challenge to survive after it was only awarded a fraction of the funding it said it needed.

Other high-profile providers, such as the Ofsted ‘outstanding’ Exeter College, were denied contracts altogether.

The outcome led Mr Dawe to describe the situation as a “Wild West of apprenticeship contracts and delivery”.

The ESFA has been approached for comment.

Application window opens for £170 million Institutes of Technology cash

The application window has opened for providers that want to apply for a share of £170m available for new Institutes of Technology status.

Education secretary Justine Greening has today invited applications from further education and higher education providers, and employers, through its eTendering portal. It follows an announcement that this would be happening imminently at last months Skills Summit.

She said: “Institutes of technology will play a vital role driving our skills revolution with business and unlocking the potential of our country’s young people through better technical education.

“By bridging the country’s skills gaps, these new institutions will drive growth and widen opportunity.

“This government continues to invest in developing our homegrown talent so British business has the skills it needs and so that young people can get the opportunities they want. These new institutions will help tackle the skills gap at a local, regional and national level and extend opportunity to thousands of people.”

A DfE spokesperson said applications will close in March.

Institutes of Technology were first mooted in the Productivity Plan in July 2015 , which said: “The government anticipates that many colleges will be invited to specialise according to local economic priorities, to provide better targeted basic skills alongside professional and technical education, and that some will be invited to become Institutes of Technology.”

Despite the DfE repeatedly saying the plan is to “establish high quality and prestigious institutions”, in truth and as previously reported by FE Week, it has since emerged that the IoT funding is in fact a relatively small three year wave of capital funding for mainly existing colleges, not to create new ones.

However, a number of providers have previously expressed a firm interest in applying, due to the prestige and extra money they hope this will bring to them.

The government release uploaded this afternoon onto gov.uk invites applications to be lodged here.

Non-levy tender shocker: Defunct provider gets contract but ‘outstanding’ college misses out

An organisation that went out of business two months ago has been awarded a contract in the non-levy tender – even while several high-profile colleges ranked ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ missed out.

PTM Group, which incorporated in May 2015 but has never held its own direct contract with the ESFA to deliver apprenticeships, last week became one of 714 providers given an allocation to train apprentices with small employers between January 2018 and March 2019.

There’s just one small problem: the Newcastle-based provider ceased trading on October 5, according to records published by Companies House.

Exeter College, on the other hand, which FE Week recently crowned the best college in the country for the second year running and is rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, was denied a contract.

Another high-profile casualty of the process is Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group, which has a successful track record of delivering apprenticeships and is rated ‘good’ by the country’s education inspectorate.

A spokesperson admitted that the group was “mystified” by the outcome and, like Exeter, is appealing the decision.

“Both the ESFA and the IfA need to get a grip on this matter very rapidly,” declared the shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden after he saw FE Week’s findings.

“This is further evidence of the lack of joined-up thinking and the state of disarray on apprenticeships in general and non-levy-payers in particular at the DfE.

“The stop-start approach that Anne Milton [the skills minister] endorsed is now complicated by the sorts of examples that are coming forward and which FE week has illustrated.”

PTM Group was run by directors Peter Tighe and Jamie Paterson.

We are hopeful that this will reach a positive conclusion

Mr Tighe is also the sole director at Northern Construction Training and Regeneration Community Interest Company, another provider which was funded during the tender, again without any direct, prior apprenticeships contract with the government.

Mr Paterson resigned as a director on November 29; neither he nor his erstwhile colleague would comment.

The Department for Education also refused to comment on how or why PTM Training had received a contract, nor what would happen to its funding considering the business is no longer running, because, a spokesperson said, the non-levy tender remains a “live procurement”.

The non-levy tender has tormented the sector all year, plagued with delays and an aborted first attempt.

FE Week analysis of the 714 providers that were successful in the procurement reveals that nearly a third (227) are on their first direct apprenticeships contract.

