Anne Milton will remain as a minister as the latest government reshuffle comes to an end, FE Week understands.

Number 10 confirmed that only new appointments had been announced on its official Twitter account today. And with no announcement forthcoming about Ms Milton, it is understood that she remains in her position, though the Department for Education has refused to confirm this. 

She became skills minister seven months ago after taking over from Robert Halfon, who was sacked in June after serving just under a year. 

The appointment of Nadhim Zahawi as a junior minister at the Department for Education was announced as part of today’s reshuffle.

Number 10 tweeted that Mr Zahawi had become a parliamentary undersecretary of state for the DfE, but would not confirm what his brief will be. It will be revealed by the DfE “in due course”, and it is possible that the former apprenticeships adviser could take on the apprenticeships and skills brief. 

The DfE refused to comment when asked about which junior minister would have the brief. 

Nadhim Zahawi MP becomes Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at Department for Education @educationgovuk #Reshuffle pic.twitter.com/z1conaXECc

— UK Prime Minister (@Number10gov) January 9, 2018

Mr Zahawi was previously appointed apprenticeships adviser to the Prime Minister in November 2015 by former PM David Cameron, in support of the conservative manifesto pledge to deliver three million apprenticeship starts by 2020.

But it was confirmed in August 2016, a month after Theresa May took over as PM, that he was no longer in the role.

Yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle saw Justine Greening resign from government after refusing to move from the DfE to the Department for Work and Pensions. Her position as education secretary has been taken over by Damian Hinds. 

Four new deputies have been appointed to support the FE commissioner in his drive to slash the number of colleges rated grade three or four, FE Week can exclusively reveal.

The new recruits – which include two principals who will retire from their colleges later this year – mean Richard Atkins now has an army of eight deputies who will help him to carry out “diagnostic assessments” at up to 60 colleges at risk of failing.

Ioan Morgan (pictured above far left), Meredydd David (middle left), the principal of Reaseheath College, and Frances Wadsworth (middle right), the boss of Croydon College, are the new faces in the team, while Teresa Kelly (far right) has been promoted after two years as an FE adviser.

The roles, advertised by the Department for Education in October, will last two years and come with a salary of £700 a day.

The four join existing deputies, Marilyn Hawkins, Steve Hutchinson, Andrew Tyley and David Williams, and a team of 10 advisers to support Mr Atkins with his widened remit.

This will include assessments at some colleges with a grade three overall, particularly those that have been graded three several times in a row.

Speaking exclusively to FE Week, Mr Atkins said “about 60 colleges would benefit” from the process, although “they won’t all be urgently in need of intervention or failing”.

“But experience tells me that some of those – a third, or a quarter – will need to take action, particularly if they wish to benefit from the restructuring fund, particularly if they want to avoid insolvency, particularly if they’ve already got two or three grade threes on the trot” – a trend he said he wanted to “eradicate”.

“Those colleges will need to take pretty urgent action as a result of our diagnostic. So that’s why we’re doing it,” he added. “And then I hope in a couple of years’ time not only are there fewer grade fours in the sector, there are fewer threes.”

Other aspects of Mr Atkins’ new improvement toolbox, first announced by the ex-education secretary Justine Greening in July, include overseeing a £15 million college improvement fund, and the National Leaders of FE programme.

The first five deputy FE commissioners were appointed in November 2015, alongside a team of 16 advisers, to support the previous commissioner Sir David Collins carry out the area reviews of post-16 education and training.

Ms Hawkins and Mr Williams were among that first cohort, having both previously been FE advisers.

In May 2016, Sir David’s team stood at 22, with four deputies and 18 advisers.

And in October that year, Mr Hutchinson and Mr Tyley were promoted from adviser to deputy, at the same time as Mr Atkins was appointed as Sir David’s successor.

Meet the deputy FE commissioners

Meredydd David CBE (starting September 2018)

• Principal, Reaseheath College, 2004 – present (Ofsted ‘good’ 2015)
• Vice-principal, Sparsholt College 1998 – 2004
• Board member, AoC, Landex, National Land Based College, and Cheshire and Warrington LEP
• Awarded a CBE, June 2009

Ioan Morgan CBE

• Interim principal, Tresham College (Nov 2016 – July 2017) and LeSoCo (June 2014 – July 2015)
• Principal, Warwickshire College 1997 – 2010
• Caused controversy in 2009 when he was offered the job of chief exec of Learning and Skills Improvement Service but backed out after announcement was made but before contracts signed
• Former chair of the 157 Group
• Awarded a CBE, January 2007

Frances Wadsworth (starting April 2018)

