Review of apprentice provider list planned

The government is already planning to review its register of apprenticeship training providers, but not until the new window for applications has closed.

The ESFA offered training providers a third chance to get onto the register at the end of September, but admitted in its weekly update bulletin that this would be the last time before a review.

It wrote: “This will be the final time the register opens before we intend to review it to ensure that it continues to offer employers confidence that those listed can deliver the highest-quality apprenticeship training.”

FE Week has covered ongoing concerns with the RoATP since it was first published in March, when it was criticised about the numerous small and inexperienced companies that approved to deliver apprenticeships, including 48 “new organisations without a financial track record”.

A ban on companies with no financial track record from applying is likely to be on the agenda for the review.

The first two windows saw the number of registered providers directly receiving government funding for apprenticeships more than double, from 837 last year to 1,879 in May.

It has also worried Ofsted and Ofqual, which are now have to regulate this explosion in providers and assessments

Meanwhile, even though hundreds of approved providers with little or no track record have undergone mandatory training to allow them to deliver apprenticeships, promises made in June by Keith Smith, a senior ESFA official, that inexperienced providers would receive audit visits by September have not been honoured.

FE Week understands that one-to-one audits for new providers will begin next month.

In a letter sent to a twice-unsuccessful applicant in September, the skills minister Anne Milton meanwhile admitted that the ESFA was “working on improving the quality of its communications”.

“I sincerely apologise for any conflicting information you may have been given about the opening of the RoATP,” she wrote in the letter, seen by FE Week.

“The ESFA is working on improving the quality of its communications, and feedback like this really helps it to know where it needs to improve.”

The system has also come in for criticism from Ofsted’s chief inspector Amanda Spielman, who spoke to FE Week about the impact that the number of new providers would have on the inspection service back in March.

“We have very limited information but it is clear there are a lot of would be new entrants, a lot of people with very limited experience and potentially quite a lot of fragmentation,” she said.

“What that will actually translate into in terms of who gets contracts and actually starts providing apprenticeships isn’t entirely clear. I suspect that a lot of those registrations will be optimistic things that may never translate into actual learners on the ground.”

The first register saw a number of established providers fail to make it onto the approved list, including Bournemouth and Poole College, Hartlepool College and every single one of Birmingham’s general FE colleges.

Amongst the successful providers, there were three new companies with no track record at all on government apprenticeships, and which were run by one man from a rented office in Cheshire, and one training academy which had ceased trading by the time the register was first published.

Although many established providers that failed the first time around made it onto the second register, which opened for applications in March and was published in May, they were joined by several more one-man bands. These included one company with no previous experience registered to a semi-detached house in Birmingham.

The application window will close at 5pm on Friday, October 27, and the updated list is expected to appear in January 2018.

Click here for more on how to apply to the register (gov.uk)

Details of new T-level tendering timeline revealed

The Department for Education is moving forward with a detailed new timetable for the implementation of T-levels, FE Week understands.

A fresh schedule was laid out during a series of private briefing events, run by the DfE for awarding organisations this week.

According to an FE Week source, the new timeline sets out plans for procuring organisations to be licensed to award the new qualifications.

In July, the skills minister Anne Milton announced a delay to the implementation of T-levels, pushing their introduction back until September 2020, a year later than planned. That announcement also meant the DfE’s planned consultation was pushed back until “the autumn”.

In the DfE’s presentation to awarding organisations this week, the new timeline says the consultation will be released in “late 2017”, and the government’s response will be available by “spring 2018”.

Meanwhile, the DfE also confirmed it is ploughing ahead with plans for one awarding organisation per qualification.

The procurement process for each AO has been set out over a series of general stages. FE Week understands the process will start in “mid 2018”, with the announcement of successful bids in “late 2018” – although it is not clear whether all routes will be procured at the same time.

Successful organisations will then develop qualifications during 2018 and 2019 and will need to seek qualification approval from the Institute for Apprenticeships, whose remit will be extended to cover technical education in April 2018. 

Plans to proceed with single awarding organisations may come as a surprise to the sector, given the criticism the approach received in research published in July, which the DfE had itself commissioned.

