AoC demands colleges are omitted from ‘misleading’ school progress data

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

It has written to Damian Hinds asking him to intervene.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carillion apprentices will not be paid after January, report claims

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This simply isn’t good enough

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

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

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

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

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

More to follow

Warrington UTC enrages neighbouring schools by ‘poaching’ pupils

A university technical college in Cheshire has been accused of poaching students from local schools in the middle of the year, in the latest embarrassing blow to the struggling programme.

The pupils were due to join UTC Warrington as normal in September, but it invited them to move over this month, winding up neighbouring heads and potentially forcing them to return per-pupil funding to the government.

The skills minster Anne Milton has herself acknowledged that “concerns have been raised” about whether the UTC’s actions are “in breach of the admissions code”.

“We are taking this seriously and are in discussions with the UTC, the local authority and representatives from local schools,” she said in response to a written parliamentary question from Helen Jones, the MP Warrington North.

The council was very disappointed by the unwise decision of the UTC and are unimpressed by its educational principles

UTCs, technical institutions for 14- to 19-year-olds, were launched in 2010, and have struggled with recruiting sufficient numbers of students at 14, as many children don’t like to leave schools they have usually attended since they were 11.

They’re often seen as unwelcome competition in the FE sector, which typically recruits from 16, and eight have been forced to close so far.

Almost every UTC missed its recruitment targets in 2016-17, and 39 are having to return a combined debt of over £11 million to the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

UTC funding is allocated based on estimated student numbers, so if their actual enrolment is lower than predicted they have to repay the excess money.

The schools which have lost pupils to UTC Warrington could also now be asked to return money to the government, as their funding is also directly related to the number of pupils they teach.

The UTC has been scolded by for its “unwise decision” by one of its own founding members, Steven Broomhead, who is also chief executive of Warrington borough council.

“Members” are effectively the owners of a UTC, involved in setting it up and responsible for important decisions, but Mr Broomhead did not mention his involvement.

“The council was very disappointed by the unwise decision of the UTC and are unimpressed by its educational principles,” he said. “We have met with the UTC to discuss the matter and in particular how, in future, our young people’s interests could be better served by developing good relationships between schools and the UTC.”Ms Jones told The Warrington Guardian that she found it “astonishing” that the UTC had recruited the pupils early “without approval from the Department for Education”.

“The actions of the UTC have damaged many schools and will lead to yet further cuts in their budgets,” the MP said.

She has subsequently tabled questions to the government, asking it to compensate the schools that have lost money.

In response, Nadhim Zahawi, a junior minister at the DfE, wrote a letter on January 19, saying “no schools will lose funding in the current academic year for those year 9 pupils who have made an early transfer to Warrington University Technical College.

“The department is aware that concerns have been raised about the UTC’s actions and is discussing them with the UTC, the local authority and representatives from local schools.”

The UTC declined to comment.

Milton promises to find ‘the right solution’ for ‘precious’ Kensington and Chelsea College

The furore surrounding the future of a west London college in the shadow of the Grenfell Tower has made it to the House of Commons, after the skills minister promised to find the “right solution” for a “precious” community asset today.

During the regularly scheduled education questions, Anne Milton discussed the doomed merger plans between Kensington and Chelsea College, and Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, which the FE commissioner Richard Atkins has scrapped as exclusively revealed by FE Week on Saturday.

She was addressing Kensington’s Labour MP Emma Dent Coad, who had told her said that “our bereaved community needs its local education services” in the wake of the deadly blaze, and asked if the government would secure “the financial future of a community led college along with a diverse and locally representative board”.

“I was delighted to meet with campaigners,” Ms Milton replied. “I would congratulate the FE commissioner for stepping in and having numerous meetings.

“I know he’s anxious to keep in touch with the honourable member opposite to make sure we get the right solution for this precious college, this valuable resource which has been around for many, many years.”

Kensington and Chelsea College had been pressing ahead with merger plans in the face of massive local opposition – and especially fears that the resulting conglomeration would have closed its major Wornington Road campus, which is close to the tower block where 71 died last June.

