Education is the missing piece in David Lammy’s race review puzzle

The criminal justice system in this country disproportionately affects people from black and ethnic minority backgrounds, and prison education is failing them, says Nina Champion

The overwhelming message from David Lammy’s groundbreaking new report is the depressing lot faced by minorities at every stage of life: from school exclusions, to engagement with the police, to charging, sentencing and treatment in custody, BAME youngsters get a disproportionately worse deal, and the ill-effects of a criminal record follow them as they return to the community.

Sadly this state of affairs has long been known to students of the UK justice system.

Education has been proven to significantly reduce the likelihood of reoffending

What the Lammy Review does is put forward a number of valuable proposals, including making allowances for younger defendants’ immaturity and in certain cases sealing criminal records to help former prisoners find work. These steps could go some way to redress the injustice, and it is hugely important for the long-term sustainability of our justice system that the government responds energetically to the recommendations. The Prisoners’ Education Trust, alongside every other informed commentator on criminal justice, will endorse that call.

But crucial though the Lammy Review has been in highlighting the most egregious points of injustice, it is only a start at looking at the experience of BAME people in custody. In particular, it does not tell us enough about how they access education in custody, education that has the power to transform lives and has been proven to significantly reduce the likelihood of reoffending.

The report confirms that BAME prisoners are likely to have better prior educational attainment than white prisoners on entry to custody. But what the report doesn’t tell us is what happens next. Given the level at which they enter the system, are they being engaged equally in learning opportunities during their sentence? Are they being supported to progress to the higher levels of educational achievement which can help transform their lives after release? These were questions raised by our alliance of prison education charities, the Prisoner Learning Alliance, in our submission to the Lammy Review, but which went unanswered in the final report.

Our questions went unanswered in the final report

The chapter ‘Education, Training and Employment’ focuses on criminal records as a significant barrier to employment, and suggests measures to tackle disclosure obligations. But another – arguably bigger – barrier to employment is a lack of skills, meaningful qualifications or the attitudes employers look for. Learning in prison can support the development of these crucial skills and attributes. If BAME prisoners are not getting equal access or support to progress during their sentences, this is something we should know.

Its omission from the report matters. Education is not a side issue: it is the engine of rehabilitation. Named in the Queen’s birthday honours this month were two men, Chris Syrus and Frank Harris, both of whom were first funded by PET to complete distance-learning courses while serving prison sentences. Both are black men who have gone to achieve degrees and serve their communities, doing vital work with young BAME people at risk of committing crime. This is the positive ripple effect of education: it has the power not only to change one life but to create role models.

Governors  should be held to account for equality of access to education

As governors take over commissioning prison education from next summer, and become accountable for the educational progress of their prisoners, they should also be held to account for equality of access to education and equality of outcomes for all prisoners. This will require the Ministry of Justice to examine data concerning BAME educational progression and use it as a baseline against which governors are measured and held to account.

It will also require governors to listen to BAME prisoners and understand their needs, interests and barriers to learning when planning the curriculum. It will hopefully encourage governors to seek the expertise of specialist education providers and voluntary and community sector organisations. This is particularly important in young offender institutions and prisons with high numbers of young adults where the proportion of BAME prisoners is up to 40 per cent.

The Lammy Review should provide a starting point for further urgent and critical investigation of every aspect of the prison experience for the BAME population, including whether they leave prison with more skills and qualifications they entered with. Because these are the skills and qualifications that could determine whether they are equipped to build a crime-free life after release, realise their potential and become assets to their families, communities, and our society.

Nina Champion is head of policy at the Prisoners’ Education Trust

University’s controversial takeover of Lambeth College delayed

A university’s controversial plans to take a college over by the back door have been delayed, FE Week can reveal.

Lambeth College consulted in June on proposed changes to its governance structure, which would have handed significant control over how it is run to London South Bank University, ahead of a formal merger.

The changes had been due to take effect from mid-June – but the college has confirmed that they are yet to be implemented.

