Start date: October 2017 Previous job: Director of Medacrii.com Interesting fact: She is the director of a social enterprise that runs organic sourdough bread-making courses.
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Steve Burgin, Chair of governors, South Staffordshire College
Start date: November 2017 Previous job: Vice-president of GE Power in Europe Interesting fact: He is deputy president and board member of the French Chamber of Commerce of Great Britain.
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Alison Robinson, Principal and CEO, Myerscough College
Start date: April 2018 Previous job: Vice-principal and deputy chief executive at Myerscough College Interesting fact: She will be the second woman to lead the college in its history, and has lived down the road from the main campus for over 20 years.
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Matt Bagley, Head of farms, Askham Bryan College
Start date: September 2017 Previous job: Head of agriculture at Askham Bryan College’s Penrith campus Interesting fact: He sits on a number of national committees including the National Sheep Association and the Sheep Vet Society.
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Bruce Carnegie-Brown, President, the Chartered Management Institute
Start date: September 2017 Previous job: Chairman of Lloyd’s of London and Moneysupermarket.com group Interesting fact: He is a trustee of Historic Royal Palaces and a deputy lieutenant of Greater London.
If you want to let us know of any new faces at the top of your college, training provider or awarding organisation please let us know by emailing news@feweek.co.uk
The leader of a troubled college has stepped down just 18 months into the job – and will be replaced by the ex-principal of another formerly struggling institution.
Derek Headrige [pictured right] was appointed campus principal at Totton College in April 2016 following a period of turmoil that saw it merge with the social justice charity Nacro.
But he has now resigned and is being replaced on an interim basis by the former principal of LeSoCo, Maxine Room [pictured left], the college announced today.
Lisa Capper, director of education at Nacro, said she was “delighted to welcome Maxine to the team”.
She praised the work Mr Headrige has done since her took over, and said Totton College “has improved its Ofsted rating and results and has introduced a number of high-quality technical courses and apprenticeships to match the needs of the local community and industry demands”.
A spokesperson insisted the resignation was not connected to the college’s recent Ofsted inspection, in which it improved by just one grade to ‘requires improvement’ in July, and said he was leaving to take a “promotion to a new role within the education and training sector”.
A return visit by the education watchdog in June resulted in the college receiving a grade three across the board.
“Since the transfer of ownership to Nacro in December 2015, the pace of change has been slow,” noted the inspection report.
Ms Room was in charge of Lewisham College from 2009, and oversaw its merger with Southwark College in 2012.
But when the new body was inspected in November 2013, it was branded ‘inadequate’ – a verdict that occasioned a visit by the FE commissioner Sir David Collins in January 2014.
His report noted that a lack of action to address the weaknesses identified by Ofsted “leaves serious doubts about the capability of the leadership team”, and that there was a “lack of confidence” in the leadership team among key stakeholders.
Despite a recommendation that the college board “develop and implement a succession plan for the post of principal”, it wasn’t until May that Ms Room announced she was stepping down.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Room has been working in a variety of consultancy roles since leaving Lewisham Southwark.
She will be supported in her new role by Hannah Avoth, who is being promoted to vice-principal.
“This is a strong set of appointments and I know they will take the college to the next stage of its successful development,” Ms Capper said.
The skills minister will be speaking at this year’s Association of Colleges annual conference.
Anne Milton’s address is guaranteed to be one of the highlights of this year’s event, which will be held at ICC in Birmingham on November 14 and 15.
The news of her appearance at one of the FE sector’s biggest annual events comes days after she spoke at the Conservative party conference, at which she discussed the need for “flexibility” in the new apprenticeships system.
David Hughes, AoC chief executive, said he was “delighted” that Ms Milton would be speaking at the conference.
“It’s such a good opportunity for her to set out the government’s vision for education and skills and the critical role colleges will play in achieving that vision. I know that AoC members will be looking forward to hearing from her and posing their questions.”