But on Friday, Mr Atkins told campaigners that the merger was off, after he and the minister intervened.

The Wornington campus has been a popular place of learning for many of Kensington’s less affluent residents, among them people who lived at Grenfell.

The campus is one of the college’s two main sites, and was recently sold under a lease-back deal worth over £25 million to the borough council, which soon outlined controversial plans for the site which would at best have resulted in greatly reduced teaching space.

But Kim Taylor-Smith, who took over as deputy leader of the council in July and is lead member for Grenfell recovery, said he had listened to a huge number of complaints about the plans, and paused the campus redevelopment plans.

“We are really pleased that Richard Atkins reached the decision he has, but it is against a backdrop of sadness as we know all of this government intervention wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for all the loss of life at Grenfell, and the need they now feel to repay the community,” said Edward Daffarn, one of the leaders of the Save Wornington campaign, who himself escaped from the fire.

“It is now important that we secure the long term future of the Wornington campus, which cannot be done simply through the college securing a 10 year lease on the site.

“That will be too costly for the college and no-one would know what would happen after the decade.”

Ofsted revisits grade three college amid signs of falling standards

A huge college rocked by a string of senior leadership departures that’s currently rated ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted has been revisited amid portents that standards could be slipping further.

Sheffield College lost its chief executive in November and its governing body chair in January, after both resigned with immediate effect.

Its latest accounts, dated December 18, reveal an ongoing decline in achievement rates – particularly among 16- to 18-year-olds.

However, the college denied there was any connection between these upheavals and Ofsted’s visit.

The timing is as expected, falling with 24 months of the college’s last inspection

“The timing is as expected, falling with 24 months of the college’s last inspection, according to Ofsted’s common inspection framework,” a spokesperson told FE Week.

She added that it would be “inappropriate” to speculate on the outcome before inspectors had completed their report.

An Ofsted spokesperson confirmed the visit was part of its usual inspection schedule.

Sheffield college was rated ‘requires improvement’ overall – down from its previous ‘good’ grade – after its previous inspection almost exactly two years ago.

According to the new accounts, the college’s self-assessment concludes that it remains at grade three, but the same document also revealed a slide in its education and training achievement rates – down from 77.4 per cent in 2015/16 to 76.3 per cent.

Among 16- to 18-year-olds that proportion fell even further, from 75.2 per cent last year to a worryingly low 73.6 per cent this year.

Minutes from an October board meeting reveal that this fall came as a surprise to college leaders.

A year-on-year improvement of 2.5 percentage points had been forecast, but this was later downgraded to a “flat position or small decline”.

And a 13-point drop in the proportion of adults achieving a functional skills qualification was “completely unexpected”.

Angela Foulkes

The minutes note that the college’s “approach to tracking and risk-rating student engagement” had been “inspected and commended” by a consultant Ofsted inspector, but that this “did not seem to have informed more accurate learner achievement forecasting”.

The college was also subject to a “diagnostic assessment” from the FE commissioner in November – one of a small number of pilot assessments carried out by Richard Atkins and his team.

These are two-day visits to colleges at risk of failing – particularly those with multiple grade threes – to identify areas for improvement before they hit rock bottom.

Principal Angela Foulkes confirmed that the college had “agreed to take part” in the assessment, but that it “has not triggered formal intervention”.

Earlier this month, its chair Richard Wright stepped down after almost four and a half years, according to local media reports.

His departure came just two months after chief executive Paul Corcoran resigned with immediate effect, two and a half years after he was appointed.

Ms Foulkes, who only took the job in June, is acting chief executive until a permanent replacement for Mr Corcoran is found.

She replaced former principal Heather Smith, who retired last summer after two years in charge.

Mr Corcoran and his senior team launched a consultation over the summer on controversial proposals for a staffing shake-up, prompting complaints among employees about the way the restructure was being handled.

Forty senior leadership, managerial, business support and administrative posts were to be cut, as part of drive by the college to invest in frontline teaching.