Monica Box, Lambeth’s interim principal, told FE Week that the college’s board had “considered the responses to the consultation on changes to governance” and had “reaffirmed its commitment to make changes to the governance profile” but admitted that “the timescale has been altered”.

This is to allow the board to take into consideration “feedback from the college application for the designation criteria pilot” which is expected “early in the autumn term”.

The changes would see the college’s principal stripped of many of her responsibilities, while at least half of the college’s governors would be appointed by LSBU.

Amendments would be made under the college’s instruments and articles of governance, which don’t need to be signed off by the government.

Among the powers that Ms Box would therefore pass over to the university include annual budgets, staffing arrangements and the college’s “strategic direction”, according to the consultation document on Lambeth’s website.

“Up to five” governors would be chosen from among LSBU governors and senior staff, sitting alongside the university’s vice-chancellor “unless he or she chooses not to be a governor”.

The college would be represented by an employee and a learner, along with two or three independents, who would be selected from among its current governors.

“All other governors of Lambeth College will resign,” the document explains.

These proposals came months ahead of a consultation on a potential merger between the college and university.

This amalgamation was one of three options proposed for the college, which was rated as ‘requires improvement’ at its most recent Ofsted inspection in December, in the central London area review.

A report published by the former FE commissioner Sir David Collins in March, based on a visit to the college in September 2016, concluded that it was “no longer sustainable” unless it merged.

His visit had been precipitated by a “significant deterioration” in the college’s finances, caused by poor financial management.

The college was bailed out by Education and Skills Funding Agency last year after its projected deficit for 2015/16 ballooned from £500,000 to more than £5 million.

Major provider exposed for offering inducements goes into administration

An apprenticeship provider exposed in June by FE Week offering inducements to an employer has called in the administrators.

After around 100 staff were made redundant on 17 August, Talent Training’s chairman David Harper informed them that he had “reluctantly chosen to agree to appoint administrators today for the company” in an email sent last night.

The decision was apparently made after he failed to reach a deal to transfer the South Tyneside-based firms’ contracts to another provider.

Mr Harper said he had had “detailed discussions” with other providers, “one of which had been in discussions with the ESFA to ensure a smooth transition as far as possible”.

But despite being “reasonably optimistic” that this would lead to a “quick agreement” he had been told that no deal could be reached until “the end of September at the earliest”.

“Having spoken to my advisors, it was obvious to me that the company could not continue in limbo under this timetable,” he said.

David Harper. Source: www.talenttraininguk.com

Earlier this week, FE Week asked Mr Harper to comment on reports that Talent had made most of its staff redundant without pay in August.

In a response sent just hours before the all-staff email, he told us it had been “necessary to make ALL staff redundant without exception” – but made no comment on whether they had been paid.

However, in his email to staff, Mr Harper said that the administrators, David Rubin and Partners, would be “in touch with you to assist with your unpaid wages claim”.

A spokesperson for Gateshead College recently revealed that Talent had been in talks to sell it its remaining learners, in order to “ensure their learners can complete their training”.

Mr Harper said he had “spent the last two weeks speaking to several organisations with a view to safeguarding as many jobs and learners’ programmes as possible and am unable to comment further in this regard at this stage to ensure I do not prejudice any sensitive arrangements”.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education confirmed that it was “continuing to work closely with Talent Training to ensure the continuity of training for learners and minimise any disruption to employers”.

She added: “Where a provider is looking to remove itself from the market place or where the Education and Skills Funding Agency takes action to remove a provider from the market place, it is the responsibility of the ESFA, or the employer, to determine where learners are transferred to in order to complete their learning.”

FE Week also asked the department to confirm whether Talent had its adult funding budget, loan funding and pre-May apprenticeship funding contracts terminated, not only for apprenticeships funded from May via the levy, but are yet to receive a response.

We understand that Talent intends to apply for a judicial review against the ESFA’s decision to pull its contracts.

This saga follows an undercover investigation FE Week carried out in June, in which we exposed a Talent employee offering as much as 20 per cent of its government funding per apprenticeship to a firm that was considering its training services.

