The government increased the size of the register of apprenticeship training providers (RoATP) by 354 today, pushing the total to 2,187 organisations with direct access to funding and in scope for Ofsted inspection.

The number of apprenticeship providers now in scope for Ofsted inspection, assuming the vast majority recruit level two and three apprentices, has now more than doubled since the levy reforms were introduced last year. 

The majority of successful organisations in this third official application window are private companies, 12 of which have yet to file their first set of accounts with Companies House.

In addition, 15 universities, including the University of Cambridge, join the register taking the total number of universities on RoATP to just over 100. Under current arrangements, degree level apprenticeships will be inspected by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and where there is a prescribed HE qualification contained within an apprenticeship at Levels 4 to 5, this will be done jointly with Ofsted.

Funding allocations for 2016/17 suggest that prior to the introduction of RoAPT there were 837 providers in scope for inspection and in the same year Ofsted inspected 189 providers on the delivery of their apprenticeships.

In a wide ranging FE Week interview last March, the Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman was asked about the impact of RoATP, which Ms Spielman said included “a lot of people with very limited experience and potentially quite a lot of fragmentation,”

When pressed on a prediction that the number of providers would exceed 2000, against a backdrop of ongoing budget reductions at Ofsted, Ms Spielman said she and Paul Joyce, Ofsted’s deputy director for FE and skills, were “worried”.

Earlier this month, at a recent Public Accounts Committee hearing, Ms Spielman said: “This is something that I raised last year with Jonathan Slater [the permanent secretary at the Department for Education], that if the levy policy was a success then a lot of these new providers are going to come on stream and start having learners and we expect to have more work and need more resource to do that,” she said.

“We had the acknowledgement that the more work we had the greater resource we would need,” she added.

“We haven’t got a specific resource increase because we don’t know how many of these [new providers] will come on stream with a volume of learners. But we have the acknowledgement in principle that this will be required.”

The following day the issue was also raised during an Education Select Committee session as part of the inquiry into apprenticeship quality.

Joe Dromey, a senior research fellow for the policy think-tank IPPR, warned apprenticeship numbers and Ofsted resource was “going in opposite directions”.

Of the 354 additions, 61 are employer providers that can now directly access their own levy funding and include household names such as the Salvation Army, Greggs, British Airways, River Island and Lloyds Bank.

And the 2,187 total does not include the 114 organisations added to the 276 with ‘supporting provider’ status taking their total to 390 on RoATP.

Providers catagorised as ‘supporting’ cannot access funding directly. They can only subcontract from one of the main providers up to the value of £500,000 per year and are not directly in scope for Ofsted inspection.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has so far completed three official RoAPT application windows, and as reported by FE Week last September, is currently reviewing the process.

For more information and analysis see the next edition of FE Week.

Financially struggling colleges should seek bailouts from the restructuring fund while they still can, the FE commissioner has said in his annual report.

“There remains an opportunity for colleges, while the restructuring facility is available, to access support to put them in a strong position ahead of the introduction of the insolvency regime and the end of exceptional financial support,” said Richard Atkins.

His advice contradicts previous statements from the Department for Education – which insisted the facility can’t be used to prop up failing colleges – and there are growing concerns about transparency.

“There remain a number of colleges that need to improve their financial health, including some that remained standalone following the area reviews,” he wrote. “It is vital that colleges carefully review forward financial plans – including testing income assumptions.”

The annual report – Mr Atkins’ first since being appointed FE commissioner in November 2016 – covers his work over the year from September 2016 to August 2017.

It gives an overview of colleges’ health, and identifies any challenges facing the sector – as well as detailing Mr Atkins’ expanded role in supporting colleges.

The report doesn’t mention any colleges which have been successful in their applications to the fund.

A number of colleges in financial difficulty have applied for cash from the fund, which is designed to support changes recommended in the area reviews that are too expensive for the institutions in question.

There was a massive £25 million injection expected at Lambeth College this month, even though its merger plans appear to have hit the buffers.

During a Commons education committee hearing last week, Mr Atkins dodged claims by the chair Robert Halfon that the restructuring fund was being used to prop up failing colleges.

He said that 17 out of 35 area review-recommended mergers had “benefitted from restructuring funds”, but wouldn’t be drawn on transparency questions.

“I don’t have responsibility for allocating those funds,” he said, acknowledging that “openness and transparency is really important in running any organisation”.

He also described funding for FE as “unfair”, and told MPs that financial pressures could be at least partly to blame for falling standards within the sector.

His annual report revealed that just four colleges subject to intervention because of financial problems had managed to lift themselves away from his oversight over the past year – and that all four had merged with a stronger institution.

