The quality of FE teacher training has continued at an extremely high standard, but falling numbers joining the profession is proving a significant “challenge”, new research has found.
The Education and Training Foundation has today published its fourth annual report examining the provision and take-up of initial teacher education in the FE sector.
It found that all 34 of England’s ITE providers that have had their education and teaching programmes inspected by Ofsted have achieved at least a grade two, and over one in 10 were rated grade one.
Not a single provider was rated ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’.
The report, undertaken by ICF Consulting Services, stated that these figures have remained “relatively consistent” over the last four years.
However, falling numbers of people training to join the FE profession has continued to be a major cause for concern.
The number of learners who completed a diploma or postgraduate certificate in education has fallen from 7,990 in 2011/12 to just 5,240 in 2015/16 – a 34-per-cent drop.
Falling numbers joining the profession continues to be a challenge
The latest figure represents a 12-per-cent decline on 2014/15, when 5,980 completed their training.
ETF’s report stated that the decline in completions was largely due to a decrease in learners studying in colleges.
“There was a 25-per-cent decrease in the number of learners completing diplomas and an 18-per-cent decrease in learners completing PGCE in an FE college in 2015/16,” it said.
“In contrast, the number of learners undertaking a PGCE in a HEI dropped only slightly in 2015/16, and has remained relatively stable since 2011/12.”
The report also found that only around 60 per cent of ITE learners progressed to a teaching role in FE, of which 73 per cent gained employment in FE colleges.
It noted that an increasingly high proportion gained employment at independent training providers.
In terms of salaries, ITE learners entering a full-time teaching role in 2015/16 started with a wage of £25,220. This has remained “relatively static” since 2012/13.
Charlynne Pullen, head of data and evaluation at the ETF, said the report showed there are both “positives” and “challenges” in ITE for FE.
“Given the need to continue on the journey of driving up teaching and training standards in the sector, the fact that the quality of the organisations bringing future generations into the profession is high is a clear positive for the sector,” she said.
“The coming introduction of T-levels means we need a high-quality workforce to make sure they are a success. The gradually falling numbers joining the profession continues to be a challenge, but providing this data allows the whole sector to clearly identify and address both current and future trends and changes.”
Ms Pullen added that this ITE report is a “key part” of the ETF’s spring series of “impartial and independent research”, ensuring that “practitioners, providers and policy makers have access to high-quality and reliable data to support their decision-making”.
The college that topped the funding tables during the adult education budget procurement has been awarded an extra £1.6 million for growth – even though it plans to subcontract it all with hefty top-slices.
Independent providers, forced for the first time to tender for all their AEB funding, were aghast in November after FE Week revealed that a sizeable £5.2 million portion of the total £110 million was shared among 19 colleges.
It was awarded £1.18 million in November, on top of the £8.34 million it gets in non-procured AEB funding.
FE Week can now reveal that it has gained an extra £1.6 million from the AEB tender this month.
To add insult to injury, it has only applied for the funds to subcontract out the provision, using what is likely to be its standard 22.5-per-cent top-slice.
The chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, hit out at the situation.
“Providers who subcontract training and take a hefty cut of public funds deliver little of value and the money could be better spent on teaching people vital workplace skills to benefit themselves and the economy,” he said.
Board minutes from November show that Eastleigh’s principal, Dr Jan Edrich (pictured above), was “pleased to inform governors that a growth bid of £1.6 million had been made to the AEB, which the college will subcontract”.
A spokesperson confirmed this week the bid was “successful”. She added that the cash has been used to “fund and deliver both local and national skills priorities which is in direct response to employer and learner demand”.
Eastleigh, rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted, received over £21 million from the government for apprenticeships and adult funding last year, but directly delivered just shy of £4 million (18 per cent).
The remaining £17 million was subcontracted out, with a 22.5-per-cent management fee.
In total, this fee was close to £4 million – the same as its entire directly funded provision.
Minutes from a May 2016 board meeting make clear that management fees from subcontracting increase the college’s surplus.
The college subcontracted its AEB provision to 15 different providers last year.
FE Week analysis of national achievement rate data for 2016/17 shows that 62 per cent of Eastleigh’s AEB enrolments were delivered outside their local enterprise partnership in Hampshire.
The ESFA has however been telling providers that they should be moving away from national subcontracting as AEB moves towards devolution.