Exeter College, which has an 81-per-cent overall apprenticeship achievement rate, well above the national average of 67 per cent, told FE Week that it was “not satisfied” by the result and would appeal.

Karen Dobson, the chief executive of the Newcastle and Stafford Colleges Group, which has an apprenticeship achievement rate of 84 per cent, said she was “disappointed and mystified” at the outcome.

“Apprenticeships are an important and successful part of our operation,” she told FE Week.

“As you would expect, we have submitted an appeal. We are hopeful that this will reach a positive conclusion over the coming weeks, for NSCG and our many satisfied employer partners and apprentices.”

More than 10 colleges had non-levy allocations to use this year but were denied contracts in the procurement. The Association of Colleges is helping its members with their challenges and appeals.

Proven private providers which didn’t get contracts are also angry at the tender outcome.

Jamie Rail, the managing director of Focus Training Group, which Ofsted rates as ‘good’ and has delivered apprenticeships in the south-west for 20 years, said he “can’t believe” it had been the government’s intention “to lose good provision”.

He claimed that the procurement had been “more about how good you were at writing a bid” rather than the “quality of what you do”.

Nick Linford editorial: Non-levy investigation and recount?

Nobody could have predicted that the ESFA would accidently award non-levy apprenticeship funding to a company that went bust months ago.

Although the DfE is tight-lipped and presumably red-faced, there must surely be an independent investigation into how this slipped through the due diligence process.

Conversely, that some high-quality colleges and training providers will see their funding stop from January is nonsensical.

The ESFA will no doubt say its bid evaluation team simply scored the applications on the basis of the 10,000 words they included.

That the result is a fail for grade one Exeter College and others like it is most likely because a small part of the submission they had written wasn’t deemed to answer the question well enough.

But as a result, over 98 per cent of employers, those not paying the levy, can’t continue to work with these colleges and providers.

There will always be winners and losers in any competition, but as our investigation has laid bare, a recount shouldn’t be ruled out.

College refers ‘allegations of mismanagement’ to ESFA

A college whose principal resigned in October amid “allegations of mismanagement” has referred the matter to the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

Jeanette Dawson OBE stepped down from Bishop Burton College in October, prompting an external investigation at the college into the allegations.

That investigation has now completed, the college said today in a statement.

Bill Meredith, acting chief executive and principal said: “The matter has been referred to the ESFA.

“I can confirm that the college remains in strong financial health and we look forward to welcoming our students back in 2018 to continue their education after the Christmas break.”

It’s not yet clear what the allegations of mismanagement related to.

In a statement dated October 24, the college, which was rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in January, said that that Ms Dawson had “chosen to resign as chief executive and principal”.

“The college has been made aware of some allegations of mismanagement. At this stage the allegations have not been substantiated and it is not appropriate to comment further whilst enquiries are on-going.”

Ms Dawson was made an OBE for services to land-based education in 2010.

Bishop Burton College is a specialist land-based college, with its main campus in the village of Bishop Burton in the East Riding of Yorkshire and another campus at Riseholme in Lincolnshire.

According to ESFA figures, the college has a 2017/18 AEB allocation of £3.4 million, and an apprenticeships allocation of £645,500.

The ESFA has been asked for a comment.

 

Further education transforms lives and we must protect it

Our further education providers are crucial for challenging inequality and transforming lives in 21st century post-austerity Britain, say Vicky Duckworth and Rob Smith

Further education provides a host of social benefits that have remained largely unmeasured – precisely because they can be hard to quantify.

To this end, we recently completed a research project to discover and describe some of the benefits that are often not reflected in traditional measures of success.

The research cuts across the grain of the current skills policy discourse, providing a picture of transformative teaching and learning taking root and flourishing in the sometimes stony ground of further education.

Evidence from the project exposes how, despite straitened finances and the constraints of a constantly changing annual funding methodology that incentivises college self-interest and gaming, further education providers continue to empower people and their communities.

