Funding concerns will be acknowledged in a speech from the skills minister, who is to assure delegates at the Sixth Form Colleges Association conference that she will always fight their corner.

Anne Milton will attempt to strike a reassuring tone when she addresses the conference in London this morning.

“I am determined to see the sixth-form sector get the recognition it deserves,” she will say. “I will always be your advocate in government. The work that you and your colleagues do to transform the lives of young people is so important for them and for the country. You change lives.”

She will also repeatedly refer to funding, which is a touchy subject among members after the Department for Education last week ruled out increasing funding for 16- to 18-year-olds next year.

This flew in the face of the Support Our Sixth Formers campaign, back by the SFCA and FE Week, which has been warning the sector is at “tipping point”.

“Yes, we will always return to the question of funding in the longer term and will want to continue to talk to the sector about how to secure the high-quality education all our young people need, but to do this in an sustainable and affordable way,” Ms Milton will say.

The funding rate for 16- to 18-year-olds has remained unchanged for six years, and even Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, warned during her speech at the launch of the Ofsted annual report in December that the “sector will continue to struggle” without an increase.

Ms Milton will refer to the issue again in her closing remarks.

“As ministers we are fortunate to have very helpful officials who draft us our speeches,” she will say.

“And like many draft speeches, I read the conclusion ended with the words that ‘this is a hugely exciting and challenging time’. What does that mean? It is possibly political speak for the fact that the challenge is money.

“But I guess it is exciting too. Exciting because with the government focus on social mobility we have a choice to change people’s lives.”

Ms Milton will also refer to efforts to “harness capacity” through “collaboration”, rather than “relying on competition to achieve improvement”.

“We have recently recruited the first of our new cohort of national leaders and I am pleased that this includes Peter McGee”, principal of the ‘outstanding’ St John Rigby Sixth Form College in Wigan, she will add. “He will work to help improvement in colleges”.

The national leaders will work under FE commissioner Richard Atkins to support struggling colleges.

“Our members will be pleased to hear the minister pledge to be our advocate in government, and we hope that she will continue to do everything she can to ensure sixth form colleges can continue to act as engines of social mobility,” said Bill Watkins, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association.

“Young people from all backgrounds benefit from the kind of environment the sixth-form colleges provide: one where rigorous academic standards are expected, where it is safe to love learning, where everyone has access to individualised pastoral care and support, and where there is a fantastic array of extra opportunities and experiences outside the classroom.”

FE providers are rallying to help more than 1,000 apprentices affected by the collapse of the outsourcing giant Carillion, but many more places are needed to ensure everyone’s qualifications are saved.

The UK’s largest employer of construction apprentices went into liquidation on Monday, leaving the future of around 1,400 trainees, mostly 16- to 18-year-olds, uncertain.

Since then, the Construction Industry Training Board has asked all former Carillion apprentices to get in touch so it can help them continue their training – and for employers to come forward to take them on.

FE providers have now started offering support by opening their doors to those affected.

“We take our responsibility to our local community seriously and we’re working with CITB, our local authority partners, and directly with students and apprentices who have had their learning disrupted,” said Simon Cook, principal of Mid-Kent College, which ended a subcontracting arrangement with Carillion in June last year.

“Our priority at this stage is to identify the needs of those students, and the most appropriate and effective ways we can support them.”

BMet College also stopped working with Carillion last year but has offered similar aid.

Our priority is to identify the needs of those students, and the most appropriate and effective ways we can support them

“As we have a longstanding partnership with the CITB, we are engaged with them to see if there is any way that those apprentices without a training provider may still complete their qualifications,” a spokesperson told FE Week.

Middlesbrough College added that it is currently working with one Carillion apprentice to “find an alternative apprenticeship position”.

Merseyside and Cheshire have the largest number (235) of Carillion apprentices to place. All of those trainees were invited to an event run by the CITB today at Hugh Baird College in Liverpool.

“We are very keen to support the apprentices and ensure that they can continue their education,” said Vicky Edwards, assistant principal at Hugh Baird College.

“Thanks to our longstanding partnership with CITB and extensive links with employers across the region, we are confident that we can work together to help place as many apprentices as possible.”