Talent at the time insisted that no inducement payments had actually been paid to any employers.

The ESFA initially said it would terminate its “levy agreement” with the provider, but not its non-levy apprenticeships contract.

Nevertheless, the ESFA appears to have stopped making payments – although this was never confirmed.

Training providers join forces to challenge Justine Greening in court

A group of leading training providers is gearing up for collective action against the government’s adult education budget procurement process, FE Week can reveal.

The coalition is made up of organisations which say they’ve suffered financial loss and damage to their business as a result of the recent tender – and they believe they have sufficient grounds to launch a judicial review against the Secretary of State for Education, Justine Greening, or even appeal to the EU Commission.

They even allege that the Education and Skills Funding Agency was negligent of – or even complicit in – corrupt practice under the Public Procurement Act 2015, which states that a procurement must not be interfered with once underway.

They also believe the ESFA has breached the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, specifically with its “failure to treat bidders equally and without discrimination, failure to act in transparent and proportionate manner and artificially narrowing competition by unduly favouring or disadvantaging bidders”.

The ESFA significantly changed its original tender rules this week, almost at the end of a tender process that has been going on for much of 2017 in various guises.

Its original policy, published in January 2017, stipulated that providers which did not bid or were unsuccessful would be offered a contract worth no more than £589,148.

But the ESFA this week sent letters to such providers, telling them that they would now receive 75 per cent of the value of their previous contract to use in 2017/18.

Among them is the nation’s biggest FE provider, Learndirect, which the DfE admitted this week had at first applied for funds, but which later withdrew its tender.

Learndirect had a contract worth £60 million last year, and stands to receive roughly £45 million to recruit and train adult learners until July 2018, even though it was recently slapped with an ‘inadequate’ rating from Ofsted – a situation which usually prompts the DfE to terminate a provider’s funding.

Other providers which made successful bids, on the other hand, have seen their AEBs slashed.

Somerset Skills & Learning, a provider rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, and which has been running in various forms for more than 100 years, has been awarded a contract for November 2017 to July 2018 worth just three per cent of its previous budget and faces catastrophic repercussions.

Another independent provider which did not wish to be named, received 30 per cent of the money it had at its disposal last year, even though it delivers “priority provision in priority local authority areas”, forcing it to lead the legal charge against the entire tender.

Had it been known the ESFA would change its rules and reduce allocations by just 25 per cent for those that did not participate, many providers may well have found themselves ignoring the bidding round to secure sufficient funding to survive.

The unnamed provider told FE Week it had “fully believed” that unsuccessful or non-bidders would receive a maximum of £589,148 when it applied.

“After protecting grant funded institutions and Learndirect, the ESFA contrived to open up £65 million of AEB to the near 4,000 organisations listed on register of training organisations,” a spokesperson said.

“Existing contract holders have been discriminated against at every step of the process and now face having to make large scale redundancies, with the ESFA absolving itself from their legal TUPE responsibilities, despite explicitly stating TUPE applies in the three-month contract extensions.”

The spokesperson alleged that the procurement process had been “unfair, inconsistent and illegal” from start to finish.

The AEB tender for private providers has been dogged by delays. Results were supposed to be released on May 19 after it was first launched on January 27, for a sum that originally came to just £110 million.

The organisations involved in the legal challenge do not wish to be identified at this stage for fear of government retribution, but they are seeking to get in touch with others in a similar position.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “We understand the anger and frustration of many of our members and we hope to reach a resolution with the ESFA shortly without court action being necessary.”

The Department for Education was not contacted for comment.

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Providers that wish to get in touch with the group can do so in confidence by emailing news@feweek.co.uk.

Commissioner report exposes financial turmoil at London SFC

A sixth-form college is in grave danger of running out of cash in the next 12 months, after a report uncovered shocking financial turmoil.

The sixth-form commissioner Peter Mucklow has demanded an immediate recovery plan for Brook House Sixth-Form College in London, after a meeting of the board of governors revealed a huge deficit for 2015/16.

