A private equity firm has reportedly paid a massive £700 million to buy out a major independent training provider.

The sale of a majority stake in IT provider QA Training – from previous owners Bregal Investments, which bought the firm in 2007, to CVC Capital Partners – was announced today.

The deal is reported to be worth £700 million, according to the Financial Times – although the parties involves have refused to disclose the actual sum paid.

William Macpherson, QA chief executive said the firm had “expanded rapidly” under its previous ownership to achieve “exceptional growth”.

“I am looking forward to forging an equally successful partnership with CVC,” he said.

“Their record of supporting expansion, together with their UK and international reach provides QA with a significant platform for success as we seek to execute our ambitious growth plans.”

Richard Blackburn, managing director at CVC, said: “William and his team have built a very high quality business, which is a clear leader in rapidly-growing markets, helping with the vital task of enhancing technology and business skills across the UK workforce.”

He added: “We look forward to working together to continue QA’s track record of success.”

QA Training, based in Slough but with multiple locations across the country, provides a range of IT training services including apprenticeships. QA Apprenticeships is part of the organisation.

It has a funding allocation of more than £20 million for 2016/17, according to the latest Education and Skills Funding Agency figures, which includes £6.4 million for adult apprenticeships and £13.5 million for 16 to 18 apprenticeships and traineeships.

The provider, which successfully applied to the register of apprenticeship training providers, was rated outstanding across the board at its most recent Ofsted inspection, in October 2013.

But the proportion of QA’s apprentices completing their courses dropped 16 per cent from 2014/15 to 2015/16, according to the latest national achievement rate tables published by the Department for Education on June 15.

They show that 70.2 per cent of apprentices achieved their qualification in 2015/16, compared with 86.2 per cent in 2014/15.

Update 1 : At 17:45 the DfE responded by saying the data they published for May is not full the full month. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The data published did not reflect the full vacancy figures for May, and was only for the first few days of the month. The updated data covering the whole of May will be published shortly with an explanatory note, as part of the June release.”

Update 2 : At 17:46 the DfE published new apprenticeships vacancy files labeled June, although there were no figures included for June. However, they did include full month figures for May. This article has been amended to include the full figures for May

Latest government figures for apprenticeship vacancies, published this morning, appear to show a fall in vacancies and employers posting them, for the month of May compared to the same month the previous year.

Last May there were 3,490 employers posting  17,310 vacancies, compared to 2,850 employers posting 16,750 vacancies

Any reduction will be of concern to those that feared the levy reforms, which went live last month, would result in employers switching their provision to support only existing employees.

AELP chief policy officer Simon Ashworth said: “These figures simply confirm what our members have been telling us over the last few weeks, namely that apprenticeship start figures have plummeted since the levy started.  Levy-paying employers are holding back on their starts and the predicted calamity with the size of the non-levy funding allocations is being realised. 

“We are also getting a lot of feedback that employers in some sectors are refusing to pay the 10 per cent co-investment contribution and in other sectors there is definitely a shift to high-value management training rather than highly valuable level 2 and 3 sector-specific apprenticeships.  We hope that the government would want to use our expertise and intelligence to help determine what action needs to be taken.”

The government still won’t say when the results of the first ever procurement process for the adult education budget will be published – after previously claiming it would be revealed after the general election.

FE Week revealed in May that the Education and Skills Funding Agency had emailed providers via FASST, the online services hub for organisations working with agency,  to confirm a “pause” of the process following Theresa May’s call for a snap election.

The Department for Education’s “sourcing team”, who sent the email to providers, said it would update on when results would be published after the general election on June 8.

But, with the time lapse now approaching two weeks after the election, the ESFA is still not saying when it will publish the much anticipated AEB results.

FE Week first asked the agency before midday on June 15 for an expected date of publication, then followed it up with a nunmber of enquiries on Friday and this morning, before a spokesperson finally responded half an hour ago – but only to say that the results would be published in “due course”.

Providers that didn’t have to tender for AEB funding will have already received their allocations, but those relying on the process for their financial support will be frustrated by the news.

Mark Dawe, chief of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, previously called for a long-term pause relating to the AEB procurement on April 25.

He said at the time: “The ESFA have just set a precedent for placing a pause on the non-levy apprenticeship procurement, so why not set aside the AEB invitation to tender for a year and give ITPs an allocation for the year 2017/18 essentially based on what they had before?”

It is thought around 500 training providers will have applied for a share of the AEB, which totals around £1.5 billion.

But only around £250 million of the budget was actually up for grabs through the tendering process, because colleges, local authorities and universities – which contract with the ESFA through a grant funding agreement – were not affected by recent changes and therefore did not have to tender.

The former Skills Funding Agency first wrote to independent training providers last autumn and told them that their current AEB contracts would come to an end in July, rather than having them automatically renewed as before.

FE Week then reported in January that the resulting procurement process for such contracts for ITPs had finally been launched by the SFA.

A previously struggling university technical college has performed a remarkable turnaround to be rated ‘good’ by Ofsted just eight months after receiving the lowest possible rating.

The education watchdog awarded UTC Cambridge grade two across the board – making it the first of the 14 to 19 institutions to have come back from a grade four.

The latest report praised leaders – who took over in October following the previous inspection – for their quick action in transforming the 14 to 19 institution’s fortunes.