Apprentices left anxious about their futures need all the support and advice they can get, according to Liz Green, the mother of one former Carillion trainee, who she says has been “kept in the dark” since the beginning of the week.

Her son, Alex, had six months left of his level two construction apprenticeship before he was told about the collapse on Monday when he got home from his placement in Birmingham.

The 19-year-old was contacted the next day and told he would be paid as normal until the end of the month, but since then communication has been sparse, and he now fears he’ll end up with no qualification.

“I think it’s disgraceful,” Ms Green told FE Week. “The whole situation is a mess and has been handled badly from the start.

“The staff and apprentices have been kept in the dark. The managers of Carillion obviously knew what was ahead and yet they still carried on.

“They offered apprenticeships to school leavers as recently as August and September. I can only hope that someone steps in to protect the services they provide.”

Carillion was the second biggest construction firm in the UK.

Its apprentices learned at its training division, Carillion Training Services, primarily in bricklaying, carpentry and joinery.

The staff and apprentices have been kept in the dark

The provider held a £6.5 million ESFA contract last year and was rated ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted in December 2016.

The CITB said it has worked with the ESFA to ensure funding is available so that it can “continue to support the training for Carillion apprentices”. 

A spokesperson added that it has attempted to contact all 1,400 apprentices, but that not everyone has been reached. It hopes to start placing the first apprentices with new employers as early as next week.

Meanwhile, political screws are turning on new the education secretary Damian Hinds to provide clear information on how the government will safeguard the apprentices.

The chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, wrote to him yesterday asking for an “assessment” of how many apprentices may be affected through the longer Carillion supply chain.

“The committee understands that the ESFA is working closely with the CITB and hope that this will result in no learner losing out through no fault of their own,” he wrote.

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden has also written to Anne Milton, asking the skills and apprenticeships minister what she is doing to “assess the potential hit that the skills sector could suffer as a result and what contingencies are you putting in place for this?” You can read his full letter here.

A Department for Education spokesperson told FE Week on Monday that it has “taken steps to protect learners by transferring the training of Carillion apprentices to the CITB”.

The CITB is hosting free support events on January 18 and 19 for any Carillion apprentices in need of face-to-face advice.

They can contact CITB on carillion.apprenticeshipsupport@citb.co.uk or 0344 994 4010.

FE has “no representation” on the board of the new higher education regulator, a leading figure at the Department for Education has admitted.

The DfE’s permanent secretary, Jonathan Slater, told a public accounts committee hearing on Monday that it was “correct” to say that the further education sector was not represented on the board of the Office for Students.

Mr Slater said there had been “quite a lively debate” in Parliament over whether certain positions should be reserved for certain representations, adding: “We have overseen the process of appointing it in accordance with what Parliament agreed in the act, which wasn’t a specific representation from that sector.”

However, he would not be drawn on whether representatives from FE should have been included on the board, but claimed the conclusion had been for people to be appointed based on their job description and “that is what ministers did”.

Mr Slater’s admission directly contradicts the claims of ex-universities minister Jo Johnson, who said FE was represented on the board through Monisha Shah, the chair of Kent arts college Rose Bruford College, during a parliamentary debate on January 8.

However, despite the DfE’s insistence that the college is an FE body, FE Week established that Rose Bruford is officially classified as a higher education institution and receives no FE funding.

A student panel appointed to advise the Office for Students appears to feature only one former FE college learner, the president of the National Union of Students, Shakira Martin, who was once president of the student union at Lewisham Southwark College.

The NUS’ vice-president for further education, Emily Chapman, warned that the government is “hell-bent on ignoring” how central FE is to the HE sector, and said it was “astounding” that there was no dedicated FE representation on the board.

She added that greater understanding of the role colleges play in widening participation to universities was vital for boosting social mobility.

“If the Office for Students fails to consider the state of FE, postgraduate numbers will continue to decline, dropout rates will increase and under-represented groups will continue to be failed by a system that promises something it is ill-equipped to deliver,” she warned.

A spokesperson for the DfE said: “Candidates were chosen to ensure there is balance of experience and skills on the board. Each appointment will be vital to the role of the new higher education regulator and we remain confident it will deliver for students.”

She added that the process to recruit a board member to replace Toby Young, who resigned last week, would commence “in due course”. 