It comes after minutes of a full board of governors meeting for Brook House Sixth-Form College revealed “surprise” at the size of the 2015/16 deficit.

The SFC was issued with a government notice to improve its financial health in March, which occasioned a visit from two of Mucklow’s advisors.

“If current trends were allowed to continue, the college would be at risk of running out of cash during 2017 to 2018, and could not continue operations without an overdraft facility,” the resulting report warned.

The college has been relying on a £500,000 overdraft facility for operational purposes that was due to be reviewed by Barclays Bank in July this year.

“This underlines the imperative for a review of the college’s strategic options to be conducted by autumn 2017,” it added, casting doubt on its sustainability unless “active measures” were taken to ensure student numbers hold up, and that the college could meet its costs.

Governors and senior leadership were told to improve oversight and management of financial control “immediately”, and to carry out a review of their own roles and the structure of the senior team, to “ensure the leadership and management of the college is efficiently and cost-effectively organised”.

Minutes of a full board meeting in December last year demonstrate further shock at the size of the deficit.

“The finance committee had drawn to the corporation’s attention that the financial outcome for 2015/16 was far worse than forecast; a deficit of £492,000 caused largely by staff costs in relation to agency staff,” the report said of the minutes.

“The reasons for the large deficit and the late emergence of the situation were discussed, and it was strongly felt that a more positive system should be determined to avoid such a surprise in future year.”

Around 1,350 students, mostly aged 16 to 18, attend the grade three Ofsted-rated SFC.

Around a third are on AS- and A-level programmes, with a third on vocational programmes at level three, and the remaining pupils taking vocational or GCSE programmes at level two, or vocational programmes below level two.

It was noted that the central London area review recommended in February that Brooke House should remain as a standalone institution, albeit one that should be “working to improve its financial position and its quality against an improvement plan agreed with the Department for Education’s funding agencies”.

The skills and apprenticeships minister Anne Milton sent a letter to the college that accompanied today’s report.

“The funding agency will be regularly monitoring progress at the college, and will be looking for evidence that the college has responded to the recommendations and is delivering the changes necessary,” she wrote.

The college has not been approached for comment.

 

Trial begins: Former Welsh footballer and three others accused of £5 million FE fraud

A former Wales international footballer and three other men conspired to scam colleges and the government out of around £5 million of apprenticeship funding, in some cases faking “ghost learners”, a court has heard.

Mark Aizlewood, aged 57, from Aberdare, who played for Wales 39 times in the 1980s and 1990s, appeared today before Southwark Crown Court alongside his former colleagues Keith Williams, 45, from Anglesey, Paul Sugrue, 56, from Cardiff, and Jack Harper, 30, from Southport.

The four, who formerly worked for a provider called Luis Michael Training, face charges ranging from conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation, to fraud and using a false instrument, dating from between 2009 and 2011.

Alexandra Healy QC, prosecuting for the Serious Fraud Office, opened for the prosecution this morning where FE Week was in attendance.

“The case concerns fraud involving in the region of £5 million of public money,” she told the court. “That money was intended to be used to fund the training of apprentices.

“LMT persuaded colleges to enter agreements and that involved them enrolling learners. But a number of the learners were ‘ghost’ learners and did not exist. Others were real people but did not know their name was being used.”

The court heard that LMT did not only deal with “ghost learners”.

“Learners who were real were meant to have over 450 guided learning hours to achieve their qualifications,” Ms Healy said.

“LMT said they would deliver 20 hours of guided learning per week, but these real learners actually received much less, just two to three hours per week.”

To persuade colleges to join agreements, the court heard that LMT submitted false accounts purporting to show the provider had a history of trading profitably.

A number of young people on work experience from a school in Wales were also said to have worked at the now-defunct provider’s offices, where it was alleged that they completed fake tests learners had been supposed to complete, and filled in false learner comment reviews.

Mr Aizlewood, Mr Sugrue and Mr Williams helped set up LMT in 2009, and were directors and equal shareholders of the firm, the court heard.