Other confirmed speakers at the two-day conference will include Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman, and the writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed.
This is only the second time the sector will have had the chance to hear from the apprenticeships and skills minister directly, after she spoke at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference in June, just days after she took up the role.
The skills minister has admitted she’s heard serious concerns about the government’s apprenticeship reforms, but claims there is “just enough time” to ensure that the enthusiasm, energy and time put into the project is not lost.
Speaking at an Apprenticeships Forum fringe event at the Conservative Party conference this morning, Anne Milton said successive governments had proceeded with “good intentions and great ideas”, but then the “dead hand of the state” took over.
She was responding to a question about the problems with the process for developing new apprenticeship standards and criticism of the new Institute for Apprenticeships, and admitted that the system would not work “unless there is flexibility in it”.
Successive governments proceed with good intentions, and then the dead hand of the state comes in
“Successive governments proceed with good intentions, great ideas, everything’s very exciting. And then the dead hand of the state comes in,” she said.
“This conference is very timely, because there’s just about enough time to pick it up and make sure that enthusiasm and energy and actually time, people are giving up huge amounts of time to work with the IfA, isn’t lost.”
Ms Milton claimed her door was “always open” to the sector and to businesses, but admitted the list of people wanting to see her was “huge”.
Although she praised civil servants, who “tell me what’s working and what’s not”, she admitted that, four months into the job, the conference had been an opportunity to identify concerns about government policy that she was not aware of before.
For example, she said she had been “quite flabbergasted” to find out that many large businesses were unaware of the apprenticeship levy, despite paying large amounts of money into the pot.
She said she had had meetings with one managing director who “didn’t know anything about it”, and admitted that more needed to be done to promote the levy.
“[I met a] local business, big business [that is] paying the levy. Certainly the managing director didn’t know anything about it. Finance director knew vaguely about it,” she recalled.
“I said, you can spend this money on training – they have a couple of apprentices anyway. They knew nothing about it. Two people around the table yesterday. Senior levels in big organisations.”
Issues with the involvement of small and medium-sized employers (SMEs) in the apprenticeships system have also been raised, she said.
“That has come up quite a lot in the round tables for me, how we get SMEs involved, how we make sure that they can use the levy.
“The flexibility in the system is something that a number of people have raised with me.
“The other issues, if we’re talking about upskilling the workforce, so your existing employees, can that levy money be used – and it would apply to small businesses as well – to do shorter courses. So we need to look, we definitely need to look at that.”
Ms Milton also discussed the WorldSkills competition in Abu Dhabi, and said she had been “talking to the press office” about her potential trip to the event.
“What I would love to see is that get huge publicity. There can be no better opportunity than to give apprenticeships a boost. It is a brilliant opportunity.”
At the event this morning, she shared a stage with her predecessor Robert Halfon.
Now chair of the education select committee, Mr Halfon admitted that changes to the apprenticeship levy system were needed.
“I’m allowed to say this now that I’m not in government,” he said. “I actually think that we need to fine tune the apprentice levy. We need to do one of two things. We either increase the levy generally or we increase the amount of companies that have to pay.
“At the moment on two per cent of companies pay the levy, that have got wage bills of £ million. Perhaps you should increase that, set it at a wage bill of £2 million.
“And I would use that levy, part of the levy, to incentivise people to acquire apprentices from disadvantaged backgrounds. Because I think that will be a really good financial incentive to the companies, and I also think it will also help in the long term.”
FE Week put the employers’ concerns about a lack of feedback and flexibility, and too much bureaucracy, to the IfA, which replied they related to rigid guidance determined by the Department for Education.
The institute’s spokesperson added: “We are listening to employers and exploring how we can improve the speed and responsiveness of the processes that we run.”
We put the IfA’s claim to the DfE, and a spokesperson said: “The Institute for Apprenticeships, puts employers at the heart of the decision-making processes so it’s important that we listen and respond to concerns they have about how it is working for them.