The report, written by Frontier Economics, concluded that limiting access to a single AO may create a “risk of system failure” both in the short- and long-term.

FE Week understands that presenters at the events to awarding organisations this week were specialists in government procurement, rather than qualifications specialists.

These information events come shortly after the DfE tendered for T-level information events targeted at providers. The tender, which closed on September 20, will provide at least seven full- or half-day events between October 9 and December 15.

There was no confirmation at the event of which routes or pathways would be included in the first phase of implementation.

According to our source, the DfE said it intends to start with three pathways – with each route expected to have between three and five pathways – which would be decided by which areas are able to proceed first. FE Week understands that information should be available in advance of the consultation.

Delays in announcing plans for the pathways may have been impacted by the delay to the advisory panels, which we reported in July.

Comparable outcomes explained for college leaders

The first few years of any new qualification are carefully monitored, so your GCSE students haven’t been hurt, says Lesley Davies

My overriding priority as a college principal, when I think about my students’ exam results, is that everyone is treated fairly. This year we were all grappling with major changes to most qualifications, particularly GCSEs. How could we as college leaders be sure that our 2017 GCSE students weren’t disadvantaged as guinea pigs on the new 9-1 GCSE qualifications? And were our resit students doubly disadvantaged because they sat a different A*-G qualification 12 months before?

Before moving to Trafford, I was the responsible officer for Pearson’s Edexcel qualifications, so I know how the exams industry deals with these issues. Grade boundaries for GCSE, AS and A-level qualifications are set using an approach called “comparable outcomes”. This means that, at national level, if one year’s students are of a similar ability to the previous cohort, we would expect similar results in a particular subject.

The experts who write exam papers always try to make sure they are at the same level as previous years, but regardless of whether exams turn out to be slightly harder or easier from one year to the next, the system aims to ensure that students receive the grade they deserve, whichever year they sit their exams. There have been well-publicised plans to align key lettered grades to the new numbers for reformed GCSEs, so an A is aligned to the new grade 7, a C is aligned to the new grade 4 and G is aligned to the new grade 1.

At the start there can often be a dip in cohort performance

Comparable outcomes is not a statistical fix, whereby five per cent of students get a 9, and 10 per cent an 8 and so on; exam boards use statistical information about the students sitting their exams and historical data about results in each subject area, and balance it with the views of subject experts to set grade boundaries.

During this period of significant reform in GCSE and A-level qualifications, comparable outcomes is ensures there is stability in the system and creates an anchor between the old qualifications and the new.

As a reformed qualification beds in over time, factors such as familiarity, growing availability of professional development and support resources, increased teacher confidence, greater numbers of past papers and so on, can all contribute to improvements in cohort performance. But at the start, there can often be a dip in cohort performance, known as the “sawtooth effect”.

Ofqual has recently published a study into patterns of performance seen after the 2010 and 2011 reforms to GCSEs and A-levels, which showed that changes in average grade boundaries roughly follow the expected sawtooth pattern. Students and teachers took around three years on average to become familiar with the content and style of the new tests.

In the summer of 2017, we saw the first wave of reformed GCSE Maths and English and reformed A-level qualifications assessed for the first time, and these provide a useful example. Grade boundaries were in some cases set slightly lower than in the previous year. In the case of GCSE English and Maths, we had nearly 1,000 students sitting these exams, and significant changes to level of demand, content and assessments impacted on performance. In the case of some A-levels, coursework no longer contributed to the final grade, while in subjects such as science and psychology, more mathematical content was included.

Without using the principle that at national level roughly the same proportion of candidates should achieve each grade as in the previous year, a significant number of learners would have suffered from that lack of familiarity in the system – and might perhaps even have lost their university place as a result.

So we might see grade boundaries in the first couple of years of a new qualification set lower than in subsequent years, but this should build your confidence that the system will ensure students are not disadvantaged.

Lesley Davies is the principal of Trafford College

National Education Service proposal is flawed

Labour’s proposed new National Education Service could impoverish colleges and disadvantage learners, claims Professor Bill Wardle

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech to the Labour conference included a rallying call that should alarm the education community, particularly colleges: the establishment of a National Education Service, offering free college education courses to all.