“I would expect to see less subcontracting as funding is put in the hands of users or allocated more locally,” former skills minister Nick Boles told the ESFA in a letter in December 2015.
Eastleigh said it is “well aware” of the devolution agenda, and that it has a “strategy in place to manage the policy change”.
Simon Ashworth, the chief policy officer at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said the scale of Eastleigh’s delivered provision is “significantly weighted” on subcontracting.
“Certainly the recent reforms and new rules were supposed to be moving the sector away from managing agency-type models, and the ESFA should be giving the taxpayer better value for money by contracting much more with those providers who can deliver for themselves,” he told FE Week.
Five aspiring engineers from UTC Swindon took a top prize in the Royal Navy engineering challenge finals, a national STEM competition.
The team of year 10 students won the 14-to-16 age category, in which they had to design an unmanned, remotely operated system that would clear objects from the seabed. The students had just one day to build, refine and test their invention, alongside preparing a presentation about their design and approach.
Their invention impressed judges the most out of the 75 teams competing at the finals in Portsmouth, as well as clearing the most objects from a replica sea bed set up in a 3 x 3.4m test tank.
“They showed immense technical skill, determination and ingenuity to win the challenge against tough competition. These are exactly the kind of qualities that we need in the engineers of the future and as a school we are hugely proud of them,” said Jon Oliver, principal of the UTC.
Hundreds of colleges and training providers have between them failed to deliver £73 million of allocated funding, exclusive FE Week analysis has revealed.
Education and Skills Funding Agency figures show that 441 providers delivered less provision over 2016/17 than the money they were allocated from the adult education budget would have allowed.
This will be a source of major frustration for huge swathes of the sector, especially considering the heavy criticism directed recently at the government for wider underfunding of FE.
Julian Gravatt, the deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, claimed the fault lies with “restrictive” rules and low funding rates, rather than providers.
And an email sent last month by the ESFA to one provider that underspent, seen by FE Week, states that officials are reviewing college budget forecasts and comparing them with delivery projections.
It goes on to offer “voluntary” ways to lessen the impact of funding claw-backs for under-delivery, such as reducing their current allocations either mid-year or in 2018/19.
This was on top of the £5,059,522 that was paid to 86 colleges and local authority providers for courses that didn’t take place, thanks to a three-per-cent tolerance rule on grant-funded AEB under-delivery.
With the exception of independent training providers, FE institutions receive their AEB funding through a grant, which means they have to repay any cash they’ve been overpaid.
The ESFA no longer automatically reduces AEB allocations year-on-year where providers have under-delivered, which can mean some get allocations that are larger than the level of provision they expect to deliver.
To compound matters, the introduction of FE loans for learners aged 19 to 23 in 2016/17 meant that courses that used to be funded through the AEB were no longer included.
“The government should introduce more flexibility into the rules, because there are millions of adults who could benefit from adult education and retraining”.
Mr Gravatt insisted restrictions are too tight on what can and can’t be funded through the AEB, and urged the government to “introduce more flexibility into the rules, because there are millions of adults who could benefit from adult education and retraining”.
A spokesperson for the University of the Arts, London said that “like many providers” it was affected “by changes in government funding arrangements, from funded adult learning to FE loans for 19+ students”.
UAL was one of the worst culprits, delivering just £83,605-worth of adult education, from an allocation of £1.5 million. Despite this shortfall, its allocation is unchanged for 2017/18.
Capita had the largest shortfall of any provider, with actual delivery almost £2.5 million lower than its £4 million allocation.
A spokesperson said this was due to “a change in customer demand” over the year.
Lambeth College under-delivered by £1.5 million on its £11 million allocation, which Monica Box, the college’s principal, claimed was because it had moved out of one of its campuses at the beginning of that year.
It had been unable to find space for the courses that had been delivered on the closed campus and “this situation had a significant impact on our ability to meet our AEB funding target for 16/17”.
Both Lewisham Southwark College and Telford College had shortfalls of more than £1.5 million, but were unavailable for comment.
Earlier this year Anne Milton admitted that the “mainstream participation element” of the AEB had been underspent by £63 million over the year.
The revelation prompted Mark Dawe, the boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, to demand that any unspent cash be reallocated to other providers.
A change in procurement rules meant that private providers were forced to tender for a slice of just £110 million in AEB funding in 2017/18, while their competitors – most notably colleges and local authorities – did not.