In doing so, colleges challenge the stubborn cycle of intergenerational inequality and offer a transformative experience that enhances agency and hope for the project participants, their families and communities.

Adult education courses for young and older adults offer a second chance of re-engaging with education

 Empowerment

Accounts from learners demonstrate that further education courses are pathways to overcoming economic, social, political and cultural marginalisation.

David, from a traveller background, said his motivations for learning are so he can read to his four-year-old daughter. But he also wanted to take part in our democratic processes.

“You need education to know what’s going on outside: the politics and all that. I’d never voted in my life, ever,” he said. “I read the thing that came through the letterbox and I voted for the first time.”

Mental health and wellbeing

Further education also has a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing. For several of the participants, further education offered a lifeline that helped in their recovery.

Nyomi’s partner had a long-term illness and when she had a child she became depressed and felt locked in a spiral of despair.

Encouraged by her health visitor, she attended a course at college, where she felt accepted for who she was, and a year later has begun studying a podiatry degree. Now her partner is also beginning to study. Together they want to improve their lives and provide for their daughter.

Clearly, adult education courses for young and older adults offer a second chance of re-engaging with education. These courses can contribute to personal development, lead to the development of soft skills such as confidence, and consequently provide economic, social and health related benefits. Juxtaposed with this, adult education courses offer people opportunities of acquiring the tools needed to run their own lives.

Adult Education and Integration

Chaima grew up in Oldham. Her experience at school ended in disillusion and poor qualifications.

Entering further education, she rediscovered her learning identity and, with the support of teachers who believed in her, she worked steadily until she gained entry to higher education. Further education provided a space where she met people from other walks of life and, very importantly, learnt about cultures outside that of the Bangladeshi community.

“I learnt about them and their community and they learnt about me and my community as well,” she said. “It eliminates that ignorance.”

Chaima’s comments highlight the often overlooked role of further education colleges in providing integrated social spaces that have the potential to foster social cohesion in our diverse urban centres.

A decade on from the financial crisis that introduced public spending cuts across the UK, we have yet to emerge from quagmire of the politics of austerity. Yet a transformative curriculum delivered in a further education setting is able to challenge rather than reproduce social inequality.

Our findings are particularly interesting for commissioners of a range of services in cities and devolved administrations. With devolved budgets and outcome-based local commissioning arrangements, over the coming years we are likely to see changes to the way adult learning and education works. This requires joined-up thinking across discipline areas, and a cohesive approach that challenges inequality and moves towards social justice is a necessity.

It’s time to recognise these important contributions and to re-prioritise educational funding to reflect this new understanding.

 Dr Vicky Duckworth is a reader in education at Edge Hill University and Dr Rob Smith is a reader in education at Birmingham City University. Find out more about the UCU FE: Transforming lives and communities project here

Will college governors have to justify high executive salaries?

Dr Sue Pember, director of policy and external relations at Holex, answers your questions on college governance, backed by her experience as principal of Canterbury College and in senior civil service posts in education and skills

Question One: Executive pay

Academy governors and trustees have received a letter from the DfE asking them to justify high headteacher salaries. Are we subject to the same criteria for college principals?

Answer:
As yet, there has been no sign that the DfE wants to send out a similar letter to colleges. Colleges are independent of the government, while academies are part of the DfE. This is an important feature of a college’s legal status and why the DfE may not feel it is in a position to offer such direct advice.

However, the sentiments in the letter about justifying salary levels and the need to benchmark are as relevant to governors of colleges as they are for academies. We only have to look at the row going on in HE regarding vice-chancellor salaries to see how divisive it is to pay more than what the public thinks is appropriate. It might be prudent for your remuneration committee to consider the letter and make decisions in light of it.

 

Question Two: Meeting staff

We are keen to be a proactive governing body but we feel the executive blocks us from getting too close to college staff. What can we do to be assured what senior staff tell us is true?