Government loophole allows apprenticeship brokerage to continue

Taking fees for brokering apprenticeship funding is acceptable, according to correspondence from the Skills Funding Agency – as long as payments aren’t made directly from government funding.

The government recently promised to crack down on brokering, which can see subcontractors charged up to five per cent of their total contract funding in commission to be matched with a prime.

The AELP now wants this loophole fixed for good, to “ensure the need for brokerage is eliminated”.

Funding rules were changed last year to prevent brokering, and state that “funds in an employer’s digital account or government-employer co-investment must not be used for… specific services not related to the delivery and administration of the apprenticeship”.

But the director of a Yorkshire-based firm that openly offers a “subcontracting and brokerage service” on its website has denied any wrongdoing, and has correspondence from the body that became the Education and Skills Funding Agency to prove it.

It is fantasy and fallacy to imagine that if brokering was banned, the funds previously paid in commission would find their way into learning

Daniel Scargill, the boss of Diamond Advisory Services, was told that “the service you provide is not fundable under the funding rules – however, any employer/provider can pay you for your service, just not using government funds”.

The message, seen by FE Week, also indicates that profits from funding can still be “indirectly” spent on his brokerage services, though “they cannot be used and included as part of an apprenticeships funding value”.

Mr Scargill claimed while the funding allocation system “is not a perfect one”, his company was “helping to perfect it”.

“It is both fantasy and fallacy to imagine that if brokering was banned, the funds previously paid in commission would find their way into learning,” he added.

AELP boss Mark Dawe was not at all happy to discover the existence of this guidance.

“Anything that takes funding away from frontline has to be assessed for value for money. Sadly the clunky funding system and disastrous procurement exercises mean for many quality providers, they have to find a prime contract partner,” he said.

Mark Dawe

“This will always lead to a potential market for intermediaries. We are working closely with the ESFA to try and ensure the need for brokerage is eliminated.”

Diamond Advisory Services was previously known as the Funding Brokers, but its name was changed a year ago.

FE Week reported on the Funding Brokers in April 2016, during an investigation that found brokers were typically charging subcontractors up to five per cent of their government cash for matching them to a prime provider.

The firm had posted an advert which said “we have been providing this service for over three years, securing in excess of £100 million in the process for our clients”.

“Diamond Advisory Services offers a diverse range of services to a similarly diverse clientele,” Mr Scargill said this week. “As such, a decision was taken regarding the company name that the Funding Brokers was inappropriately narrow in what it conveyed.”

Quattro Consultancy, which offers on its website to match prime contractors “looking to work with training providers on a subcontracting or associate basis”, also denies that moves to cut down on brokerage have had a meaningful effect.

“The key change to the rules is that ‘from May 1, 2017, no government money can be used to pay brokers’ fees’,” the firm which did not comment this week, said on its website. “Will this affect our clients? Well we don’t think so.”

This loophole is not the first example of weak enforcement. It was reported last year that the NHS and Nottingham city council were continuing to charge what amounted to brokerage fees for allowing providers access to apprenticeship contracts.

The Department for Education clarified its approach to brokerage this week.

“Any government funding provided for apprenticeships must be spent on apprenticeship training and assessment only,” a spokesperson said.

But third-party brokers appear to be in the clear, as it was stressed the ESFA would “only investigate organisations with which it has a contractual relationship”, referring employers or providers.

Victory for Grenfell campaigners as FE Commissioner scraps colleges’ merger

A merger between two London colleges has been called off following direct intervention from the FE commissioner, triggered by fallout from the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy.

Kensington and Chelsea College had been pressing ahead with plans to merge with Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College, despite massive local opposition.

But Richard Atkins told campaigners yesterday that it was now off.

One of their leaders Meg McDonald, from The Save Wornington College group, which has been working in partnership with campaigners battling for justice following the Grenfell Tower fire, has thanked the thousands of people who helped fight to stop it.

“The merger is definitely off and that’s because of you whether leafleting and fly posting, emailing the governors and the principal, lobbying governors meetings in the cold, getting the petition signed, standing at the stall on Fridays, coming to meetings with your ideas, investigating legal matters, writing letters, speaking at meetings for the campaign, you have been the core of this campaign,” she said.

