David Hughes is wrong to criticise the rise in management apprenticeships – they are opening opportunities to people who’ve never had them, argues Mandy Crawford-Lee
The University Vocational Awards Council believes in the vital role of colleges in delivering college and work-based training programmes for young people and adults. We also want to champion HE and FE partnership in the delivery of apprenticeships.
However, we strongly disagree with David Hughes’ concerns about an ‘unstoppable rise in management apprenticeships’ and inaccessible degree apprenticeships, voiced in his interview with FE Week published on 10 November. Much as UVAC values and respects the AoC, we would like to set out why these arguments are so flawed.
Read any labour market study and a deficiency in and need for management skills will be identified. Put simply, a lack of management skills is arguably the most significant barrier to increasing productivity in both the public and private sector.
The levy isn’t ‘FE money’
Apprenticeships are supposedly a productivity programme where employers are in the driving seat. When the apprenticeship levy was introduced, levy-paying employers were given the assurance they would choose through the apprenticeship service how it should be spent. Are AoC really arguing that employers should be restricted on using levy funds on the chartered manager degree apprenticeship, despite commitments made by government and the evident need to enhance the quality of leadership and management in the UK economy?
There are a few other fundamental problems with the AoC’s arguments. First, let’s look at where the levy is coming from.
The biggest levy payer by far is the NHS. The effective use of their levy will be fundamental to the development of NHS staff and the delivery of NHS services. We would all want the NHS to have the best trained and most competent managers possible, and we know from some significant tenders the NHS wants to use the chartered manager degree apprenticeship to meet an identified need. The NHS sees the maximum recovery of its levy payments as fundamentally important – to state the obvious, the NHS is a cash-strapped organisation. Is the AoC really saying the NHS shouldn’t be able to recover its levy payments as its sees fit and the AoC knows better than NHS managers how best to spend their levy payments?
A second problem with the AoC argument is that it feels like the thin end of the wedge. Take the registered nurse degree apprenticeship. Before Brexit, the UK was facing a massive shortage of nurses; with Brexit, this shortage will increase substantially. We suspect – and hope – many NHS trusts will focus on recovering a large proportion of their levy payments by using the registered nurse degree apprenticeship.
The biggest levy payer by far is the NHS
Police forces will do likewise with the police constable degree apprenticeship, and local authorities with the social work degree apprenticeship. Given these are high-cost, high-level and potentially high-volume programmes, does David Hughes want to restrict their numbers too and instead divert funding, against employer wishes, to the level 2 business administration and customer service apprenticeships that characterised the system in the past?
Of course, no one would argue against using apprenticeship to support social mobility. But here again UVAC takes issue with the AoC argument. Degree apprenticeships, including the chartered manager degree apprenticeship will open up new opportunities to individuals who haven’t in the past had the opportunity to benefit from higher education or to obtain professional membership. Not all aspiring and accidental managers, and existing employees who want to become nurses and social workers, are as well paid as the AoC assumes.
Finally, AoC might be playing with fire here. The levy wasn’t introduced by government as a cash grab or stealth tax on employers in the public and private sector to fund further education. The levy isn’t ‘FE money’.
The apprenticeship reforms were introduced to move the system on and replace the old discredited agency, intermediary level and provider-driven apprenticeship system of the past. Employers not providers are in the driving seat, and employer leadership will ensure the development of a high-quality apprenticeship system.
Mandy Crawford-Lee is director of policy and operations at the University Vocational Awards Council
As one college principal puts out a call for greater support for practitioner research, moves are afoot to create a “meta network” of FE research organisations to facilitate collaborations on the ground. So what can principals do to support more research – and why does it matter? FE Week takes a look.
Around 30 bodies – including the Learning and Skills Research Network, the National Education Union, the Education and Training Foundation and others – met recently to discuss a “meta network” of FE research organisations.
The idea behind this network is to allow practitioners to share work and collaborate – which, according to Andrew Morris, co-founder of the LSRN, could bring a number of benefits.