The watchwords “free, universal and empowering” echo the founding principles of the NHS. Corbyn’s proposal to rebuild society anew has been made against a backdrop of escalating global competitiveness and shifts in the use of technology and its effects on employment. Others have considered this political and economic theorem, including Lord Sainsbury, but Labour’s approach lacks consideration of implementation or consequences.

The Labour Party is in an abstract, even indiscriminate, bidding war, finding a “solution” for colleges along the lines of Angela Rayner’s boast that Labour triumphed over the Conservatives on HE tuition fees.

Colleges ought to be very worried. First, how will we afford free tuition? There could be raids on other budgets, unless new money is created via magic money trees or new taxes. The depletion of school budgets, as has happened in Scotland to fund higher education fees, might be of lesser concern to colleges than the fact that “free to all” might in practice mean “free only to those allocated a place”.

Growth is meaningful only if it is managed, and managed by the professionals

Scottish college education stayed publicly funded but the effect was reduced student numbers. Stark priorities were enforced and there were curriculum and institutional casualties, via forced mergers. Provision shrank away from the spectrum currently imagined by Corbyn and became controlled and confined. Part-time students, and work-based, employer-focussed programmes, disappeared.

Second, free provision is expected to enable all individuals to have the skills to move to higher, technology-focused levels. This is virtuous, but it does raise massive questions about investment, coherence and comparability across the sector. One of the biggest challenges for the NHS is how to achieve consistency across the country.

Will our preoccupation with waiting times for access to surgical services shift to one for access to courses based on higher skills and promising high-value employability? The NHS is a fantastic concept, but shackled with the necessary practicality of coexisting with other forms of separately funded provision.

Colleges have thrived on competition, and the sector is growing, becoming stronger and developing an identity. If it is now expected to receive all-comers and, at the same time, equip them with the skills of the modern knowledge economy, how does it square this with its current role as the perennial bulk-carrier for those who have underachieved at school?

Growth is meaningful only if it is managed, and managed by the professionals. What will worry colleges is how their funding is sourced, the potential reintroduction of an allocation system, and the levels of investment required to reengineer the curriculum.

Over the last 15 years, colleges have taken successful business decisions (and some bad ‘businesses’ have disappeared) and their balance sheets reflect their operational position and related capital investment and borrowing. Uncertainty over funding brings reflexive risk-aversion on the part of colleges and banks. Colleges have developed a sound business model, based on growth rather than neoliberal dogma.

College business plans will be thrown by a centralised system, more so since it is a flawed one. The focus on colleges would need to be accompanied by a new level of rigour regarding school outcomes. The silence on university tuition fees is disappointing and perplexing. In one sense, the raised level of expectation on colleges means that their budgets must be ring-fenced.

While Labour’s new national plan for education has shone a spotlight on colleges, it leaves schools and higher education in the shadows – not to mention apprentices. A truly national perspective would have been holistic but also recognised phases and the obligations on each phase. The speech mixes up expectation and entitlement but without spelling out the curriculum revolution, and the funding structures and investment shifts necessary to give credibility and confidence.

Bill Wardle is from WAW Consulting

Should FE colleges raise their HE fees?

Our universities provide a good service, but it’s not flexible enough for the needs of everyone, says Paul Feldman

It’s known that FE colleges charge less for higher education courses than universities, even while they are faced with funding challenges on all fronts. So could colleges increase their provision of HE courses to create new or improved funding streams?

This is just one idea raised by a recent report published by the Higher Education Commission, entitled ‘One size won’t fit all: The challenges facing the office for students’.

Diversity and choice

The report looks at the landscape of alternative providers for HE, investigating the barriers, current structures and possible options for widening the UK’s offering. There is no denying that there is already an amazing vibrancy and diversity in our universities, but current funding structures are a serious barrier to opening it up to those who want or need to access learning in an untraditional way. By promoting standard three-year campus-based courses, we limit diversity and social mobility. So this may open the door for colleges.

Opportunities

The report certainly calls for providers to work more closely with employers to develop sandwich degrees and degree apprenticeships to support the industrial strategy. And it recognises that vocational courses offered in an FE setting are often more flexible, responsive and adaptable than those offered by HEIs because colleges are used to juggling competing demands from their students and local employers.