It worked as a subcontractor for eight FE colleges, including Sparsholt College and South Thames College.

The court also heard that both Mr Sugrue and Mr Aizlewood were able, through other businesses that they operated (Luis Michael Trading and Aizlewood Consultancy), to “claim certificates for the learners’ completion of the component aspects of the apprenticeship framework as a result of the Direct Claim Status those businesses had with the various awarding bodies”.

Mr Harper got involved with LMT in 2009 and was supposed to provide level one and two coaching qualifications.

He is accused of allegedly committing a separate but linked attempt to defraud Liverpool Community College, through his company FootballQualifications.com.

“Mr Harper entered an agreement with LCC,” Ms Healy told the court. “Inquiries into the 39 learners that he had submitted to the college for enrolment revealed that many were not employed, a number were in full time education and so ineligible for apprenticeship funding, others were only attending very short training sessions.”

The college asked for evidence that the learners existed, but Mr Harper was alleged to have produced false bank statements purporting to show payments to the learners.

The four defendants deny all charges.

Two more men pleaded guilty before the trial began.

These are Christopher Martin, 53, from Newbury, who pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation, and Steven Gooding, 53, from Bridgwater, admitted one count of the same charge, both in relation to the case.

The trial continues and is expected to last 12 weeks.

Five new UTCs open doors to students

Five new university technical colleges have opened their doors this month, including one that was so popular it had to increase capacity before it even opened.

But with four more of the troubled 14-to-19 technical institutions closing in the summer, this still represents a net increase of just one, bringing the total to 49.

Ron Dearing UTC in Hull, which will focus on engineering and digital skills and which is backed by the University of Hull, was one of the five new UTCs to welcome its first intake of students this month.

It bucked the trend of low student numbers among UTCs when it was obliged to increase its capacity months before it even opened.

It had planned to take on 150 students in its first year, but it successfully applied to the Department for Education in 2016 to up this to 200 after demand for places outstripped supply.

Other UTCs to have opened this month include SGS Berkeley Green UTC in Gloucestershire, which specialises in digital technology, advanced manufacturing and cyber security, and UTC Portsmouth, which will focus on mechanical and electrical engineering and advanced manufacturing.

Meanwhile, London has gained two more of the controversial technical institutions – making up for the two that recently closed.

Sir Simon Wilton Westminster UTC is backed by the University of Westminster and specialises in transport, construction engineering and the built environment, while Mulberry UTC, based in Tower Hamlets, will focus on the health and creative industries, and is supported by Goldsmiths University.

However, both Tottenham UTC, which opened in 2014, and Royal Greenwich UTC, which opened in 2015, closed in the summer after they failed to attract enough students.

Tottenham’s site has now become the London Academy of Excellence Tottenham, a sixth-form school, which opened this month.

Greenwich council spent £13 million to convert its UTC to a secondary school, Greenwich Trust School, which also opened this month.

Greater Manchester UTC and Daventry UTC also shut up shop due to low student numbers, meaning that a total of eight of the technical institutions have now closed.

The UTC model has struggled since the first one opened in 2010, as many have not managed to recruit enough students to be viable.

Freedom of Information requests submitted by FE Week in April revealed that learner numbers had dropped at two thirds of the institutions opened in 2014 or before.

Even Michael Gove, the former education secretary and a key architect of the UTC programme, admitted earlier this year that “evidence has accumulated” that the experiment with 14-to-19 technical institutions had failed.

And around half of the UTCs inspected by Ofsted have been rated as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’.

Lord Baker, chair of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust which supports UTCs, said the schools “play a vital role in developing young people for the modern labour market”.

“In the ‘90s Blair called for ‘education, education, education’,” he said. “Today the call should be ‘employability, employability, employability’. 

“Focus on employability should start in schools, but too many of them only care about exam pass rates. What really matters is that students are ready for skilled work and, as we approach Brexit, the stakes could not be higher.”