He described it as a place where information about research could be brought together, providing “tremendous scope for collective communication of work and of best practice” and “increasing the chances of collaboration” – which in turn could bring in vital funding.
Meanwhile Ali Hadawi, principal of Central Bedfordshire College and the only college representative on the board of the Association for Research into Post-Compulsory Education, has exhorted his peers to “take the initiative and embed research within our colleges”.
In an exclusive piece for FE Week he calls on fellow principals to “actively support college practitioners to engage with local universities”. “Practitioner research”, which involves lecturers testing ways to expand or improve their normal teaching practice, is not widely carried out in FE, according to Ruth Silver, chair of the Further Education Trust for Leadership.
She described this research as “idiosyncratic and individually based” but with the potential to be “amplified geographically”.
“The seeds are there, it just needs a brave gardener to get it going,” she said.
Dame Ruth Silver
The Education Endowment Foundation, which was set up in 2011 with a £125 million investment from the Department for Education to support research in schools, had its remit expanded in 2016 to include post-16.
It is running three trials on GCSE resits, and also offers funding to FE practitioners – although this is reserved for “high-potential programmes” across “multiple post-16 settings”.
This can make it hard to access, Mr Morris explained. “One of the huge problems with FE research is that it’s so fragmented,” he said. “There are so many small operations going on; that it doesn’t secure big funding from big organisations very easily.”
Two research centres have also been established in recent years, looking specifically at post-16 education and training: the Centre for Vocational Education Research at the London School of Economics, and the Post-14 Education and Work Centre at the University College London Institute of Education, both founded in 2015.
The Further Education Trust for Leadership has been dedicated to developing leadership of thinking in FE since 2013 – which includes funding former Association of Colleges chief executive Martin Doel’s “public policy” FE and skills professorship at UCL IoE.
The most effective way to improve outcomes for your own learners is to spend time getting to know them in a research context
But why should colleges engage more with research?
According to Paul Kessell-Holland, head of partnerships at the Education and Training Foundation, which runs a practitioner programme, research allows colleges to create a “bespoke” solution to tackle their own problems. “The most effective way to improve outcomes for your own learners is to spend time getting to know them in a research context,” he said.
Rania Hafez, co-chair of the London and South-East LSRN, argues that framing practitioner research as a focus on “scholarship” rather than on “more articles in obscure journals” or “quantifiable outcomes” is vital to improving teaching and learning.
Challenging regulators is a primary focus for Mr Hadawi, who wants a research body from the FE sector to have power to “challenge Ofsted or policymakers”. But FE practitioner research faces a number of challenges, including a lack of time and research culture within FE, fragmentation and underfunding.
According to Gary Husband, a former FE lecturer who now works at the University of Stirling and sits on the ARPCE committee, many research grants require a university to be involved, which can make it “very difficult” for FE institutions to get research-specific funding – although some is available through the Education and Training Foundation’s practitioner research programme.
Mr Husband said partnerships between colleges, research organisations and universities, as suggested by Mr Hadawi, would give people in FE the “skills needed to do good quality research”, and mean they could apply for funding.
“All it needs is a few brave individuals to lead the way,” he said.
Education and Training Foundation practitioner research programme
This programme, worth around £250,000 a year, provides funding for FE staff to engage in research that would benefit teaching and learning or management of their institution.
Around 50 places are on offer on two programmes, a one-year course leading to an MA short=-course qualification, and a two-year MPhil qualification.
The funding covers all the costs of the programme, which involves a commitment of around three residential stays of three days each per year.
Paul Kessell-Holland, the ETF’s head of partnerships, acknowledged that there will be some costs to the college in terms of staff time away.
“It works in a similar way to an MBA, where you’re expected to work on your own business, and that’s one of the benefits of letting a member of staff do it,” he explained.
West Yorkshire Colleges Consortium
The consortium was set up as a joint venture company in 2016 by seven colleges: Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees, Leeds City, Leeds College of Building, Shipley and Wakefield, with the specific remit of bidding for and managing European Social Fund projects.