Many colleges already have HE provision, but relationships could be stronger

Of course, many colleges already have HE provision, but relationships could be stronger. There are many that have synergistic partnerships but there are also some with tensions, in which colleges feel their voice goes unheard. The report’s recommendation for a stronger relationship between colleges and universities, is something we fully support. Improving HE provision in colleges will benefit learners, colleges and ultimately the whole of the UK.

The report also specifically recommends closer partnerships between learning providers and small- and medium-sized employers to ensure that their skills needs are being met. This is another area where colleges are ideally placed to take a lead, knowing, as they invariably do, their local area’s business community inside out.

Digital infrastructure

In the ongoing search for ways to increase funding and ensure long-term viability, colleges need to focus on their strengths and develop what they’re good at. Already well used to meeting the needs of diverse local communities, most are equipped to provide tailored and flexible courses that meet their students’ needs in a variety of formats, and it won’t require huge investment to start to offer blended learning solutions and technology-enhanced approaches.

For one thing, FE colleges in the UK all already have a connection to the same high-speed Janet Network as universities, providing the reliability and high bandwidth necessary to enable high-quality teaching, learning and assessment. For example, seamless connectivity when moving between university and college buildings is hugely important for learning and something eduroam does.

Widening participation

FE colleges have an important role to play in widening participation. During the inquiry, the commission heard from providers who described how college-based learning encourages individuals from low-participating groups to consider studying HE courses, and gave evidence that a fair proportion who progress to an HEI later transfer back to college to continue their course because it feels more supportive.

Many colleges feel beleaguered in the current climate. But both the Higher Education and Research Act and now this new HEC report offer plenty of opportunities for FE providers to expand their offer and develop additional funding streams. The challenge is to ensure that new and more flexible programmes are aligned to best meet the needs of the students who will pay for them. And given degree apprenticeships won’t be student funded, colleges will need to adjust to meet the needs of students and employers alike.

Paul Feldman is CEO at Jisc, and a member of the Commission

Institutes of Technology freighted with unrealistic ambitions

We’ve had a bit of clarity on the new IoTs, but Mick Fletcher doesn’t want to pop any corks just yet

The DfE’s latest on the Institutes of Technology doesn’t deserve three cheers – but it maybe warrants one and a half. The half is for the additional investment in FE: any extra cash is welcome though the sum is so small compared with the needs of the sector that a full cheer is out of the question.

More important is the confirmation that the new Institutes will build on existing infrastructure. After the Tories’ flirtation with focusing IoTs on universities, common sense has prevailed and the new institutions will promote rather than compete with existing colleges. It’s a small but sensible step.

Although it is a positive, results will likely still disappoint because the IoTs come freighted with unrealistic ambitions. There is more than just the normal hype associated with any loosening of the Treasury’s purse strings: people seem to expect that a small number of IoTs will lead a total transformation in higher technical and professional education (HTPE), will deliver a step change in the production of higher-level skills and revolutionise attitudes to sub-degree-level higher education. It won’t.

There’ll be little lasting change beyond a few plaques in college foyers

The sums involved are far too small. A total of £170 million spread over three years can do some good but no serious observer will see it as transformational. Moreover any impact will be further diluted by the approach we’re taking to develop IoTs: bids will be sought from consortia.

No doubt work is already under way to develop the “correct” type of consortium: a high-profile employer as figurehead, other employers promising support that will likely prove to be moral rather than financial, a big FE college coordinating the action as a hub and linked with a host of smaller colleges and training providers which reckon their best chance at a piece of the action is as a spoke. Once the hub has made a symbolic investment and each of the spokes has taken its modest cut, the impact will be minimal.

The DfE expects that, in addition to capital investment, any “transformation” will be driven by designating some institutions as “institutes”. This is likely to be undermined by the consortium approach. When one of the new national colleges, seen in some ways as prototypes for IoTs, describes itself as “a network of hubs” one can envisage how collaborative IoTs might develop. Like the Centres of Vocational Excellence promoted by the Learning and Skills Council some 15 years ago, giving them new titles will do no harm, but there’ll be little lasting change beyond a few plaques in college foyers and further confusion with nomenclature.

