There was good news across the FE sector last week as both providers with reports published maintained their grade two standards.

Birmingham’s Gordon Franks Training was congratulated for taking “very effective action” to reverse a decline in the numbers of apprentices achieving their qualifications in 2015/2016.

The independent learning provider delivers short study programmes to prepare young people for employment, traineeships and apprenticeships, mainly in childcare, administration and customer service, and caters for many learners from areas of high deprivation in central Birmingham and the surrounding area.

The report, published on October 2, also commends GFT for effectively supporting learners in developing self-confidence, resilience and social skills to prepare them for the future, with most students moving into further training, employment or apprenticeships on completion. However, it does say that too few learners retaking GCSE mathematics or English achieve a grade C/3 or better.

The report also mentions that some apprentices are unsure about what progression opportunities are available to them and that some do not develop a good enough understanding of radicalisation, extremism or British values, but emphasised that these were a “small minority”.

Independent learning provider Nital Ltd also kept its grade two after a short inspection.

The Kettering-based provider was praised for establishing an engineering skills training academy to provide practical and theoretical support to young people and for expanding the range of apprenticeships offered.

Although Ofsted noted the proportion of learners successfully achieving their qualifications had fallen slightly, it also said the achievement rate remained high.

The report also commended Nital for maintaining excellent relationships with local employers effectively safeguarding learners.

In its final monitoring visit after being ruled ‘inadequate’ last November, Stockport College has been found to be making reasonable progress.

The report, published last week after a visit in September, noted that 27 members of staff had left since the last monitoring visit in May. However, Ofsted said these had been replaced by new staff “who are clear about the minimum requirements that senior managers expect of them”.

The report also criticised senior managers for reacting too slowly to recommendations in the previous report, resulting in too little progress in improving the standard of education and training. Although it accepted the pace of improvement has increased in the past six months, Ofsted warned this was too late to generate the improvements needed with almost one in five 16- to 18-year-old learners leaving courses early in 2016/2017 and more than one quarter of learners not achieving their qualifications.

Despite this, senior managers were praised for holding curriculum managers to account, providing more detailed information to governors, developing staff teaching skills, appointing a teaching and learning manager to improve standards across the college and developing an in-depth data dashboard to help monitor attendance, behaviour and attainment levels.

Finally, Birmingham-based Compass Group UK & Ireland received its first monitoring visit since it was rated ‘inadequate’ in July.

The report, published on October 3 after the visit a month before, said directors had fully accepted the “shock result” and made a swift response to implement the Ofsted recommendations.

Although it praised the independent learning provider for appointing new managers and undertaking their own detailed analysis of the weaknesses in provision, which highlighted “far deeper problems than they had anticipated”, it warned that managers need to focus on how to actively improve the experience for apprenticeships as well as fixing the weaknesses.

A private training provider has successfully overturned an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgement after a nine-month battle which even saw inspectors forced to go back and reconsider the grade.

WS Training Ltd, a provider based in Suffolk with nearly 1,000 learners, was rated at grade two in 2013 but was reinspected in January this year.

FE Week understands the provider had been due to receive an overall grade four in a report which singled out safeguarding concerns.

WS Training feared it would go out of business as an ‘inadequate’ rating typically means the government will terminate funding contracts.

Directors engaged lawyers to challenge the outcome and after an initial investigation, the watchdog deemed the original inspection “incomplete”, and sent inspectors back in to gather more evidence seven months later.

After this mini reinspection, which took place over two days in August, WS Training was given a grade three across the board in a report published on September 28 – nearly 250 days after the first inspection.

The wait was eight times longer than the average 30 days between an inspection and a published report.

“While we aim to get our inspection reports out as quickly as possible, it is important that the reports are an accurate reflection of the provision,” an Ofsted spokesperson told FE Week.

“We don’t often have to gather additional evidence after an inspection, but will do so where we feel it is necessary to secure our judgement. Sometimes this leads to an unavoidable delay.”

In the last two academic years, five inspections of FE providers, including that of WS Training, have been deemed incomplete as a result of Ofsted’s quality-assurance process.

In all cases the inspectorate had to return to the provider to gather more evidence “in order to ensure that the inspection judgements were secure”.

FE Week understands the nature of the complaint from WS Training centred on alleged incompetence of inspectors. However, Ofsted told FE Week it had “no concerns about the conduct of any of our inspectors on this inspection”.

The decision comes at an embarrassing time for the watchdog given its recent judicial review with Learndirect.

Like WS Training, the nation’s largest FE provider accused the inspectorate of not doing its job thoroughly enough to make an adequate judgment.

During a court hearing in July, Learndirect claimed that inspectors had a “predetermined” negative view of its apprenticeship provision, and that the inspection was inadequately detailed considering its size.

But these allegations were thrown out by the judge and Ofsted was vindicated.

Jane Wood, WS Training’s chief executive, told FE Week it would be “inappropriate” for her to comment on her firm’s case against the inspectorate.