She added the FE Commissioner will share the report of his team’s recommendations next week.

Mr Atkins was sent in before Christmas to review the situation, along with further intervention from skills minister Anne Milton, in-part because KCC’s Wornington campus is in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, which was struck by tragedy last June when 71 people died in a huge fire.

The final vote by KCC board of governors either to accept or reject a merger with Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College had been due to take place on December 18.

But they agreed to delay at least until the end of next April, after Ms Milton and Mr Atkins made fresh recommendations.

FE Week has had it confirmed separately that the merger is off.

“They will be looking into the quick sale of the college, other partnerships, proper consultation with the community and other interested parties, speaking to the council to negotiate a better and longer lease for Wornington, and the finances,” Ms McDonald said.

More than 1,600 campaigners who oppose the merger have signed a petition to be handed to college leaders.

They believe convinced the resulting super-college would have been more likely to allow the local council to redevelop KCC’s Wornington Road campus, situated close to Grenfell Tower, which was devastated by fire over the summer killing 71 people, for housing.

Wornington has traditionally been a popular place of learning for many of the sort of less affluent residents in the local area, for example it has been people who would have lived at Grenfell.

Mr Atkins visited KCC last month under orders from Ms Milton to review the merger plan which were meant to go ahead from January.

Campaigners, led by Grenfell survivor Ed Daffarn, had been saying for months that they felt confident they would stop the merger, because they believed that would be given special consideration by the government because of the Grenfell fire tragedy.

Ms McDonald added that “many people have asked how to seek the dismissal or resignation” of Kensington and Chelsea College’s chair of governors, Mary Curnock Cook, also a former UCAS boss, and principal, Dr Elaine McMahon, who have remained committed to the merger as local opposition has mounted.

Ms Curnock Cook said: “The board of Kensington & Chelsea College will be discussing the recommendations of the FE Commissioner at its February meeting.”

The Wornington campus is one of the college’s two main sites, and was recently sold under a lease-back deal for £25.3 million to the borough council, which then outlined plans for the site which would at best result in greatly reduced teaching space.

But Kim Taylor-Smith, who took over as deputy leader of the council in July and is lead member for Grenfell recovery, said he has listened to a huge number of complaints about the plans, and paused the campus redevelopment plans.

The Department for Education has not commented so far.

Area reviews mishandled early on, DfE research concludes

The way the government handled the first wave of the area reviews has been slammed by new research on behalf of the Department for Education.

Most of those who took part “considered their involvement in the first wave of the process as a challenge”, consultancy firm CFE found.

Major obstacles included a “lack of lead in time to understand the policy” or prepare for it, and “underdevelopment of the guidance”.

There was initially too narrow a scope of providers, especially because school sixth-forms weren’t included, and there was too much focus on finance above all else.

“Many interviewees said it was unfortunate and sometimes frustrating that the needs of learners and local businesses were not considered in the same level of detail as financial issues,” the report said.

The area reviews of post-16 education and training were announced by the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in July 2015, and kicked off in September that year, concluding in March 2017.

The process was intended to lead to “fewer, often larger, more resilient and efficient providers”.

The needs of learners and local businesses were not considered in the same level of detail as financial issues

Early predictions claimed up to 80 mergers would result, just 58 were proposed – of which 35 have gone through, according to the FE commissioner Richard Atkins, who oversaw the final reviews.

He told the Commons education committee this week the reviews weren’t an “unmitigated success”, but claimed that “on balance they had a number of successful elements”.

These included “bringing colleges, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships together”. He also highlighted the benefits of “holding colleges to account in terms of looking at their data and sharing their data”.

The research focused on the experiences of people involved in two of the first-wave reviews: Birmingham and Solihull, and Tees Valley, which were the first two to finish in March and May 2016 respectively.

Many of the difficulties cited have been reported extensively by FE Week.

We covered the long delays to the early reviews, and the initial timeframe of three to four months that even the government representatives involved in the process acknowledged had been optimistic.