“We want to ensure all apprenticeship standards are developed to a high quality and part of this is ensuring that apprenticeship standards are employer led.
“We will continue to work closely with the Institute for Apprenticeships and make sure we address concerns as the new system evolves.”
Picture L-R: Kevin Schofield, Editor of PoliticsHome, Anne Milton MP, Skills Minster and Robert Halfon MP, former Skills Minister and now Chair of the Education Select Committee
Editorial: Milton in the middle
Sat at the front of a breakfast event, I was witness to a refreshing account from a skills minister from whom we’d not really heard since June.
On the morning of the third day of the Conservative conference, Anne Milton was speaking at her fifth fringe event.
Freed from the shackles of civil servant minders, employers were able to give her honest and frank feedback.
She declared she was “quite flabbergasted” to find several big business bosses ignorant of the apprenticeship levy.
Read Editor Nick Linford’s view here
Others were telling her that employer ownership in practice meant red tape and discussing “inflexibility” from the new Institute of Apprenticeships.
Stuck between her advisors and employers, she said she would need to find common ground, and quickly.
I was also struck by how much degree apprenticeships dominated the debate, as if they were now the only show in town.
But when I asked what the saturation point was for £27,000 management degree apprenticeships, I was reassured that level two and three were also important.
The minister sounded like she was taking the feedback seriously, and change could be on the way.
Whether the “dead hand of the state” ultimately wins, only time will tell.
This year’s adult education budget has been a debacle, according to Mark Dawe, who wants the whole process substantially rethought and redesigned to avoid underspending on one hand and underfunding on the other
There’s no denying that the recent tender process for the independent training providers’ £110 million share of the £1.5 billion adult education budget was a bad experience for everyone involved. Frustrations were made worse because over 90 per cent of the total budget was inaccessible to ITPs as it’s grant funded, while there are persistent reports that almost £300 million of it wasn’t even spent in 2016-17. What we needed instead was a tender that achieved fair outcomes, led to a value-for-money delivery, and met policy requirements.
The outcome of original procurement achieved very little of this. The way regional priorities were determined seemed broken, while providers with ‘outstanding’ provision which had met the government’s standards for years suddenly found themselves with a fraction of what they required.
Who know whether it was AELP lobbying or FE Week’s coverage of the Learndirect and Somerset County Council cases, the threat of a microscopic examination of events by the Commons Public Accounts Committee, or all three, that prompted the U-turn. The first two certainly exposed the flaws in the process and the DfE’s ability to change rules at will. Ministers must have finally seen sense over the unfairness of it all.
AELP is awaiting feedback from member-providers but reallocating 75 per cent of supposedly “non-priority” delivery through extended contracts to make it fair for successful bidders was absolutely the right and necessary thing to do, and something we had proposed as a solution many weeks ago.
The next step is to allow providers who have been delivering priority learning to bid for growth, to enable them to plan ahead and maintain capacity. As always, this will only be successful if adequate money is allocated for this growth. Bearing in mind with the size of the reported underspend, adult contracted delivery could treble and there would still be money left over.
We should now take the opportunity to review the whole future of AEB funding, in the context of the extended devolution timetable. AELP understands that elected mayors will not countenance this as an academic exercise with the ESFA effectively retaining control; they will want a budget allocated under them to meet their local economic priorities. There will be a great deal of pressure on them to keep the bulk of their funds grant-allocated, even if the AEB is underspent to a significant degree.
It may require a transition process but we would like to see all combined authorities and LEPs move over to commissioned funding. That may mean more work for bid-writers but that is far better if it means better outcomes and improved value for money. Moreover if the education select committee is about to examine the prevalence of subcontracting in the sector, we should hardly be taking decisions that will encourage continuing a practice with an abundance of top-slicing.
The Department for Education has recently indicated that funding for traineeships for 19- to 24-year-olds will no longer be part of a devolved AEB. Having sat through several fringe meetings at the main party conferences listening to a wide range of experts complain about the previous lack of local ring-fencing for SEND budgets for schoolchildren, I have to say that AELP is in full agreement with the decision.