WS Training’s combined government contracts are worth more than £2.5 million, according to the ESFA’s latest funding allocations.

Ofsted’s final report on the provider said “too few” tutors plan teaching, learning and assessment “well enough to help learners to make good progress from their starting points”.

Tutors “do not always have high enough expectations” of what learners can achieve, and “too few challenge them beyond the minimum requirements of their qualifications”.

Inspectors added that leaders do not take “sufficient account” of the quality of teaching, learning and assessment in self-assessment or improvement planning, while not all employers are “routinely involved in planning apprentices’ learning”.

Leaders do however work “effectively” with partners to “meet the needs of learners”, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with complex high needs.

Theresa May spelled out plans to create a first class technical education system for the first time in our nation’s history, in a difficult speech to conference.

The Prime Minister, who has a cold and was struggling to make herself heard, spoke about her high hopes for the government’s FE reform agenda.

She stressed the need to invest the same level of energy and commitment to boosting skills training, for example through planned new “gold standard” T-level technical qualifications and Institutes for Technology, as usually goes into schools.

This, Ms May said, was about “preparing our young people for the world of the future, setting them up to succeed, taking skills seriously with new T-levels for post-16 education, and a new generation of Technology Institutes in every major city in England – providing the skills local employers need, and more technical training for 16-19 year olds”.

Her plan, she further explained, was to create “a first-class technical education system for the first time in the history of Britain. Keeping the British dream alive”.

The Prime Minister added: “As we roll out our modern industrial strategy, we will attract and invest in new high-paid, high-skilled jobs.

“We will continue to reform education and skills training so that people growing up in Britain today are ready and able to seize the opportunities ahead.” 

But while Ms May was reinforcing her commitment to FE, the sign on the wall behind her was doing anything but.

By the end of her speech the motif, which had originally read “building a country that works for everyone”, had lost an F and an E – prompting an amused reaction on Twitter, as photos of the disintegrating sign, taken by FE Week’s editor Nick Linford, went viral.

Yikes! Now the “E” has also floated away…and then… pic.twitter.com/vRTtN6jUS8

— Nick Linford (@NickLinford) October 4, 2017

“Is this a subtle way of telling us FE has been dropped?” quipped one Twitter user, while another asked “Is this a subliminal message for FE?!”

While Ms May’s words were applauded by the party faithful, her performance was fraught.

She was troubled by bouts of coughing that left her unable to speak at times – which at one point even forced the chancellor, Philip Hammond, to hand her a throat sweet.

And prankster Simon Brodkin – more commonly known by his comic alter-ego Lee Nelson – disrupted the speech by handing her a P45 before being bundled away by security.

While many commentators were quick to criticise Ms May’s performance, some sympathised with her plight and leapt to her defence.

These included the chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, who tweeted his support.

“PM deserves suppt. Key measures: affordable housing, energy bill caps, Institutes of Technology more impt than cough or knucklehead coNmedian,” he tweeted.

Earlier in her speech Ms May included “three million more apprenticeships” in a list of achievements since the Conservatives came to power.

And she promised to spread “prosperity and opportunity to every part of this country” by “tackling our economy’s weaknesses like low levels of productivity, backing our nation’s strengths, and bringing investment, jobs and opportunities to communities that feel they have been forgotten for far too long”.

Just two years ago, Lewisham Southwark College suffered the dubious honour of being the first FE and skills provider in the UK to receive two grade fours in a row from Ofsted.

But since hitting rock bottom, the college has welcomed a new leadership team, is undergoing a controversial merger with the Newcastle-based NCG group and, most surprisingly of all, has achieved a complete turnaround that it claims will rank it above the national average for learner outcomes and quality.

Our new reporter Pippa Allen-Kinross spoke to Gordon Gillespie, the college’s vice-principal of curriculum, learning and teaching, to find out how things have changed so dramatically in such a short space of time.

When Gordon Gillespie joined Lewisham Southwark College, it had already received its infamous second grade four. Its coffers were empty and it had been placed into administrative status by the FE commissioner’s office under a leadership which was, he claims, “indifferent”.

He was part of a new senior leadership team brought in by newly appointed principal Carole Kitching in June 2015, who went on a mission to “win back hearts and minds” to the floundering college.

“Carole is a very clear leader,” he says. “Her communication with staff is honest and regular, and she’s always open for a chat. She knows what she’s doing and all of those things add up to success.

“One of the first things we did was tell the staff they weren’t all terrible, they weren’t all grade four, and actually there was a lot of talent and skill in the college.

“We set to tackling long-standing issues of bad discipline, of a mentality that cared more about bums on seats than proper investment in making sure learners were put on the right courses.

The culture of the place, the ambience, the environment, everything was feeling a lot better

“Within a year we went up to a grade three. We could see there was a change. The really big success was the academic year 2016/2017; all of a sudden the new quality assurance practices, the time invested in learners and making sure they were at the centre of what we do rather than the periphery, it started to show. The culture of the place, the ambience, the environment, everything was feeling a lot better.”