Participants in the Tees Valley review, which was jointly chaired by Sir David Collins, the FE commissioner at the time, and Gill Alexander, Hartlepool council’s chief executive, complained that “the two individuals had different ambitions for the review”.

This echoed deep divisions in the Greater Manchester area review – not included in this report – between the colleges and combined local authority, leading to lengthy delays.

The research sheds some light on why so many recommended mergers, including all three of those proposed in Tees Valley, have subsequently fallen through.

“The extent to which the options were appraised in both areas was relatively light touch, with the emphasis being on pragmatic partnerships between colleges to merge rather than a detailed analysis of the data to suggest which merger options would be best based on the evidence base,” the report said.

However, it didn’t look at the outcomes and impacts of the reviews as “at the time the evaluation took place it was too soon to measure these”.

But the report did note that “only a few respondents agreed that the changes recommended would have happened without the area review process being undertaken”.

Over half of Learndirect’s 17,000 apprentices failed last year

More than half of the 17,000 apprentices due to complete their course with Learndirect last year failed, as its achievement rate slumped a further 8.6 percentage points, FE Week can reveal.

These latest figures now mean that nearly 25,000 learners have failed to successfully complete their apprenticeship at the nation’s biggest FE provider over the last four years – during which time it was given over £150 million to deliver these qualifications.

The ESFA shared its provisional data for individual providers in 2016/17 last week, revealing that Learndirect had accomplished its worst ever overall achievement rate for apprenticeships.

Back in November, following its first monitoring visit since Learndirect’s infamous grade four, Ofsted announced that its rates had fallen below the 57.8 per cent dip recorded in 2015/16, but that the actual figure would not be available to the public until as late as June.

FE Week has now seen the data and can reveal that during the last academic year, Learndirect’s cohort of 17,033 apprentices had an overall achievement rate of just 49.2 per cent. In other words, more than half failed to attain their qualification.

This is significantly below the ESFA’s minimum threshold of 62 per cent and raises yet more concerns about the quality of training its apprentices are receiving.

The timescale of the 2016/17 figures shows that even after Learndirect’s damning inspection in March, when concerns about its delivery were first raised, it didn’t sharpen up quickly and continued to fail the majority of its trainees.

Its achievement rate has dropped considerably over the last four years (see table), and since 2013/14, Learndirect has trained 58,283 apprentices but 24,712 of them failed to achieve their qualifications.

During that time, it was given £153 million by the ESFA to deliver apprenticeships, according to the National Audit Office. It will get an additional £14 million to deliver the qualifications in 2017/18.

During the full inspection in March, Ofsted inspectors slammed managers for allowing around a third of apprentices to “not receive their entitlement to off-the-job learning” and miss out on “the skills they require to progress to the next step in their career”.

Its monitoring visit report from November said it still “remains unclear” what off-the-job training had taken place at the provider.

It added that senior leaders had overseen the “phased introduction” of a new policy to clarify how assessors are expected to plan and record apprentices’ off-the-job training, but this did not start until two months after the grade four.

Almost half of apprentices were “identified currently as being behind target, and a further fifth are at risk of falling behind target”, Ofsted found.

The monitoring visit did have some more positive news about the current delivery of apprenticeships, however.

“Since the inspection, the proportion of apprentices leaving their programmes early has reduced, and the number of apprentices on unauthorised breaks in learning, which was a major contributing factor to the poor overall achievement rates in 2016/17, has declined significantly,” inspectors wrote.

“As a result, the proportion of apprentices completing their qualifications is beginning to increase, but from a very low base.”

There is, however, no evidence of this improvement for courses that ended by July 2017.

Learndirect has been under the microscope ever since the ‘inadequate’ report appeared in August, and the government subsequently singled it out for special treatment by allowing it to retain its contracts for almost a year – much more than the usual three-month termination period.

It was subject to an NAO investigation and then a Public Accounts Committee hearing, and the report of the latter is expected in the spring.

Learndirect declined to comment on its apprenticeship achievement rates.