It doesn’t matter if we are talking about areas with notional full employment; we believe that traineeships are needed nationally when half a million young people are still unemployed and many of them won’t have the skills to compete in a post-Brexit labour market. Greater investment is required in traineeships and at the same time their budget needs to be protected from raids for other things.
Mark Dawe is chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers
The National Audit Office has officially launched an investigation into Learndirect and the Department for Education following outcry from the Public Accounts Committee.
Despite being slapped with the lowest-possible grade from the education watchdog after a failed judicial review, Learndirect has had none of its contracts terminated and was even told it could recruit new learners as long as they complete their qualifications by July 2018.
The provider has repeatedly been branded “too big to fail” by many sceptics in the sector.
But in a move that will place the provider and ministers under the biggest microscope yet, the NAO has confirmed it is going to scrutinise Learndirect.
In a note that appeared on the NAO’s website this afternoon, the country’s national auditor said: “Learndirect is a very large commercial further education provider, whose core business is skills, training and employment services. Learndirect receives funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency and, in keeping with other further education providers, is subject to inspection by Ofsted.
“In March 2017, Ofsted carried out an inspection of Learndirect and awarded it a grade four (‘inadequate’) rating. ESFA subsequently made a number of decisions about its ongoing funding of Learndirect. This investigation will set out the key facts relating to those decisions.”
Ofsted sent damning evidence that apprentices were not receiving enough training to the DfE at the end of March. An experienced independent apprenticeship funding auditor previously told FE Week this evidence should have raised significant concerns at the department.
“It does not seem to me that in this case the DfE has been a smart client,” she told FE Week. “It got to a point where … if it had started digging it might have gone in and found its problems – so it does seem that Learndirect has been too big to fail.”
Upon hearing the news that the NAO had taken up her referral, Ms Hiller said she was “pleased” the national auditor was investigating and “looked forward to examining its findings in due course”.
The provider’s chief executive, Andy Palmer, today welcomed the investigation.
“Learndirect welcomes the investigation which is clearly not an investigation into Learndirect but into the public bodies and stakeholders that have engaged with Learndirect. We believe that it will vindicate the decisions that they have made with respect to Learndirect.”
The DfE also welcomed the NAO’s inquiry.
“Following the Ofsted report, we have taken swift action to work with learndirect and put safeguards in place to protect learners,” a spokesperson said.
“We welcome the NAO’s investigation and will look at its findings when published.”
The exact dates of investigation are not yet known, but the NAO has said it will be conducted during “winter 2017-18”.
The NAO told FE Week that its investigations, such as the one following the Kids Company scandal in 2015, are “reactive to a situation” and “offer a rapid assessment of service quality, failure and financial management”.
There were at least six potentially misleading claims in the tender, in which LDA appeared to take credit for activities that happened several years before it was even set up, which are understood to have been undertaken by Learndirect Ltd.
After reviewing our findings, the London Procurement Partnership (LPP), which the NHS uses to manage the capital’s dynamic purchasing system (DPS), launched a review of LDA’s position as a provider.
A spokesperson for the partnership told FE Week today that after investigation, LPP had taken the decision to remove LDA from the “leadership and management apprenticeship” category of the DPS.
“Following an enquiry into Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd’s original application to join the NHS London Procurement Partnership’s apprenticeship training providers DPS, the company has been removed from the Leadership and Management Apprenticeship category, effective 5pm Friday, September 29,” she said.
“The award criteria for the Leadership and Management Apprenticeship category requires bidders to provide published and verified success rates which, upon audit, Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd has not been able to provide to LPP’s satisfaction.
“At such time as Learn Direct Apprenticeships Ltd can produce published and verified success rates, the company will be entitled to reapply for a place on the DPS.”
