Apprenticeship funding bands might be about to change – because employers “do not feel able” to negotiate with providers on price.
The Department for Education has announced that it would review the “effectiveness of the current funding band structure” which “includes considering funding band structures” – and any changes will apply to new starts from August 2018.
“When we moved to 15 funding bands, we expected to see employers and providers negotiating on price below the funding band upper limit,” it said.
“However, this hasn’t materialised across all of the market, with many employers telling us that they do not feel able to negotiate with providers. We are therefore considering changes to incentivise negotiation and drive better value for money.”
Every apprenticeship standard and framework are allocated a funding band of between £3,000 and £27,000.
That band represents the maximum government or levy funding an apprenticeship can attract and employers are expected to negotiate with providers on the price.
Employers can agree to pay more than the funding band maximum, and pay the difference from their own cash.
The current 15 funding bands for apprenticeship were introduced in May 2017, an increase from the previous six funding caps for apprenticeship standards.
According to today’s announcement the maximum funding band will stay the same, but other bands could change. Any changes would be confirmed in the spring.
“If we do change the funding band structure, we will work with the IfA to ensure that any new standards that are approved for delivery are allocated to both one of the 15 current funding bands and to a new, post-August funding band.”
The skills minister identified September as the month by which she expects to see a surge in apprenticeship starts, in an exclusive webinar with FE Week.
Anne Milton revealed that she is looking to the start of the next academic year, during her chat this afternoon with FE Week’s editor Nick Linford.
“I will be told by my officials that I shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to say it anyway,” she said. “I would hope that by September to see some real numbers.”
Figures released by the Department for Education in January revealed apprenticeship starts have fallen 41 per cent since the introduction of the levy in May, compared with the same period in the previous year.
Provisional starts for the first quarter of 2017, covering August, September and October, showed a fall of 26 per cent on the previous year.
For the government to hit its target of three million apprenticeship starts by 2020 there would need to be an average of at least 50,000 starts a month.
However, Ms Milton believes there has been “quite a dramatic shift with employers” recently, and said many are “planning to rapidly increase numbers” of apprentices, particularly in the retail and hospitality sectors.
“We’ve done some proper investigation,” she said. “These things take time, and it’s only been a year. But the providers are waiting in the wings and ready to go.”
FE Week editor Nick Linford questions Anne Milton about apprenticeship reforms during the webinar
During the webinar, sponsored by the Northern Council for Further Education (NCFE) and featuring the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of funding and programmes, Keith Smith, Ms Milton said local MPs have a role to play in encouraging small businesses to take on more apprentices.
“We are doing some teaching sessions for MPs,” she said. “I’ve got 650 disciples in the Houses of Parliament. They know their local areas, they know a lot of small businesses.
“I think they can do a great deal of work with them. I think that’s a great opportunity.”
Mr Smith shared the ESFA’s plans for the development of apprenticeship policy over the next year, including the option for employers to transfer 10 per cent of the levy to another employer from April.
He said the new policy should be seen as an “employer-led opportunity” and means “levy-paying employers taking control of where they want to invest their funds”.
At the end of the session, Ms Milton said FE Week’s webinar had been a “great opportunity” and she was looking forward to “doing again soon”.
Good to join the @FEWeek webinar with Skills Minister @AnneMilton this afternoon. Minister acknowledged standards readiness a huge issue for biz and needs to be addressed quickly 1/3
FE providers failed to spend £63 million of the adult education budget during the last academic year alone, the skills minister has admitted.
Not everyone agrees with Anne Milton, however: the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, has insisted that the true figure is likely to be much higher.
Ms Milton’s admission came in answer to John Mann, the chair of the Commons treasury sub-committee, who asked what estimate had been “made of the underspend against the AEB in the academic year 2016/17”.
“The underspend against the mainstream participation element of the AEB for the 2016 to 2017 academic year was £63 million,” the minister replied. This is “less than five per cent of the total contracted value”, she claimed.
The underspend against the mainstream participation element of the AEB for the 2016 to 2017 academic year was £63 million
“A portion of the underspend was reallocated within the further education sector, providing the opportunity for providers to expand provision through growth bids, funding over delivery in providers who exceeded their delivery aims, and support other provision.”
This excludes “growth deals and other funding support” because these programmes are “managed on a financial-year basis”.
The AELP boss Mark Dawe believes the announcement was misleading, however, as not all elements of the AEB have been accounted for.
It is “really disappointing” that the written answer only referred to “the mainstream participation element of the budget”, he said.