 

Providers can now bid to become one of the first to deliver T-levels, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced.

Guidance, published today, invites expressions of interest from providers who want to deliver the new qualifications in 2020/21, and sets out the criteria they will need to meet.

But while it says that the Department for Education is looking for a “small number” of providers it’s not clear how many it wants.

Providers – which can be colleges, independent training providers, university technical colleges or schools that currently deliver relevant ESFA-funded 16-to-19 education to at least 10 students – must be rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted and must have at least ‘satisfactory’ financial health.

They must also “demonstrate excellent attainment in the relevant vocational qualifications for the T-level pathways they wish to deliver” – judged to be at least a ‘merit’ average.

The guidance doesn’t specify the number of providers the government is looking for – although it does say that if there is “significant interest” it will apply further criteria to reach a “manageable number” – including giving priority to grade one providers.

It also discusses the steps the DfE will take to ensure there are providers across the range of types, and from the DfE’s opportunity areas, as set out in the recently published social mobility action plan.

The guidance includes a list of commitments that the chosen providers will need to make, including working with the DfE ahead of 2020 “to help develop the best approach to implementation”, and working “collaboratively with employers to offer a substantial work placement with an employer, away from the students’ learning environment”.

The first three T-levels set to be delivered from 2020 will be in digital, childcare and education, the DfE announced in October.

Consultation on the new qualifications opened at the end of November – although ex-education secretary Justine Greening told FE Week that the government would not budge on plans to make them level three and to include a mandatory three-month work placement.

Learndirect’s boss has admitted he was “surprised” his provider was handed such a large allocation in the adult education budget tender fiasco, after it tactically withdrew its bid.

Andy Palmer made his astonishment known about the £45 million contract at last night’s Public Accounts Committee hearing on the nation’s biggest FE provider.

Responding to a question from Heidi Allen MP about why Learndirect withdrew its bid in the AEB tender, Mr Palmer explained that it was a strategic decision made with his board’s blessing.

“Having looked at the [AEB tender] specification I was aware that if we had a grade four at that time we wouldn’t have received any funding,” he said.

“I was also aware that if we withdrew from the procurement round then there would be an amount of funding for providers who had withdrawn.”

He then unexpectedly admitted he was “surprised by the volume of funding” when asked by the committee how he reacted to Learndirect being given 75 per cent of its previous year allocation.

As revealed in last month’s National Audit Office report, Learndirect originally bid for £85 million in last year’s AEB tender. But in mid-July, after the provider’s grade four inspection became known, the ESFA asked Learndirect to generate some funding scenarios and their consequences.

The provider gave two survival scenarios: one in which the business could continue if awarded £48 million and another for £40 million, which would be insufficient and “the business would probably become insolvent”.

On July 25 Learndirect contacted the ESFA to withdraw its bid from the tender.

On September 6, the ESFA wrote to all providers which either did not participate in the procurement or were unsuccessful, to confirm a rule change that meant they would receive 75 per cent of the value of their previous contract to use in 2017/18 – which amounted to £45 million for Learndirect.

The FE sector was left outraged at this decision, specifically providers who had been successful in the AEB tender but only received a fraction of their previous allocations.

This included Somerset Skills & Learning, a large 10,000-learner community provider, which had its budget slashed by 97 per cent and launched a campaign with MPs to overturn the unfair decision.

They [providers] will be very angry to hear Learndirect’s chief executive was surprised at the £45 million awarded

This was until a later ESFA rule change, following threats of legal challenges, which brought all provider funding up to the value of 75 per cent of the amount they had last year, and therefore into line with providers which did not bid or failed in the tender process.

Responding to Mr Palmer’s “surprise” revelation, Mark Dawe, chief executive of the AELP of which Learndirect is a member, said: “It is frustrating that the ESFA was able to adjust the tender rules for those that chose not to apply.

“While clearly benefiting Learndirect, hundreds of small providers have lost out in the recent tender [non-levy] round where the rules were rigidly applied. They will be very angry to hear Learndirect’s chief executive was surprised at the £45 million awarded.

“This is not a private or public sector issue, or big or small, it is about a fairness of treatment process for all providers and this doesn’t feel to be the case in this situation.”