Mr Dawe now wants the government to oblige every provider to have to bid for its share of adult education funding.
The 86 colleges and local authorities allowed to keep £5m
Eighty-six colleges and local authorities were allowed to keep more than £5 million in adult education budget funding for courses that didn’t take place in 2016/17.
The £5,059,522 windfall was the result of a funding rule in which a three-per-cent tolerance is applied to grant-funded AEB under-delivery.
Twelve colleges and one LA provider each received more than £100,000 for provision they didn’t deliver over the year as a result of this rule, according to the ESFA’s 2016/17 final funding year values, published on Wednesday.
The largest payment went to Birmingham Metropolitan College, which delivered adult education worth £13,798,372 against an allocation of £14,189,878 – meaning it was overpaid by £391,506.
The rule states that “where your delivery of the overall AEB is at least 97 per cent of your funding allocation, we will not make a year-end adjustment to your funding allocation and you will not have to pay back any unspent funds”, according to the ESFA’s 2016/17 AEB funding and performance management rules.
However, it doesn’t apply to independent training providers, which will be subject to a “year-end adjustment” to their funding allocations for any under-delivery and “must pay back any unspent funds”.
The AoC’s Julian Gravatt said the existence of the tolerance “recognises the fact that the system itself is quite complicated because every learning aim taken by a student is separately priced”.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, 74 providers over-delivered provision that was not paid for, worth a combined total of £2.6 million.
However, this is set to change: the ESFA recently announced it was “committing to fund three-per-cent over-delivery at the end of the 2018 to 2019 funding year for all providers” to “ensure providers can deliver adult education budget provision with confidence”.
The funding and performance management rules for 2018/19 have yet to be published, so it’s not yet known if the three-per-cent tolerance for under-delivery will remain after 2017/18.
Business students have taken control of the social media accounts of a championship basketball club in a unique work experience placement.
The 15 level three students from Gateshead College teamed up with the Newcastle Eagles to develop their employability skills, taking responsibility for ticket sales, managing social media posts and increasing the number of club sign-ups ahead of a match.
Students were also in charge of organising photo opportunities with the club’s mascot, Swoop, on the day of the game, as well as selling merchandise. “It has been great to welcome students from Gateshead College to work with us. The students came along with innovative, unique ideas and a genuine enthusiasm to achieve the goals I set them,” said Paul Blake, the team’s managing director.
“Our students have taken so much away from this project. They’ve been able to get hands-on event and project management experience in a fast-paced environment with challenging targets and have really made the most of the opportunity,” added Chris Toon, deputy principal at the college.
The winners of a competition to breathe new life into Suffolk charity shops have been revealed.
Aliona Cervinskaja and Joe Seaman (pictured) won the week-long challenge, which saw teams of level three business and retail students from West Suffolk College take over six local charity shops, using their business, visual merchandising and social media skills to encourage more people to visit.
The pair took over the St Nicholas Hospice Care Shop on St John’s Street, Bury St Edmunds, raising the most money in the store compared to their peers, who took over branches of EACH, Suffolk Age UK, Barnardo’s, Cancer Research UK and the Salvation Army.
“We gave them the tools and the space to express their retail ideas and creativity, and they developed an attractive and eye catching Easter shop window display,” said Bill Hill, shop manager at the St Nicholas Hospice Care Shop.
“Both were engaged with the day-to-day structure of life in a boutique charity shop, and were keen to acquire knowledge of the essential art of visual merchandising.” “Feedback from charity staff has been extremely positive, so we hope to build on links with these great charities in future projects,” added Nina Hart, business and retail course director.
The leader of a college with an annual turnover of just £30 million was paid almost £300,000 in 2016/17 – a £68,000 increase and nearly double the sector average.
Matt Hamnett’s huge pay packet last year has probably made him the highest-paid principal in the country at the time, provoking a furious reaction from the University and College Union.
He was paid £294,000 on top of a £47,000 pension contribution and benefits in kind worth £1,000 last year, according to North Hertfordshire College’s financial statements – or just over one per cent of its entire turnover.
Mr Hamnett stepped down from his role in November, but a college spokesperson said his salary was justified, as “Matt led us to a strong position”.
She stressed that the payment “included a one-off payment of accrued benefits and significant performance-related measures, earnt due to the success of our turnaround”.
These included a grade two Ofsted inspection in November, up from the previous grade three, and improvements in the college’s achievement rates for the year.