“The bottom line is that revenue budget was wasted on bailing out failed institutions not supporting learners.
“Any underspend should be reallocated to support the participation of learners by effective providers,” Mr Dawe added. “The AEB procurement demonstrated the unmet demand.”
Private providers were forced last year to tender for a slice of just £110 million in a much-cricitised AEB procurement exercise.
Their competitors, notably colleges and councils, were exempt.
The total sum of tender applications is understood to have been six times larger than £110 million.
Multiple sources confirmed at the time that around 13 per cent of the total £1.5 billion AEB budget had not been used.
Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden said this was part of a “systemic set of problems that we are seeing all the way through to the dispersing of adult funding” and insisted that the government needs to “urgently review the whole process”.
It’s a degree of progress for chief executive Dan Wright, who told FEWeek in January that his goal was to make CIFE self-sufficient by 2019.
He said that Trafford College had “clearly demonstrated the maintenance of high-quality standards over a sustained period of time”.
WMC had impressed with “the quality of [its] strategic plan and its strong links with the community it serves”.
Burton and South Derbyshire College was had meanwhile “forged strong relationships across the sector”, and was “highly regarded by students and employers as a model training provider”.
“I am delighted that WMC – The Camden College has achieved the distinction of being the first adult college in London to join the CIFE membership,” said its principal Helen Hammond.
“This supports our ‘outstanding’ grade and recognises our continued efforts to ensure we are a learner-centred college dedicated to widening access to education for all adults across London.
“This supports our ‘outstanding’ grade and recognises our continued efforts to ensure we are a learner-centred college
We look forward to being part of this membership that recognises our commitment for providing high standards and opportunities for lifelong learning.”
Ms Hammond said she hoped to encourage other colleges to join the CIFE “to show their level of excellence in education”.
“We are delighted to have been awarded chartered status,” added the principal of Trafford College, Lesley Davies.
“This accolade distinguishes us as a leading education provider and is a testament to our vision of becoming a career college.
“At the heart of this vision is the dedication of our staff who work tirelessly to provide high-quality teaching and learning for our students so that they achieve their career goals as well as meeting the training needs of local employers.”
Dawn Ward, the principal of Burton and South Derbyshire College, also spoke of her excitement.
“I am delighted that we are now a member of the chartered institution,” she said. “It recognises the broad reach and scope within colleges such as ours and the impact we have on the local economy, how we help individuals develop the skills needed for successful careers and the wide-ranging work we undertake with employers helping them improve productivity by developing the skills of their workforce.
It recognises the broad reach and scope within colleges such as ours and the impact we have on the local economy
“Chartered institutions are also part of the landscape that employers understand, so having one that represents and celebrates further education really emphasises and communicates the valuable and important work done by so many in our sector.”
A Freedom of Information request revealed last month that the CIFE had received more than £1 million in public subsidy, and was still being propped up to the tune of £210,000 a year.
Each prospective member pays a £3,000 fee to have their application assessed – a process that involves a financial assessment as well as evaluation against the institution’s quality criteria – and a further £5,000 a year in membership fees.
All four providers that joined a year or more ago confirmed they had renewed membership. These are Hawk Training, Blackpool and The Fylde College, Bridgwater & Taunton College, and Furness College, Cumbria.
East Riding College, Dudley College, Steadfast Training Ltd, and Skills Group all joined within the last 12 months, so do not need to renew membership.
The chair of a London college has vowed to stay on after the FE commissioner cancelled a merger she had tried to force through against huge local opposition.
But the former boss of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service has announced she will be staying “to a secure and successful future” for KCC, amid calls from campaigners for her to quit.
She started as chair around the time a huge scandal broke surrounding the £28 million sale to the local council of its Wornington Road campus, in north Kensington, without public consultation.
There was huge public outrage as it emerged the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea planned to build housing over most of the site, leaving a much smaller space at best for learning.
Ms Curnock Cook reached an agreement with RBKC to pause the redevelopment, but she repeatedly refused to cancel the merger, which campaigners opposed due to fears the resulting super-college would not retain the contentious Wornington campus in the long term.
She claimed at the time that merger was needed to address grave financial problems resulting from years of decline exposed in the commissioner’s diagnostic assessment report, which agreed that KCC was no longer “financially sustainable as a standalone institution”.
But the board conceded in a meeting this month that “there was more we could have done to secure local community support for last year’s merger plans”.
“Ultimately, it would not have been in the best interests of the college’s students and staff to proceed,” said Ms Curnock Cook. “I don’t pretend that this was an easy decision.”