The company still remains as a potential bidder for categories on the DPS including Dental Nurses, Digital Services (IT, data analysis), Healthcare Support Services, Healthcare Science, Healthcare Assistant Practitioner, HR and Recruitment.
According to the LPP spokesperson, these categories currently “do not require applicants to provide published success rates as apprenticeships in these sectors have not been available long enough for there to be any statistics at this time”.
She added that LDA’s application for each of these categories “met the criteria, as confirmed during our audit. Consequently there are no grounds under the OJEU rules to remove the company from these categories.”
Learndirect Apprenticeships has been approached for comment.
This will bring new funding levels for all private providers up to the value of at least 75 per cent of the amount they had in 2016/17, bringing much-needed parity to those that felt aggrieved by the massive funding cuts imposed after their “successful” bids in the recent tender process.
“We cannot confirm the budget at this stage of the procurement as contract talks are still taking place,” a spokesperson for the Department for Education said, though he did clarify that “the amount will be published once all contracts have been signed. This money comes from underspends in the adult education budget”.
Multiple sources confirmed to FE Week that around 13 per cent of the £1.5 billion AEB budget went unspent in 2016/17 – a situation sector leaders described as “worrying” and “frustrating”.
Many ITPs would also have at first been infuriated by news of the unspent £200 million.
This is because, unlike FE colleges and councils, they were forced to tender for part of a pot worth just £110 million.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency attempted to make amends on Friday, writing to aggrieved ITPs to inform them that extra money had become available for their AEB allocations.
Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden previously said it would have been a “scandal” if the unspent £200 million had gone back to the Treasury, and not been spent on more FE provision.
AELP boss Mark Dawe added that the underspend was the “final piece of evidence” that proved the government should “start a transitional shift to full procurement of the whole budget, with greater prioritisation to meet the Brexit skills challenge”.
“The fact that the recent tender was six times oversubscribed tells you all you need to know about demand for the programme,” he said, pointing out that the size of underspend could be used to treble allocations to independent providers.
A large community learning provider in Somerset has reopened courses today after the government granted it substantial extra emergency funding, but warned that it has no “long-term solution”.
Somerset Skills & Learning, which teaches around 10,000 students and employs around 200 staff, received the good news it had been hoping for on Friday – that its AEB allocation for 2017/18 had been pumped up to just over £2.4 million.
While the new cash allows SS&L to continue to deliver courses across Somerset this year, the provider still has a “significant shortfall”, and a gap of almost £1 million it will need to address.
“We’re obviously relieved that the ESFA has been able to find some additional funding outside of the procurement process to support Somerset’s adult education provision, we need to remember this is just a transitional sum for this academic year only,” said SS&L’s chief executive, Susie Simon-Norris.
“As an organisation we will need to not only address the large shortfall in funding this year, but also prepare the organisation for future years under different funding priorities.”
Ms Simon-Norris admitted SS&L would have to change as a result, and a restructure is “possible” – though “we don’t know what the optimum solution will be”.
“Our first priority now is to ensure our learners are able to start their courses and that they receive the high level of tutoring and service for which we are known,” she said.
SS&L won much public support after its catastrophic initial funding cut became known. It later rallied the support of four local MPs to fight its case for more funding, and held emergency meetings with the DfE to reverse the cut.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the support and messages of goodwill which we’ve received from the Somerset community, our learners and clients and of course Somerset MPs who have acted on our behalf, and for that we are hugely thankful,” Ms Simon-Norris said.
Letters sent on Friday from the ESFA to providers affected by the AEB tender debacle focused on non-priority provision and delivery areas, and brought funding up to the value of 75 per cent of the amount they had last year, and therefore into line with other providers which did not bid or failed in the tender process.
New contracts for priority delivery will continue with opportunities to bid for growth.
A spokesperson for the DfE said it “cannot confirm the budget at this stage of the procurement as contract talks are still taking place. The amount will be published once all contracts have been signed.”
He added that this money “comes from underspends in the adult education budget”.