The DfE seems to envisage HTPE being delivered in a limited number of institutions with distinct specialisms – a set of monotechnics recruiting nationally. In practice HTPE is far more likely to thrive if it is available widely and on a part-time basis. It is not the case that the demand for most types of provision at levels four and five is geographically circumscribed.

Moreover, adopting a delivery model that looks very much like full-time undergraduate HE seems most likely to cause defection to the more benign funding and regulatory regimes of the HE sector. One has only to look at where almost all our art colleges and many agricultural colleges have gone in recent years to see the potential temptation.

Finally, the idea that to raise the status of technical and professional education requires a further stratification of institutions is a peculiarly English approach. It would be better to allow HTPE to grow naturally in a wide range of FE colleges than attempt to pick winners. To do so would add to the reputation of the sector as whole rather than give status to some at the expense of others.

Mick Fletcher is founder of Policy Consortium

How to embed Prevent in college life

It’s not enough just to do the bare minimum, argues Sam Parrett, who believes colleges have a true duty of care

With all the dreadful terrorist attacks on British soil this year, there has never been a more important time for colleges to ensure they are implementing an effective Prevent strategy.

Ofsted, quite rightly, demands that educators must comply in full. However, like many of these initiatives and new policies, this sometimes creates a tick-box culture, with organisations doing the minimum to meet requirements.

There is a huge amount of pressure on the FE sector at the moment and we all struggle to keep our heads above water with so many priorities that all seem to be urgent.

But Prevent is an issue we can’t afford to brush under the carpet. Rather than seeing it as a standalone policy, colleges should look to embed it in all areas of college life, including teaching planning and delivery.

The duty was introduced in 2015 with the aim of giving “due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism”. Colleges and independent learning providers have a huge responsibility here and are under scrutiny not only from Ofsted, but from local communities, parents and students.

By widely and regularly promoting the right kinds of values, our aim is to minimise the wrong ones

A safe learning environment is the one of the most important objectives for any college, but in the current climate this has to be our number one priority. We need robust, risk-assessed safeguarding policies for Prevent and British values. And what about the management and business continuity implications of a terrorist attack in one of our colleges? I am sure principals will all be revisiting these issues at the start of term.

Last year we undertook a large consultation exercise with students and staff to create a set of unique values, which are separate from but incorporate fundamental British values. We have collectively identified the fabric of our college, and we are building these values into every aspect of college life, into tutorials, pastoral support and our enrichment programme.

We took a multi-agency approach to this work and engaged our local communities. We also recruited a college chaplain who uses a wide range of theatrical and therapeutic approaches to encourage even the most reluctant of students into this process.

Our student experience team holds debates throughout the year in which students have the opportunity to voice their opinions, thoughts and concerns on various issues, ranging from ‘Are you a global citizen?’ to human rights.

We also arrange visits to various places of worship for a number of faiths, and students have the opportunity to come back to college and discuss their experiences and any thoughts arising from the visits.

By widely and regularly promoting the right kinds of values, our aim is to minimise the wrong ones. Rather than focusing on explicit messages relating to radicalisation, we are working hard to promote a positive and supportive environment. We are ambitious about this spiritual and social aspect of college life and we have recently become a UNICEF rights-respecting organisation, which is also underpinning our approach.

This goes beyond a tick-box exercise to meet Ofsted’s requirements, or indeed the tutorial system and our pastoral approaches to the SMSC curriculum. We are aware of our responsibility and want students to feel safe and supported in their learning environment, allowing them to achieve their full potential. We also want them to feel empowered about speaking out, to be able to challenge and be challenged, and we want to be clear about what is and is not acceptable.

We have a responsibility to support any student at risk of radicalisation whilst protecting others. We have a much better chance of doing this if every single student, tutor and staff member is part of a collective drive to tackle this issue effectively in an environment where interventions to support the prevent strategy are invisibly woven into the values and behaviours of everyday citizenship and college life.