The college will now cooperate with a new commissioner-led structure and prospects appraisal seeking a different merger partner.
The board has also agreed to form a new advisory group to “represent our communities in Kensington and Chelsea and engage them in the process of considering options for the future”.
It will also commission an independent review of “the process surrounding” the Wornington sell-off, and aim to sign a long-term lease on the site with the council.
Ms Curnock Cook insisted she retains full backing from the board.
“I have always seen my role to steer KCC to a secure and successful future,” she said. “This continues to be my priority.”
The FE commissioner said in his report, also made public this week, that the scrapped merger process had been “objective and thorough”.
However, it “was limited in the range of future options considered, and did not include sufficient focus on the future of FE provision in north Kensington in the selection of a partner”.
“While the commissioner recognises the ongoing work of KCC to implement an effective communications strategy, the perceived lack of student communication appears to have resulted in some suspicion and misinterpretation regarding the direction the college is moving in,” he wrote.
“The college has an underlying operating deficit of around £3 million in cash terms each year. This is clearly not sustainable.”
It forecast an operating deficit for the college of £3,771,000 for 2017/18, and money generated by the Wornington sale is clearly diminishing.
It emerged that £3.2 million from the proceeds was used to pay off bank debts, and “approximately £2.7 million of the cash proceeds were used in 2016/17 to support the ongoing operations of the college”.
Save Wornington College campaigners, led by Grenfell survivor Ed Daffarn, want the skills minister Anne Milton, who has personally intervened in the case, to force RBKC to give the campus back to the college.
This would avoid the long-term financial burden of yearly rent.
They are confident they will be heard, not least because the site stands in the shadow of Grenfell Tower, the block of flats ravaged by fire last summer killing 71 people. They claim retaining further education in the locality for the sort of poorer residents who lived there is now viewed as “reparations”.
The Association of Colleges hopes a new review of post-18 education and funding announced by the prime minister will herald a massive expansion in higher education among its members.
Speaking exclusively to FE Week from Derby College, where Theresa May delivered her speech, AoC boss David Hughes said the review is a huge deal for the sector.
The government has not yet explained its full scope, nor how much FE will be involved, but it is expected to focus on funding around level four and above.
Mr Hughes, who was provider services director for the Skills Funding Agency until 2011, spoke of his excitement.
“The review is significant because it is the first proper review of higher education, post-18, level four-plus provision I have ever seen,” he said.
He believes that the government is open to presenting colleges with potential opportunities to expand in to the higher education market.
“That includes opening up fair funding to incentivise people to consider level four, five and six part-time flexible learning as well,” he continued.
David Hughes
“Colleges have a massive part to play in that – they already offer over 150,000 students HE across the country, but they could do so much more if the funding was fair and proportionate with the undergraduate route.”
The review is not expected to look in depth at adult education funded by the Education and Skills Agency funding.
It will instead look at arrangements with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which has been responsible for the distribution of funding for higher education to universities and further education colleges in England since 1992.
Mr Hughes was delighted at the choice of Derby College to host the speech, as using a college as the venue for the announcement holds major significance.
“Out of all the places she could decide on to make her speech, the prime minister chose Derby College,“ he said. “It’s a fantastic college in the middle of the country in a part of the world that needs more people to do HE.
“They have 600 students doing HE. I reckon with sensible funding and fair investment they could easily double that.”
In her speech, Mrs May called for a parity of esteem between “academic and technical options” to “create a system of tertiary education that works for all our young people”, as a means of helping to address concerns that spiralling costs to students for HE courses could be undermining social mobility.
The cartoon for edition 235 of FE Week
This “means equality of access to an academic university education which is not dependent on your background, and it means a much greater focus on the technical alternatives too”.
Mick Fletcher
Mick Fletcher, the founder of Policy Consortium, was more circumspect.
“I’m pleased that it is called the post-18 education and funding review though I’m pretty certain it won’t cover the whole of post-18 education and training,” he said.
“Will it deal with level three and below for example? Will it look at FE loans alongside HE loans? Will it look at maintenance costs for FE students?” He expects it won’t.
“The terms of the review need to be made crystal clear to give all parts of the post-18 education system clarity about what’s on the table and how they might engage with a review,” he said.
The review is also supposed to “look at how to support flexible life-long learning, including part-time and distance learning”.