“The new headteacher has acted quickly to establish a culture where teachers and students enjoy working hard in an atmosphere that is highly conducive to learning,” it said.

Inspectors noted that “leaders’ systematic and organised approach” had “rapidly and successfully addressed the flaws found at the previous inspection”.

Students’ “attendance and punctuality” had “dramatically improved” in the past nine months, which the report said was “an example of passionate and effective leadership”.

In addition, “leaders work successfully to engage with parents” and “the new principal has listened to parental concerns and acted upon them,” inspectors found.

Principal Sian Foreman took the helm at Cambridge as acting principal in November 2016, following the previous Ofsted visit, and became headteacher in April.

According to the Ofsted report, the UTC has been receiving support from the Parkside Federation of Academies, and is set to formally join the multi-academy trust in September.

Ms Foreman had been supporting the school in her role as specialist leader of education at the federation prior to her appointment, the report said.

She said: “Students come to UTC Cambridge because they have a passion for science and I am delighted that the Ofsted report recognised the ‘wonderful opportunities’ that are open to our students here.”

Ms Foreman added that: “With the support of our parents and governors I want to lead the college to become the ‘outstanding’ centre for science education in Cambridge.”

Today’s report comes after the education inspectorate slammed Cambridge UTC for its poor leadership and management and ineffective safeguarding arrangements in a report published in November 2016, but based on an inspection in September 2016.

“Leaders and governors have failed to ensure that the procedures to safeguard the most vulnerable pupils are effective,” it said, and “the management of attendance and punctuality” was deemed “inadequate”.

But the UTC, which opened in September 2014 and currently has 232 pupils, was rated ‘good’ in all other areas, including 16 to 19 study programmes.

These areas continued to be rated good in today’s report.

It said that “the provision that was judged to be good at the previous inspection has improved further,” and “leaders have high expectations” of 16 to 19 students.

Inspectors found that 16 to 19 standards “were not met last year”, which they attributed to “an attempt to recruit students onto courses for which they were not suited, but also a lack of systems at the time to ensure student progress”.

“However, standards are rising,” the report said.

As reported by FE Week earlier this month, Cambridge UTC is one of a number of the institutions to be expanding to recruit from year 9.

The move, which will take effect from 2018/19, will mean the school will have to halve the number of students it can take in year 10 from 100 to 50 in order to accommodate the year 9 intake.

FE Week reported in March that just nine out of the 20 UTCs to have been inspected to date had been rated good or outstanding – while six had been rated as ‘requires improvement’ and five had been graded ‘inadequate’.

Since then Bolton UTC has also been rated inadequate, while three UTCs have been graded as requires improvement – Heathrow Aviation Engineering, Lincoln and Sir Charles Kao.

A Merseyside college hit with an Ofsted grade four in apprenticeships is claiming it will not cut down on staff, despite government rules removing it from the new apprenticeships’ register.

St Helens College was given an overall ‘requires improvement’ judgement by the inspectorate in a report published today, but it was branded ‘inadequate’ for its delivery of apprenticeships.

The college successfully got onto the register of apprenticeship training providers this year, but will now it is thought be removed from it as a result of the grade four – in line with government rules.

It will therefore not be able to create any new starts on apprenticeship courses until the grade improves to a three or higher and successfully gets back onto the register.

The college has said it will continue to train its current crop of over 800 apprentices, but it expects to not make any job losses even though the courses will not be able to be run once this cohort has finished.

St Helens College Principal, Dr Jette Burford, said: “St Helens College will continue to be funded for the significant volume of our continuing apprentices, and we are working with our partners regarding supporting new business opportunities. As such there will be no impact on staffing.”

Education and Skills Funding Agency rules state that for any new apprenticeship starts after May 2017, providers must be on the RoATP, while existing apprentices are able to continue their courses under the previous rules.

Ms Burford said the majority of St Helens’ apprenticeship frameworks are two years long, delivered in subjects such as engineering, electrical engineering and electrical installation.

She added that at the time of the inspection, the college was performing at “national rates” for its apprenticeship provision and since then “the picture has continued to improve and the college is currently performing at above national rates”.

“This is set to improve further as we get to closer to the end of the academic year,” Ms Burford said.

However Ofsted’s inspection, which was carried out April 24 to 27, heavily criticised much of the college’s apprenticeships delivery.

Inspectors said senior leaders and managers do not have “sufficient oversight” of the progress that apprentices make on their programmes.

“Throughout the inspection, managers could not identify the progress that apprentices were making on their apprenticeship,” the report said. “This limits their ability to intervene when progress is too slow and achievements are too low, as they were at the time of the inspection.

“The majority of current apprentices are making slow progress on their qualifications; just under half of current apprentices have completed their qualification within their planned timescales.”

The report added that employers are not “involved sufficiently” in the planning and monitoring of apprentices’ knowledge and skills development.

The college delivers apprenticeships to 864 learners, with much of the training delivered by its own staff, with a small minority provided by Waterside Training Limited, which is part owned by the college, according to the Ofsted report.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Quality is at the heart of our reforms. We are clear that where an organisation has a grade four for overall effectiveness they cannot be on the register unless they have a three or above for apprenticeship provision. This is set out in the guidance. 

“Any providers which are downgraded to a four will be removed from the register in due course.”