Urgent investment needed for sixth forms

MPs will today (September 7) be warned that a worsening cash “crisis” engulfing the sector will cause further cuts to courses, and sixth form college closures, in a Westminster Hall debate on 16 to 19 education funding geared at drumming up support for the Support Our Sixth-formers campaign. Bill Watkin explains below why the Sixth Form Colleges Association co-launched this drive for special government action before it is too late.

Almost every principal will tell you that leading a dedicated sixth form is a wonderful job, a privilege that brings enormous rewards.

They work with – on the whole – motivated and high-achieving colleagues and students, leading autonomous corporations, in an environment that often resembles a family-sized university campus.

They serve diverse communities, make a real difference to the social mobility agenda, and offer a curriculum that blends academic and vocational courses in a far greater number of subjects than might be found elsewhere.

You only have to look at the latest exam results to see just how successful these specialist experts are.

But it is not all plain sailing. 

The low level of funding that sixth-form providers receive continues to be a cause of great concern.

Spending on FE and sixth forms fell by 14 per cent in real terms under the coalition government, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and rising costs are putting huge additional pressure on stretched budgets.

Colleges are operating with skeleton leadership teams

Colleges are operating with skeleton leadership teams, facing difficult curriculum decisions, and the wrap-around experiences that are so vital to a high-quality sixth-form education are under threat.

This is why the SFCA, the Association of School and College Leaders and the Association of Colleges have launched the Support Our Sixth-formers campaign.

We are calling on the government to introduce a £200 per-student uplift in funding for sixth form students, and conduct a review of sixth form funding to ensure it is linked to the realistic costs of delivering a rounded, high-quality curriculum.

In addition to the mounting funding and accountability pressures, the mental and physical well-being of students and staff is an increasingly important consideration, the curriculum and qualifications reforms of recent years are now in the middle of an implementation period, and ensuring a supply pipeline of expert teachers and staving off recruitment difficulties is a growing concern.

Without urgent investment, sixth form education will become an increasingly narrow experience

Furthermore, these are complex and large organisations, some of which have bank loans and mortgages, while others recruit significant numbers of overseas students, and all are balancing the imperative to work in both collaboration and competition with schools, universities and employers.

Without urgent investment, sixth form education in England will become an increasingly narrow and part time experience – which would be bad for students, bad for social mobility and bad for the economy.

We urge the government to engage fully in the debate today and accept the recommendations in the Support Our Sixth-formers campaign.

Only 15 per cent of levy-funded apprentices aged 16 to 18

Just 15 per cent of levy-funded apprentices to date are aged 16 to 18, according to experimental government statistics published today.

The new Department for Education figures, based on commitments made through the apprenticeship service since May, appear to make a mockery of Conservative party election manifesto commitments to support young people into apprenticeships.

They show that of the 18,600 ‘fully agreed’ commitments made through the service to July 31, just 2,900 were for apprentices aged under 19.

A further 6,000 commitments were for apprentices aged 19 to 24, while 9,700 – more than half – were for those aged 25 or older.

It comes after the Conservative party promised to “deliver our commitment to create 3 million apprenticeships for young people by 2020″ in its manifesto ahead of the June general election.

A commitment is defined as “where a potential apprentice, who is expected to go on to start an apprenticeship, has been recorded in the system”, according to the text accompanying today’s statistics.

For a commitment to be fully agreed it needs to have agreement from both the organisation and the training provider.

The statistics, which are described as experimental, do not reflect all apprenticeship starts since May as they only cover apprenticeships in levy-funded companies that use the apprenticeship service.

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ chief policy officer Simon Ashworth said: “As AELP exactly predicted, levy paying employers are already using half of their levy to place existing adult workers on to apprenticeships when at this time of the year.

“We would normally expect the recruitment focus to be more on school and sixth form leavers. 

He added: “It’s too soon to draw solid conclusions until we see the official starts data are published next month, but we are very concerned that the funding reforms for the programme are not providing sufficient incentive for employers, both large and small, to take on 16 to 18 year olds as apprentices.”