• Principal, Croydon College, Jan 2011 – present (Ofsted ‘good’ 2014)
• Principal, East Surrey College, May 2004 – Dec 2010
• Board member, CITB and Ofqual

Teresa Kelly OBE

• Principal, Abingdon and Witney College, 2004 – 2015
• FE commissioner adviser, appointed November 2015
• Awarded an OBE, June 2013

Marilyn Hawkins

• Appointed FE commissioner adviser in 2013, promoted to deputy in 2015
• Runs her own education consultancy, Marilyn Hawkins Ltd
• Principal, Barnet and Southgate College – 2003 – 2012
• Executive director, Learning and Skills Council – 2000 – 2002

Steve Hutchinson

• Appointed FE commissioner adviser in 2014, promoted to deputy in 2016
• Consultant and financial adviser to the FE sector since 2008
• Interim principal, K College – 2014
• Senior education advisory manager, KPMG – 2004 – 2006
• Regional finance director, Further Education Funding Council – 1998-2000

Andrew Tyley

• Appointed FE commissioner adviser in 2014, promoted to deputy in 2016
• Runs his own consultancy, Tyler Associates Ltd
• Principal, Walford and North Shropshire College – 2007-2014
• Director of finance, Harper Adams University – 2006-2007
• Director of finance, Adult Learning Inspectorate – 2003-2006

David Williams

• Appointed FE commissioner adviser in 2013, promoted to deputy in 2015
• Director, W3 Advisory – 2010 to present
• Partner, Grant Thornton – 2000-2010

Damian Hinds has been named as the new education secretary.

Mr Hinds was previously the government’s employment minister, serving in the role since July 2016. Prior to that he was exchequer secretary to the Treasury.

He sat on the parliamentary education committee between 2010 and 2012 and chaired the all-part parliamentary group for social mobility.

Mr Hinds took to Twitter last night to express his joy at being appointed as education secretary, following the departure of Justine Greening.

Delighted to be appointed Education Secretary – looking forward to working with the great teachers & lecturers in our schools, colleges & universities giving people the opportunities to make the most of their lives

— Damian Hinds (@DamianHinds) January 8, 2018

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, spoke enthusiastically about his apointment.

“AELP welcomes Damian Hinds to his new post,” he said.  “The secretary of state arrives in the light of some encouraging news on UK productivity levels but to make any increase sustainable, the government must continue to invest in skills training and technical education. 

“This means reversing an almost two-thirds cut in annual apprenticeship funding to small and medium sized employers which is potentially very damaging to the economy and the industrial strategy, especially when businesses are trying to address post-Brexit skills challenges. 

“We are delighted that the minister brings with him a shared commitment to social mobility where apprenticeships and traineeships play a vital role in transforming the lives of young people across the country and we look forward to working with him.”

Here’s what we know about the new minister:

1. Born in 1969, Mr Hinds is 48 years old. The average age of an education secretary is 50. (Coincidentally, this is also the exact same age of Justine Greening who just left the position).
2. According to Wikipedia Hinds was born in London. This makes him the 11th education secretary born in the capital. The last one was Nicky Morgan.
3. Mr Hinds attended a St Ambrose Grammar School in Altrincham, Cheshire – one of the few parts of the country that still has selective schools. It became an academy in 2012.
4. A touchy subject of late, but as the role involves children so directly it will be mentioned at times: Mr Hinds has three children. This is unusual for education secretaries as zero is the most common number. However he is not alone: Rab Butler, David Eccles, David Blunkett and Ed Balls also had three children each.
5. Mr Hinds studied politics, philosophy & economics at Trinity College, Oxford University. Several other education secretaries also studied the subject, including Ed Balls and Ruth Kelly. Hinds is also not the first education secretary to study at Trinity. He is joined by Anthony Crossland, Labour’s education secretary who began the dismantling of the grammar school system, a few years before Hinds was born.
6. While at Oxford, Hinds was president of the Oxford Union – a former glory he shares with Edward Boyle, Anthony Crosland, Quintin Hogg, and Michael Gove.
7. According to his LinkedIn profile he worked in hotel management after university before becoming a strategy consultant. This is unique among education secretaries! Wikipedia also states that he did a stint in the Conservative think tank, the Bow Group, during the early 2000s.
8. His predecessor, Justine Greening, was in role for 546 days. The average is 801 days, if you take single stints in office. If Hinds stays in office for the average number of days he will leave on March 18th 2020.
9. In the past Hinds has voted in favour of gay marriage (something that tripped up Nicky Morgan) and has always voted for education reforms made by the Conservatives in the past.

A provider has successfully overturned the government’s decision not to award it a contract in the recent controversial non-levy tender.