Rachel Mather, research and development manager for the consortium, said she worked with the different colleges to deliver “skills interventions” that made use of labour market information and social information from organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Social Mobility Consortium.
This might have meant ensuring that seasonal workers have “the right skills for the requirements of the region where there’s job availability to secure additional employment”, but it also meant looking at “other issues and barriers” for people in “precarious work” such as childcare and other caring responsibilities.
FE Research Meet
Modelled on the more established Teach Meet for school teachers, this aims to bring together people involved in FE research to discuss what they’re doing and to share their findings.
Jo Fletcher-Saxon, an assistant principal at Ashton Sixth Form College, is one of the organisers.
“I see the FE Research Meet model as a move to open up a space for those who work within the sector,” she said.
She wants to give them “the opportunity to undertake some research or practitioner inquiry in their setting to have a place, space, infrastructure and network within which to share those findings”.
The idea is proving popular –bookings for the next event in June 2018 have already exceeded the “20 or so” she’d expected. Proposed topics for discussion include the use of technology by recently trained FE teachers, and online teacher learning communities.
This entirely volunteer-run network is the granddad of FE research networks, having been around since 1997, despite receiving no funding.
The network runs two national workshops a year, one in the spring and one in the autumn, and also has a number of regional groups.
The spring meeting focuses on a policy-related issue, while the autumn one looks at “different aspects of practitioner research – universals rather than specifics”, according to Andrew Morris, the network’s co-founder.
These include “how to make your research have impact and how colleges cultivate a culture of research”.
Examples of research carried out by LSRN members include using data to measure the effectiveness of different teaching and learning strategies.
Mr Morris said there are “a few hundred” people involved with the network either through its meeting or its termly newsletter, though this is growing, with two new regional groups being set up this year.
An Interview with Rania Hafez
There’s a simple way Ofsted could boost colleges’ engagement with research, according to the co-chair of the London and south-east Learning and Skills Research Network, and that is by including it as a measure of good management.
“I would like more principals to reach out by allowing scholarship spaces for their staff,” explains Rania Hafez.
“Ofsted just needs to make it a requirement of management to be truly supportive of scholarship.”
I meet Hafez in a vaulted hall at the former Royal Naval College occupied by the University of Greenwich, where she is programme leader for the MA in education. She considers herself one of several “stowaways” in higher education – academics based in HE institutions, who are actually “FE, heart and soul”.
She has also been a visiting research fellow at the University of Derby for six years, and insists that “research should not just be about more articles in obscure journals that no one is going to read”. In fact, she considers “research” almost the wrong word – preferring “inquiry” or “scholarship”.
While “quantifiable outcomes” have their place, she says, “you don’t fatten a pig by weighing it”.
We too often treat research like a science project
A former FE lecturer and manager, she waxes lyrical about the “wonderful things happening in the classroom every day” but argues that teachers need more time to read and debate: “I would like to see libraries full of books, not only for students, but for lecturers.”
She expands on the theme: “We too often treat research like a science project. We think that if we keep researching, we’re eventually going to discover the new penicillin. But teachers as experts is one area that we’re not really valuing.”
Passionate about the need for reflection to inform practice, Hafez is adamant colleges can facilitate this at minimal cost.
FE institutions could, for example, “create spaces – both in time and place – to develop communities of practice”.
“Lunchtime discussions can be a collegiate, safe place to discuss what is and isn’t working in the classroom, and share ideas,” she suggests.
“If research isn’t informed by proper intellectual inquiry, it will just be weighing the pig.”
Jeremy Corbyn will expand on his party’s plans to offer free lifelong education through a National Education Service later today, at the Association of Colleges’ annual conference.
Held at the ICC in Birmingham with FE Week as the premier media partner, this is one of the key events in the FE calendar, and this year takes place over two days, on November 14 to 15, and the Labour leader is one of the headline speakers.
He is due to address delegates at 4.15pm this afternoon, during a keynote session also featuring Oftsed chief inspector Amanda Spielman.