According to information published by the DfE in November, 10 applications to the fund worth a total of £120 million had been approved to date.

But skills minister Anne Milton told parliament on Monday that “we have approved £300 million of restructuring money”.

Information on the number of applications that covers is due to be published shortly, according to the DfE.

A spokesperson previously said: “The restructuring facility is not being used to prop up failing colleges. 

“The restructuring facility is designed to help colleges make major changes following an area review recommendation that they cannot fund themselves and that will result in high quality provision for the local community.”

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership has today published a major report on how the region can close the education and skills attainment gap with the south.

Chaired by former chancellor George Osborne, the organisation has a number of recommendations for improving FE.

FE Week has pulled out the eight main findings.

1. “Bureaucracy” is to blame for the apprenticeship levy’s slow start

The “slow and over bureaucratic” process of approving apprenticeship standards at the Institute for Apprenticeships is to blame for the levy’s poor take-up.

Mr Osborne, who first introduced the levy, admitted disappointment with recent apprenticeship starts numbers, and believes funds are “not being fully utilised”.

Government data released last week revealed there were 114,400 starts in the first quarter of 2017, covering the months of August, September and October, a fall of 26.5 per cent on the same period for the previous year.

“This is disappointing given that the majority of starts take place in the first quarter of the academic year and suggests that apprenticeship levy funds are not being fully utilised,” the report said.

The NPP claimed there is “extensive evidence” to suggest this poor uptake is due to the “slow and overly bureaucratic” process of approving apprenticeship standards.

FE Week has reported extensively on how employer groups have complained about the “inordinately long time” it has taken to develop the new standards, some of which were first published over two years ago but are still unready for delivery.

2. Focus funding on disadvantaged people to increase starts

To turn the poor apprenticeship numbers around, the NPP wants more investment in people currently “unable to access” apprenticeships and higher-level skills.

These groups should be “prioritised” when allocating any current and medium-term underspends in the levy until its take-up increases.

“There is a significant need to help people who have missed out on access to the right skills when leaving school to move on from low-paid jobs – apprenticeships with their existing employer can be a viable route,” the NPP said.

3. Measure learner success at age 25

All FE providers, alongside schools and universities, should be measured for the “employability and eventual success” of their learners at age 25 compared to their previous attainment.

This would “shift the focus” to long-term achievement “rather than short-term measures of success”.

As recently reported by FE Week, colleges are frustrated by the government’s current and ‘misleading’ progress measures.

4. T-level work placements will prove “challenging”

The report describes the government’s new technical qualifications as a “great opportunity” despite difficulties in “identifying high-quality placements for those studying towards them”.

The DfE has said that all T-level students will have to take part in these work placements, which should last between 45 and 60 days and last a minimum of 315 hours, a feat described as “impossible” by the Association of Colleges.

The NPP said employers, which may have offered some type of work experience in the past, should be “encouraged to prioritise this group to gain the benefit for both parties from applied learning, although more flexible approaches than a three-month placement may need to be considered to maximise the quality of opportunities available”.

5. Devolve nearly all FE funding

It is recommended that metro mayors and areas receiving further devolution deals should control the adult education budget, as well as overall vocational education spending from 16 to 18.

This, a spokesperson told FE Week, would mean “close collaboration and co-decision making” with the government on things like new Institutes of Technologies and the technical pathways associated with the Sainsbury Review.

6. Make the north the “world-leading centre” for degree apprenticeships

The NPP wants to establish the north as the “world’s leading centre” for degree and higher-level apprenticeships, seeing up to one in five of its learners pursuing them in the future.

“This would allow our brightest and best students to pursue a mix of work and applied learning, with new Institutes of Technology established to focus on the Northern Powerhouse leading the fourth industrial revolution,” the report says.

7. Every northern business to become mentors for skills

The report asks employers of all sizes across the north to pledge to “mentor or provide high-quality experience of the workplace” to at least the same number of young people as they have employees.

This will include sole traders and SMEs with only a handful of staff to global brands such as Barclays, which would “expect to work with a number of young people far in excess of the 12,000 staff they employ in the north”.

8. Deploy national retraining funds “effectively”

November’s autumn budget saw Mr Osborne’s successor as chancellor Philip Hammond unveil plans to invest £76 million into retraining adults who want to work in the digital and construction sectors.

The NPP said this new scheme will go “some way” in addressing the north’s issue of upskilling.

“Given the importance of the digital sector to the economy of the north, we must ensure that this funding is deployed effectively,” it said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just having the levy on its own is not necessarily sustainable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

— vain vixen (@hghani_) January 27, 2018

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

— Shakira Martin (@ShakiraSweet1) January 30, 2018

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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