Focus Training Group, which is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted and has delivered apprenticeships in the south-west for 20 years, was originally told it had not reached the minimum threshold score to secure a contract, but appealed the decision before Christmas.

Following a nervy festive break, the Education Skills and Funding Agency got back in touch last week to change its decision.

It said that after reviewing the scores of the questions identified by Focus, and quality-assurance had taken place, the organisation reached the pass mark and its complaint was upheld.

Jamie Rail, FTG’s managing director, told FE Week it had been “one hell of a month” following the initial outcome of the tender, but he was elated with the final decision.

“Both myself and all of our staff are delighted that our appeal was successful,” he said.

“We were convinced from the outset that it was never the intention of the government or the ESFA to lose ‘good’ provision through this process, especially of the specialist nature we deliver at Focus Training Group, in electrical, plumbing/gas, and arboriculture as well as our more general provision.

“This feels like a vote of confidence in all of the investment and engagement in standards that have taken place within Focus in the last few years.

“This will allow us to meet the growing demand from our employers across the region, and we now look forward to a successful 2018.”

He also wanted “to thank all the people for their messages of support and offers of help that we have received during this challenging time, it has been much appreciated over the last month”.

The FE sector has been up in arms about the outcome of the much delayed tender ever since results were finally released in December.

A total of 714 providers were given an allocation to train apprentices with small employers between January 2018 and March 2019.

But as revealed by FE Week, one organisation that went out of business two months ago, for example, was awarded a contract in the procurement – even while several high-profile colleges ranked ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ missed out.

Those which had been successful started receiving their contracts just before the Christmas break.

If you are a provider that successfully overturned a decision not to award your organisation a non-levy contract, FE Week wants to hear from you. Email billy.camden@feweek.co.uk.

The new year has got off to a less-than-‘good’ start for one college, which saw its Ofsted grade drop from two to three in a quiet week for FE providers.

West Thames College, one of just two FE and skills providers to have a full inspection report published since the start of the new year, was rated ‘requires improvement’ overall and in seven headline fields.

The report, published January 5 and based on an inspection in mid-November, bucks the late-2017 trend that saw a number of failing colleges boost their grades.

Inspectors deemed leaders’ self-assessment to be “inaccurate”, and found that it did not “focus sharply enough on the long-standing weaknesses”.

“Managers do not take sufficient action to ensure good-quality teaching, learning and assessment,” they wrote.

“Too few” learners on 16-to-19 study programmes – which make up the majority of enrolments – “attend lessons regularly enough to make good or better progress in their learning”.

Consequently, “too few” level two learners passed their courses, and “too few” level three learners “attain high grade-passes” – while the proportion of apprentices completing their courses on time was found to be “very low”.

Learning programmes and full-time provision for 14- to 16-year-olds at the college, which had around 5,000 learners over the previous contract year and was allocated over £3.5 million by the Education and Skills Funding Agency for 2017/18 as of November last year, were both found to be ‘good’ – although the report noted that leaders had been “slow to implement the statutory requirements” for these young learners.

It was better news for the independent learner-provider Academies Enterprise Trust, which taught around 80 learners over the previous academic year and has been allocated just over £70,000 for 2017/18, which saw its grade go up from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’ across the board in a report published January 3 and based on an inspection in early November.

It is an academy sponsor, and delivers apprenticeship training in supporting teaching and learning, business administration, and ICT across the schools within the trust.

Leaders and managers were praised for having “successfully improved the quality of teaching, learning and assessment” which resulted in “improved outcomes for most apprentices”.

“Apprentices make good progress in their programmes as a result of close and effective monitoring by managers and assessors,” the report said.

“Most” apprentices were found to develop “a broad range of practical skills and professional standards” thanks to “effective and well-planned on- and off-the-job training”.

“A significant proportion of apprentices progress to full-time employment and/or further and higher education,” inspectors found.

Two independent learning providers held onto their ‘good’ grades this week, following short inspections: Bromley-based E Training, and Adult College for Rural East Sussex (ACRES).

 

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
West Thames College	14/11/2017	05/01/2018	3	2

 

Independent learning providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Academies Enterprise Trust	07/11/2017	03/01/2018	2	3

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2)	Inspected	Published
E Training	05/12/2017	05/01/2018
Adult College for Rural East Sussex	21/11/2017	04/01/2018

The Prime Minister is expected to make a cabinet reshuffle tomorrow, and most of the attention in the education sector will be on whether the Secretary of State, Justine Greening, is replaced.

But keep an eye on the minister for skills, Anne Milton, a former nurse and junior health minister, now tipped by some to replace Jeremy Hunt as Secretary of State for Health.