Answer:
I am not sure what you mean about getting too close to college staff, but I am assuming that you want to be able to get information that helps to triangulate or correlate the data you receive at board meetings.

It is important to trust your executive team and you need to work with them, so it will take time to restore this relationship. You need to be up-front about the issue and ask the executive to set up a series of staff meetings with the governors, and organise a set of learning walks. But remember you are not there to judge any member of staff, and concerns that are raised should be noted and given to the executive to resolve and report back to you.

 

Question Three: Council relations

We will be in a devolved combined authority that has a skills deal, but they have not talked to us about their vision or recognised our role in setting strategy. When there is so little engagement, what should we do?

Answer:
Your role as governors is clear: you have the statutory responsibility for determining the ‎mission and vision, and ensuring a secure financial future for your college – that role has not been given to the combined authority.

However, as the combined authority will have a commissioning role for a part of your adult budget, you and the executive team will need to build a relationship with them. So be proactive and arrange to meet them; write to them, explaining what you think the strategic issues are, how your college can help meet them, and what it would be useful for them to do to support you. But I think you will also need to be patient. These are new times with new teams of officers trying to get their head round a complex, integrated system that relies on several funding routes for financial stability.

Skills in 2017: less money, more problems…

The government has had a few good ideas this year, admits Gordon Marsden, but it seems determined not to pay for any of them to actually happen

As we count down to the end of 2017, we can reflect on how different the skills landscape is today from 12 months ago. The Institute for Apprenticeships is now operational – finally – with a permanent chief executive. They’ll need him, given the big ask when the IfA takes on technical education in April, on top of the challenges the apprenticeship levy will set him in the New Year.

While the government has begun trying to rectify some of its past mistakes, far more needs still to be done.

Apprenticeship starts for 2016/17 tell some of the story.

As a local MP, I worry that in Blackpool starts for under 19s are down 21 per cent on last year. Overall figures nationally are down 509,400 to 491,300. This is not just a towns issue – though it is crucial that government pays more attention to the particular issues faced by non-metropolitan areas, particularly post-Brexit.

Young people are being deprived of valuable opportunities by government’s short-sightedness. Its continuing failure to support non-levy-paying employers, on which Mark Dawe and AELP have spoken out, has left far too many providers in limbo.

From when we first laid down the original proposals for the Institute, through the TFE bill and the levy’s introduction, we have always said that ministers must take more time to listen to stakeholders. Many concerns both Labour and the sector at large once expressed have come to pass.

The government must act now on the need for more flexibility in the use of the levy.

Young people are being deprived of valuable opportunities by government’s short-sightedness

Ministers won’t be forgiven if we have a repeat of the Learning Loans fiasco – where lack of take-up forced the Treasury to claw back hundreds of millions of pounds that should have gone to FE.

In order to consolidate a winning strategy on apprenticeships we need more focus on progress and successful completions, not just on starts – especially as average monthly starts are 17 per cent lower than needed to hit the target. Concerns, not least from AELP, that management apprenticeships would soar in popularity when the levy came in, combined with the Sutton Trust’s ‘Better apprenticeships’ report, which found that two thirds of apprenticeships merely rebadge existing training, have increased fears about gaming the system. These are concerns I’ve consistently raised myself, that quality and progression would be overlooked in a race to the three million starts.

If we really want to expand quality and quantity, as we do need to do, our call loud and clear in 2018 is for effective traineeships to help deliver economic potential and social mobility. A once-promising idea has fallen foul of the government’s failure to promote them effectively. The latest figures showing only one in five trainees progress to apprenticeships are testament to this failure.

That is why we will be working with AELP and other stakeholders in January, hosting a parliamentary event to discuss the crucial role traineeships could play in moving forward.

We also now finally have a careers strategy. After many unfulfilled promises we have the bones of something to work with. Again however, as I have already told FE Week, the promises are not yet enabled either with enough money or the capacity to deliver them. Ministers have not got adequate resources to make this work.