Its overall apprenticeship achievement went up from 60 per cent in 2015/16 to 64.7 per cent in 2016/17, while its overall education and training achievement rate went up from 80.2 per cent to 86.4 per cent in the same time period.
The sum paid to Mr Hamnett – which is £68,000 more than he received in 2015/16 – is larger than the salaries paid to the bosses of the country’s two largest college groups, and dwarfs the average salary for a principal of a college the size of North Hertfordshire.
There are other very well paid college bosses in England. NCG boss Joe Docherty was paid £227,000, plus a £33,000 pension contribution and an £11,000 bonus and benefits in kind worth £10,000, while John Thornhill, chief executive of the LTE Group, which includes Manchester College, earned £221,000 over the year plus a £36,000 pension contribution, according to the groups’ accounts.
But NCG’s income was almost £128 million and the LTE Group took in £184 million – whereas North Hertfordshire College’s turnover was just £30 million.
The average principal salary for a college of this size was £148,000 in 2015/16, according to figures included in the college accounts published by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The UCU, which has recently held a series of strikes in colleges across the country over pay, has been spitting feathers.
Lydia Richard, a regional official, said his “bumper pay deal” was “was totally out of step” with both staff pay and that of other principals.
She demanded “greater transparency and accountability” in principal pay decision-making, adding: “The huge disparities between institutions when it comes to principal pay highlights the arbitrary nature of how it’s awarded.”
Mr Hamnett was appointed head of the college, which trades under the name Hart Learning Group, in March 2015.
He has also been director of group sales at Capita and a senior consultant at PwC, and spent over seven years as a senior civil servant.
ESFA accounts show his North Hertfordshire predecessor, Signe Sutherland, received a salary of £162,000 in 2013/14.
But records for Mr Hamnett’s first full year, 2015/16, show he received a salary of £227,000 in the same role for the year.
This increased again the following year, to £295,000.
The college’s turnover had actually gone down slightly, by around eight per cent, during Mr Hamnett’s two and a half years at the helm – from £32.6 million in 2014/15.
He stepped down as principal at the end of August, but continued as chief executive of the group – which also includes Hart Learning and Development and a school trust – until his resignation on November 30.
When asked to justify his salary, Mr Hamnett told FE Week he had “delivered rapid and significant improvements over the course of my time”.
“We made big changes, and they worked,” he said, referring to the college’s recent Ofsted report.
“I am proud of the part I played in the group’s transformation.”
Students at Barnsley College have learned about the transgender community during a guest talk from two trans women.
Ashleigh Lee and Jess Ryan travelled from Halifax to share their experiences of gender reassignment with the college’s childcare and education students, as well as fielding questions from students about their lives, what being transgender means, and the issues they’ve faced along the way.
The talk was tied to the children’s health and wellbeing unit which is studied on the course. In particular, the learning objectives of how to understand the needs of children during transition and significant events, and their potential effects of on a child’s life.
They also helped a handful of learners who were confused about their own gender become more informed about the options available to them.
“Education is key in building people’s understanding of the transgender community and hearing our stories gave the students valuable knowledge about the transgender community, who are often a misrepresented group,” said Ms Lee. “People can experience very different reactions from family members and friends and educating young people is vital in breaking down misconceptions,” Ms Ryan added.
Peter Lauener is taking on yet another job next month, this time as chair of the Construction Industry Training Board at the request of the skills minister.
The former boss of both the ESFA and the Institute for Apprenticeships, once dubbed the busiest man in FE, will take up the role at the organisation on May 1.
He will take over from construction insider James Wates, who steps down after eight years in the post.
This is the second chair role that Mr Lauener has taken on since he left his government posts last year. This spring, he stepped into the job at NCG, one of the largest college groups in the country.
“I am pleased to appoint Peter Lauener as the new chair of the CITB,” said skills and apprenticeships minister Anne Milton.
“Peter’s knowledge of the skills industry, along with his experience, will help his work with the CITB to make sure that our country has the construction skills it needs.
“I would like to thank James for the contribution he has made to the CITB during his time as chair, and I wish him the very best for the future.”
Mr Lauener said he is “delighted” to join the CITB.
“I know how committed the industry is to training and I am looking forward to working with industry leaders, together with Sarah Beale [CITB’s chief executive] and her committed executive team to make construction an exemplar for skills development,” he added.