Dr Susan Pember, director at adult community education and learning body HOLEX, who is a former top adult education civil servant, said: “We are pleased to see the acknowledgement of finding a sustainable way to fund lifelong learning. However it would be helpful to have clarity about the scope of the review and whether it will look at the issues round FE loans and whether it will consider loans to FE students to cover living expenses.”
Dr Susan Pember
Mark Leach, chief executive of higher education blog and think-tank Wonkhe, was also sceptical about the review.
“The terms of the review need to be made crystal clear to give all parts of the post-18 education system clarity about what’s on the table and how they might engage with a review,” he said.
“Any attempts to pit universities against further education colleges is likely to fail. Post-18 education depends on universities and colleges working very closely together with hundreds of examples of long-term partnerships that drive skills and growth across the UK.”
The DfE said in a terms of reference published today for the review that “the government is committed to conducting a major review across post-18 education and funding
to ensure a joined-up system that works for everyone.”
The panel undertaking a year-long review into higher education and funding, announced today by the prime minister, will include one college principal.
Blackpool and the Fylde College boss Bev Robinson is one of five members of the panel, which will be chaired by finance expert and author Philip Augar.
Ms Robinson is no stranger to government review panels, having taken part in the Sainsbury review of technical education, which concluded in 2016 and led to the government’s plans to introduce T-levels from 2020. She was also named to the board of the Institute for Apprenticeships in January last year.
Other panel members announced today include Professor Alison Wolf, who led the influential Wolf review of vocational education in 2011.
“I am delighted to chair this crucial review and to work alongside an excellent panel experienced in many different parts of the tertiary education sector. A world-class post-18 education system has never been more important to business, society and the economy. We will be focused on ensuring that the system meets those needs by driving up access, quality, choice and value for money for students of all kinds and taxpayers,” Mr Augar said.
“I look forward to engaging widely with students, business, and providers across the post-18 education landscape. This is a wide, open and far-reaching review. We begin with no preconceptions and our first priority will be a serious examination of the evidence and hearing from a broad range of stakeholders who like us are committed to ensuring the system works for everyone.”
Full list of panel members:
Bev Robinson – Principal of Blackpool and The Fylde College. She has over 20 years’ experience in further and higher education colleges in England and has been awarded an OBE for her services to FE.
Edward Peck – Vice-chancellor of Nottingham Trent University since August 2014. Previously, Professor Peck worked at the University of Birmingham as director of the health services management centre and subsequently became head of the school of public policy in 2006.
Alison Wolf – a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords, and author of the influential Wolf Review of Vocational Education, published in 2011. She has advised the Commons select committee on education and skills as well as the OECD, the ministries of education in New Zealand, France and South Africa, and the European Commission, among others.
Sir Ivor Martin Crewe – Master of University College, Oxford and president of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is the former chair of the 1994 Group and president of Universities UK.
Jacqueline De Rojas – President of techUK and the chair of the digital leaders board. She also serves on the government’s Digital Economy Council and was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s New Year Honours list this year.
The prime minister is talking up technical education, but doesn’t have the goods to back up her words, according to the former Labour skills minister David Lammy MP
I agree with the prime minister in that the public debate on tertiary education has been dominated in the last few decades by higher education and universities, with nothing like the same level of attention paid to technical education, further education or the 50 per cent of young people who don’t go on to university.
But I would find it much easier to believe the government’s new-found commitment to “parity of esteem” between university and technical education if FE budgets had not been cut back to the bone since 2010.
We don’t need a review; we need fair funding and stability so colleges and providers know what their budgets are going to be from one year to the next. It was only 18 months ago that I led a campaign in Parliament to force a government U-turn on cuts of up to 50 per cent of 16- to 18-year-old apprentices, including hundreds of young people in my own constituency studying at the College of North East London.
Technical education has always been seen as the poor sibling of university
The truth is that technical education has always been seen as the poor sibling of university, both by policymakers and cabinet ministers who overwhelmingly went to our top universities, who want their own children to follow in their footsteps and who see a degree as the only route to success. Parity of esteem is impossible to achieve in these circumstances.
The university obsession of the political and media class lets down every young person who doesn’t follow the conveyor-belt model of A-levels, a Russell Group university degree and a graduate job. Are there any newspaper editors or ministers telling their own children to do an apprenticeship instead of a university degree?
For far too many in the Westminster bubble, the term “social mobility” simply means giving other people an opportunity to become more like them and their own ideas of success in life. Overwhelmingly, this model of success is a university degree and a white-collar job in an office.
Not only is this patronising, it’s plain wrong.