In areas where major gains in reskilling and retraining could be made, the DfE has been far too timid. The fact that the Union Learning Fund, a programme accepted as hugely successful, remains frozen at £12 million – with only last-minute pressure from us and others moving the Treasury to dispense small change to prevent a proposed 33-per-cent annual cut of £4 million – indicts the poverty of ambition that still hangs with this Tory government.

That is why we will be talking far more in 2018 about out National Education Service. The NES would address some of the long-standing lack of parity of esteem towards FE and a much fairer, more joined-up ecosystem to deliver life chances and social mobility. We will recognise the central role that FE, skills and apprenticeships can and must deliver for 21st century Britain.

Gordon Marsden is shadow skills minister

What role will the Careers & Enterprise Company play in the careers strategy?

The Careers and Enterprise Company has had its role beefed up in the new careers strategy, but hasn’t always had good press for what it’s achieved with government funding so far. Claudia Harris responds

The careers strategy aims to help every young person, no matter what their background, to build a rewarding career. At the Careers and Enterprise Company we welcome it and look forward to helping implement it.

The strategy has two particularly important ideas. The first is its endorsement of the Gatsby benchmarks, which lay out a broad range of support to help transition young people into the world of work. They move us beyond debates on employer encounters or one-to-one career guidance in favour of a multifaceted approach. Our own focus was on employer engagement and workplace experiences; the strategy broadens this focus.

We will be working to ensure that young people have the best opportunity to develop their careers. This includes working with careers professionals and the wider careers sector, while continuing to ask employers to volunteer their time. We have always believed that personal guidance delivered by professionals is important and welcome the opportunity to actively support schools and colleges to develop the guidance they offer.

With the ongoing reforms to technical education we need to open young people’s eyes to the full range of career opportunities

The second idea centres on local clusters of schools, colleges, ILPs and employers working together as networks. This approach is inevitably more difficult to implement than a single “project”, but it is the best way to ensure young people receive input from a broad range of sources.

With the ongoing reforms to technical education we need to open young people’s eyes to the full range of career opportunities, and ensure colleges and other providers of technical education engage from an early age. Our own research shows this is not currently happening in all schools, and the strategy makes addressing it a priority.

The CEC was set up over two years ago to focus on employer engagement with education. With this mandate we established a network of enterprise coordinators working with clusters of 20 schools and colleges to help connect them to local employers and service providers. Each institution is supported by a business volunteer whose role is to work with the senior team and facilitate engagement with local employers.

We are now collaborating with 38 local enterprise partnerships and working with 75 FE colleges and more than 2,000 schools. Last week we published an evaluation which showed that the approach is working.

Schools and colleges in our network are now reporting 50 per cent more employer encounters than when they started working with us.

We have also funded a wide range of other organisations to scale up the best employer engagement programmes in the country, including WorldSkills and the Engineering Development Trust. So far, 250,000 young people have benefited from the first £5 million in funding.

The new strategy asks us to play a broader coordination role, using all the Gatsby benchmarks. These identify the three core pillars of good career guidance: (i) the importance of encounters – with the world of work, and with higher and further education (ii) the need for good information – about how the curriculum links to careers and the labour market; and (iii) the importance of helping a young person to develop a careers plan suited to their own passions and strengths.

Building on what was learned from a successful pilot led by Gatsby in the north-east, the strategy establishes resource for 20 local career hubs to deliver against these benchmarks. This should be welcome news for those looking for an evidence-led, locally governed solution to careers.

The careers strategy sets out a new direction for careers provision in England. It correctly identifies the national need for multifaceted and programmatic careers guidance which takes place over the longer term. We look forward to working closely with educators, employers and careers providers to deliver outcomes that last for our economy and, most importantly, for our young people.

Claudia Harris is CEO of the Careers and Enterprise Company