The college claims it has now secured a place in the upper tenth percentile of colleges in the UK on performance, and that it ranks above the national average in achievement across all age groups. According to Gordon, if the provider compared itself with last year’s national averages it would rank as one of the top 20 colleges in the UK, and in the top two in London. He is confident it would receive a grade two were another Ofsted inspection to beckon, and wants to become ‘outstanding’ in the next year.

However, Ofsted ratings haven’t been the only controversy faced by LSC.

A merger was announced with the Newcastle-based NCG group in March, a decision which Lewisham council at the time told FE Week was “disappointing”.

Despite this, Gordon is confident that the merger will bring only more good news, including plans to expand on their higher education and apprenticeship offering, and insists the independence of the college has not been compromised.

“It’s rather exciting, because you have something that’s large and powerful and strong and has good finances, and it’s there to support us rather than direct us. They have the second biggest apprenticeship arm in the UK, and having that experience on board is really helping us,” he enthuses.

“We wanted to remain independent, true to local people and the boroughs that we serve, working with local politicians and boroughs for local skills issues without inference. The simple fact of the matter is that if we had merged with another London college we would be a different organisation now.

“There are huge benefits strategically, psychologically for staff and managers and politically as well to be able to say that we have not changed. We are still LSC.”

And the college is nothing if not ambitious: its Southwark campus recently received a £43 million renovation, while Lewisham is hoping to have £56 million invested in the next four years, thanks in no small part to NCG’s robust bank balances.

“The thing we all feel most proud of is that it would have been easy for managers and staff in this college to really think the plug is about to be pulled out and the water is going to drip away,” he says.

“They stuck with it because they wanted learners to do better than they had done before, and because they were good, honest, hardworking people. As a result of that, and some half-decent leadership, we have turned the college around.

“We are seeing the proper value of not just staff but learners as well. We came from the depths of despair but now the future is looking very bright.”

Yet another area review recommended college merger could be in trouble – due to an argument about a name.

Craven College and Shipley College emerged from their respective reviews intending to create a single Aire Valley College, along with the Keighley campus of Leeds City College.

The plan, recommended by both the West Yorkshire and York, North Yorkshire, East Riding and Hull reviews, depended on the two colleges acquiring the Keighley campus from Leeds for a reasonable price.

But Leeds principal Colin Booth has told FE Week he’s not happy that the campus – recently rebranded as Keighley College – has been given a new name.

“I don’t think that renaming Keighley College as Aire Valley College would create a clearer identity,” he said.

Instead, he believes the “best way forward” for it to “create a stronger reputation and identity for itself as Keighley College”.

“There are many ways to create partnership working and less competition amongst the colleges along the Aire Valley,” he added.

FE Week asked Mr Booth if he was opposed to the merger or just the name change, but he demurred.

The three-way link-up was one of the more unusual mergers proposed during the area review process.

According to last November’s report into the West Yorkshire review, which both Shipley and Leeds City colleges took part in, the creation of an Aire Valley College had been “an aspiration for the district for many years”.

But it noted that the Shipley and Craven colleges “may require financing to secure the Keighley site” – although the actual cost “will need to be determined”.

And the York, North Yorkshire, East Riding and Hull area review report said in August that the proposal depended on “the transfer of the Keighley College campus from Leeds City College on a financially feasible and acceptable basis”.

John Grogan, the MP for Keighley, told a Westminster debate on 16-to-19 funding earlier this month that “Leeds City College seems to be holding out against” the merger and was “putting a high price—possibly above £20 million” on the Keighley site.

He requested a meeting with skills minister Anne Milton to discuss the issue, but told FE Week this week that the meeting hadn’t yet gone ahead.

FE Week put Mr Grogan’s comments to Mr Booth, but he did not comment on them directly.

Both Craven and Shipley colleges told FE Week that they remained committed to the creation of Aire Valley College – assuming the price was right.

A Shipley spokesperson added that it was “actively working with the other college corporations, the West Yorkshire Combined Authority and FE Commissioner to develop an appropriate, sustainable further education offer in the district”.

But neither college had a comment on Mr Booth’s objections to the college’s name.

Keighley College had previously been known as the Keighley campus of Leeds City College, but in early 2016 was rebranded as Keighley College – although it is still being run by Leeds.

The college has its own website, separate from that of its parent, launched at the end of last year.

Keighley has been part of Leeds City College since it was formed in 2009 through the merger of three local institutions.

It was last standalone in 2007, when it merged with Leeds-based Park Lane College.

Other college mergers to have been cast into doubt recently include one between Barnfield College and Central Bedfordshire College, after one of their chairs made “regrettable” comments on local TV.

And a proposed link-up between North Shropshire College and Reaseheath College collapsed in August amid accusations that the government was unwilling to provide the necessary funding.