Sam Parrett is CEO of London South East Colleges

Colleges should call for Ofsted reform

Having spent considerable time examining Ofsted’s methods, Frank Coffield claims they are invalid, unreliable and unjust.

While “unjust” may seem like a strong way to describe an Ofsted inspection, I have a clear example to illustrate it. Take its grading scale, which attaches one adjective, such as ‘outstanding’ or ‘inadequate’, to a large FE college with 20,000 students, 1,000 staff and 30+ departments. This is a statistical absurdity, because research has repeatedly shown that there is always great variation within an individual college and one adjective cannot capture complexity, diversity or contradictions

The area reviews are creating even larger colleges, for instance Nottingham, which now has 40,000 students. That Ofsted can or would judge such a huge enterprise by applying one summary term to it is, I repeat, unjust.

Ofsted has had 25 years to improve its methods but, despite numerous changes, it is still unfit for the present, never mind the future. Using Ofsted’s own scale to evaluate its performance, I would probably award it no more than a grade three; it ‘requires improvement’. But that would be to treat Ofsted as unjustly as it treats educators; it would discount, for example, its role in challenging poor practices, monitoring national standards and its record in closing illegal schools. Complexity has to be responded to with complexity.

We could and should be doing so much better

We could and should be doing so much better. We need not only a better model of inspection but a better system of education. I am, however, reminded of the preacher who advised: “If you are awakened at midnight with a vision of how to save the world, do us all a favour and go back to sleep.” I will therefore restrict myself here to introducing ideas for a new model of inspection.

Let us revisit the admirable work carried out by the Further Education Funding Council in the 1990s. Instead of assigning a grade to a college, the main curriculum areas were assessed separately; dialogue between assessors and assessed was promoted by having a college nominee participate in the inspection process, including the inspectors’ meetings. An inspector was also attached to each college before, during and after inspection to ensure that inspectorial knowledge was accurate and their recommendations acted on.

Inspection has a legitimate and necessary role in education. My aim is to move it from a concentration on summative assessment (judging the measurable outputs of education such as test results) towards a balance of both formative (improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment) and summative assessment. That shift needs to be based on educational principles such as education seen as growth (do students leave college as lifelong learners?), trust rather than fear, challenge matched by support provided by Ofsted, dialogue, and appreciative inquiry, which gives pride of place to everything that gives life to a college when it is at its most effective.

I want to help Ofsted by recommending that its remit be drastically reduced, by making it genuinely independent of government and by reintroducing a system of local and national inspectors, working hand in glove. In this way inspectors would once again become respected colleagues, acting as the cross-pollinators of tough ideas and novel practices in a joint search with tutors for improvement.

None of the above will happen unless tutors and college leaders begin to demand change. Ofsted may appear to colleagues as a remote and punitive arm of government, but in fact it belongs to all of us who pay for it. We have a right and a duty to call, not for tinkering at the edges, but for radical reform. This is the essence of an open, democratic society that offers its citizens the freedom not only to think differently but to demand justice.

Frank Coffield is emeritus professor of education at UCL Institute of education. His new book, Will the Leopard Change its Spots? A new model of inspection for Ofsted, is published by UCL IOE Press.

South Cheshire College’s ‘Academy’ restaurant and deli named AA College Restaurant of the Year 2017

South Cheshire College’s on-site restaurant, Academy, has been named AA College Restaurant of the Year 2017.

The training restaurant and deli received the accolade at the annual AA hospitality awards in London, which recognise excellence in catering across the UK.

Three college restaurants were shortlisted for the award, including Fareham College’s Avenue 141 and The Brasserie at Milton Keynes College.

As part of judging, the restaurant teams were asked to produce a three-minute video promoting the hospitality course at their college, and to design a business venture for Michelin-starred chef Tom Kerridge.

It is only the second year the hospitality awards have recognised college restaurants, with Runshaw College’s Foxholes restaurant winning last year.

“We hope that our reputation in the Cheshire community continues to grow and attract talented chefs who can now train at the best college restaurant in the country,” said Mark Parsons, director for retail, commercial, engineering and the built environment at South Cheshire College.

“This is an absolutely fantastic achievement for all the team and students who work at the Academy.”

Pictured: The college team collect their award