Milton has only been in the role of minister for skills for seven months, after Robert Halfon was sacked in June last year, having served just under a year.

In fact, were a new skills minister to be needed it would make it the sixth incumbent since John Hayes took the role following the May 2010 general election.

By our calculation (below), it would mean the last five skills ministers averaged just a year and a half in office – or a little over the minimum duration for an apprenticeship!

The Chartered Institution for Further Education is still being propped up by hundreds of thousands of pounds in government subsidy more than two years after it started accepting paying members, an FE Week Freedom of Information request has revealed.

Just eight providers have so far been granted chartered status – far short of the estimated 80 the body needs to become self-sustaining.

According to the figures received by FE Week, the CIFE received £210,067 from the Department for Education in 2017/18.

This means the government has now supported it to the tune of £1.35 million since 2013.

£1,026,867 million of this was cash funding, while a further £320,475 was in kind, for government office space used by the CIFE until mid-2016.

Plans for an institution – the brainchild of John Hayes, a former minister for FE and skills (pictured above at the inaugural admissions ceremony) – that would grant high-achieving FE providers a royal seal of approval were first announced by the now-defunct Department for Business, Innovation and Skills in 2012.

But it wasn’t until June 2015 that it was finally granted its royal charter, and it began accepting applications in November of the same year.

To date just eight providers have passed the CIFE’s rigorous entrance process, which requires evidence of qualities such as “an exemplary record of corporate governance”, “satisfactory financial health”, and a reputation for “honesty, openness and transparency” within the sector.

FE Week reported in May 2017 that Dudley College, Steadfast Training Ltd and Skills Group had all gained chartered status – joining existing members Hawk Training, Blackpool and the Fylde College, Bridgwater College, and Furness College.

East Riding College became the eighth member, in September 2017.

The CIFE’s chief executive Dan Wright told FE Week in May that he planned to have at least 80 members over the following two years, which would allow it to be financially self-sufficient.

The annual subscription fee for members who have achieved chartered status is £5,000, but for interested parties there is also a £3,000 non-refundable fee to have an application reviewed in the first place.

Chartered Institution for FE timeline:

• July 2012: BIS draw up plans for a chartered institute to get a royal charter under minister John Hayes.
• May 2013: Lord Lingfield appointed chair by minister Matt Hancock
• July 2013: The Institution for Further Education is incorporated (company number 08625268)
• June 2015: A royal charter is granted
• October 2015: The Chartered Institution for Further Education is incorporated (RC000883)
• November 2015: It opens to members
• July 2016: The first members join – Hawk Training, Blackpool The Fylde College, and Bridgwater College
• November 2016: Furness College joins
• February 2017: The inaugural admissions ceremony is attended by John Hayes (pictured above)
• May 2017: Dudley College, Steadfast training and Skills Group join
• September 2017: East Riding College joins

The Institute for Apprenticeships is losing a vital member of staff, one who was “instrumental” in setting up the organisation.

Michael Keoghan, the Institute’s deputy chief executive, will leave at the end of this month to take up a new job as chief economic adviser at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

He has been director for FE at the Department for Education for six years and worked alongside the IfA’s former boss, Peter Lauener, through its initial set-up phase.

A spokesperson for the IfA said Mr Keoghan had “laid the groundwork” for the organisation and has “ensured its successful launch in April 2017 with a talented and highly engaged team that will take on technical education in 2018”.

As first reported by FE Week in November, the IfA’s senior leadership team is now under the direction of Sir Gerry Berragan, with Antony Jenkins continuing as chair and its board now established.

“I will be very sorry to lose Mike from the Institute; his wisdom, corporate knowledge and support has been invaluable to me in my first few weeks and I know just how much he has done for the Institute and all of its staff since he created it in April,” said Sir Gerry.

“But I recognise that this new role is a high profile and exciting prospect for Mike, and I understand why he wants to seize this opportunity.”

Mr Keoghan said he couldn’t quite believe the new opportunity he has been given at BEIS.

“I joined the DTI [BEIS’ predecessor] in 1997 as an assistant economist, and I can’t quite believe that I now have the opportunity of becoming its CEA. It is probably the only role for which I would have considered leaving the Institute.”   

A spokesperson for the IfA told FE Week it would now advertise for a “slightly different” post, most likely for a chief operating officer, to fill the gap that Mr Keoghan leaves.

“His role as deputy chief executive was essential when the interim chief executive was double-hatted and could only provide limited time for the Institute,” he said.

“With Gerry as CEO now he needs a chief operating officer instead, focused on leading improvements to our delivery of both apprenticeship approvals and (in due course) technical education, and allowing him to spend more time and effort representing the Institute among external stakeholders.”