We need to look around us and call out this university obsession. Half of all debt-saddled graduates are taking non-graduate jobs in coffee shops, bars and retail, while those with a top technical qualifications are highly sought after by employers and can earn a fortune as an engineer, a coder or a programmer.
We need to look around us and call out this university obsession
Germany is consistently cited as an example of a productive, strong economy and it is no coincidence they are streets ahead of us on technical skills, with a dual model of tertiary education and outstanding provision of high-level technical education.
Apprenticeship numbers fell by 59 per cent following the imposition of the government’s levy. The government’s obsession with quantity instead of quality in hitting a target of three million starts by 2020 means that far too many of our young people are doing low-skill apprenticeships instead of the higher-level ones that will give them the skills they need to get on in life.
The number of adults (students aged 24+) enrolled on courses at level three or above has fallen by almost a fifth since 2010.
After significant pressure in the run-up to the budget, the government announced a £10 million flexible learning fund to support adult education – hardly the foundation for a revolution in night schools that would enable thousands of adults in former industrial heartlands and coastal downs to retrain.
The elephant in the room when it comes to any discussion of the state of our technical skills sector is of course Brexit, and in particular the hard Brexit that this government is determined to pursue. If the government is so determined to take us out of the single market and slash immigration, then where is the urgency about what comes next?
Who is going to do the jobs? Who is going to fill the skills gaps? Are we going to skill up our own people to drive our economy forwards post-Brexit? How? When? These are the questions that the prime minister’s speech hinted at but failed to answer.
A local authority in the north-east has plummeted two grades to ‘inadequate’, in an Ofsted report which raised alarms about risks of radicalisation and severely poor subcontracted apprenticeship delivery.
Sunderland city council, which was rated ‘good’ in 2014 and trains just over 3,000 learners, received the damning verdict this morning.
Inspectors slammed its apprenticeships, which are mostly in health and social care and are supplied by nine different subcontractors.
“Contract management for the apprenticeship provision has not been robust enough to identify and arrest the deterioration in the quality of the provision since the last inspection,” the report said.
Managers are “overgenerous” in their evaluation of the quality of this provision.
They do not monitor the training that subcontractors provide to “ensure that apprentices receive their entitlement to off-the-job training time”.
As a result, “too many employers do not give apprentices enough time to complete their training and do not contribute to apprentices’ learning”.
Leaders have not assessed adequately the risks related to radicalisation and extremism
Ofsted said apprentices often have to complete their work during their days off, which delays their progress, and “too many find it too difficult” to complete their training.
Owing to this, council leaders have now decided to cease subcontracting this provision. Inspectors said this plan was “commendable”, but it was too early to see its impact.
Perhaps the most serious concern turned up by the inspection was that of safeguarding.
Leaders have “not assessed adequately the risks related to radicalisation and extremism”, and they have not ensured that staff are “well prepared” to discuss these risks with learners.
Consequently, the “large majority” of students “do not understand how to stay safe from these risks”.
Managers too often place the responsibility for developing a culture of safeguarding with subcontractors, “without fully recognising their own role in ensuring effective safeguarding policies and procedures”.
Leaders have also not developed any action plan to implement the Prevent duty.
Ofsted said that although the great majority of staff at the council have completed “some form of training”, it has “not given them the knowledge, skills and confidence to inform their learners about the risks of radicalisation and extremism”.
Managers are therefore “not always certain about what constitutes such a risk”.
Although no learners were found to be unsafe on inspection, managers “cannot assure themselves of this because they do not keep a central log recording incidents and concerns at their subcontractors”.
To improve, Ofsted said the council has to “urgently improve” safeguarding arrangements, particularly by carrying out a risk assessment in line with the requirements of the national guidance on the implementation of ‘Prevent’.
We’re naturally very disappointed about the findings of this report
They must also support tutors to become “more confident and skilled” in discussing the nature of radicalisation and extremism, so that learners “become more aware of the risks that they face and how to protect themselves from harm”.
The council must also ensure that all apprentices receive their entitlement to time for off-the-job training, and that elected members receive “timely reports, informed by accurate data, on the performance of the service”.
“We’re naturally very disappointed about the findings of this report,” said a Sunderland city council spokesperson.
“We have already put an improvement plan in place and are addressing the major issues raised around Prevent and British values.
“Inspectors acknowledged that the majority of learners complete their courses and achieve their qualifications and that the curriculum has been developed to serve both local employment and community needs well.
“Our focus continues to be on our learners and ensuring that they achieve success.”