“Increasing productivity is not about squeezing out every last drop of energy from working people,” he will say. “It’s about investing in people’s lives, investing in their education, their skills and their futures – as well as the infrastructure and technologies of the future.
“This is why a National Education Service will allow anybody to retrain and upskill at any point in their lives,” he will pledge.
Mr Corbyn will add a commitment to adult education, and “never writing people off, but giving people fresh opportunities right the way through their lives”, embodies one of his party’s fundamental principles: opportunity for the many not the few.
He will demand that chancellor Philip Hammond’s upcomingbudget must provide investment in skills-related infrastructure, new technologies and people, andalso warn of a recruitment crisis in colleges and support better pay for teachers.
AoC boss David Hughes, who will also be addressing delegates this afternoon, expressed regret back in September for only being able to offer staff a one-per-cent payrise.
Nevertheless, he is delighted that the conference will feature Mr Corbyn, who will also take the opportunity during his visit to the nation’s second largest city to drop into South and City College Birmingham.
“It is great news that we have the leader of the opposition coming to speak to delegates for the first time,” he has said.
“It’s another important recognition of the crucial roles which colleges play, for the economy, for communities, families, young people and adults.”
FE Week will, as ever, report live throughout the event, and write a supplement dedicated to all the main events and announcements, sponsored by NOCN.
Anne Milton, the minister for apprenticeships and skills, AoC chair Carole Stott, and author, journalist and broadcaster Matthew Syed, will address delegates this morning.
The AoC awards ceremony this evening will include the prestigious AoC Beacon Awards and Student of the Year Award in addition to the new Student Video of the Year Award.
Keynote speakers tomorrow morning will be AoC president Dr Alison Birkinshaw OBE, chief executive of the Office for Students Nicola Dandridge, and science writer, broadcaster and comedian Timandra Harkness.
The afternoon session will see a panel of learners with National Union for Students’ vice president for FE, Emily Chapman, speaking about “what has FE done for our learners?”, and a speech by Labour’s former press chief Alastair Campbell.
A university technical college which clawed its way up two Ofsted ratings in eight months has denied distancing itself from the UTC movement even though it has removed all mention from its name.
Once known as UTC Cambridge, the 14-to-19 provider has rebranded as the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology as it joins Parkside Federation Academies, a multi-academy trust.
Its principal insisted the college was not trying to “take away from the UTC movement” but said the decision had been made because “so many people in our local community didn’t know what UTC Cambridge stood for”.
An FE Week investigation in March revealed that, out of 20 UTCs inspected by Ofsted up to that point, only nine were rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
The UTC movement began in 2010, and five more have opened this September, bringing the total to 49.
We were a small college trying to manage on our own, and that was a part of the reason for the ‘inadequate’ rating
But many of the technical providers have failed to attract enough students to be viable, largely due to issues with having to recruit at 14, and eight have so far closed.
A spokesperson for the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, the driving force behind the UTC project, said that although providers typically include “UTC” in their name, in local circumstances boards can choose to do otherwise.
Ms Foreman accepted that UTC “could” have been included in the new name, but said they were more concerned about having a name that “shared our vision” of science and technology specialism.
“We are still a part of that movement and still proud of being at UTC, but it’s hard for a UTC to get themselves known and get across what they do. People understand better now,” she said.
She added that being part of Parkside Federation Academies would provide much needed “security”.
“We were a small college trying to manage on our own, and that was a part of the reason for the ‘inadequate’ rating,” she said. “We’re putting that rating behind us. We are on a journey and getting a lot of positive feedback.”
The BDT spokesperson praised the college’s turnaround, but denied that it was distancing itself from the brand.
“In the case of the Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology, the Parkside Federation have made a dramatic impact and turned the UTC around after a difficult start,” they said.
“The governors have decided to change the name of the UTC as part of a relaunch. They are fully aligned with the UTC ethos and are an active and valued member of the UTC programme.”
UTC Cambridge had been criticised by the regulator for ineffective leadership, management and safeguarding in a report published in November 2016 following an inspection the previous September.
However, the college was awarded a grade two across the board after an inspection in May 2017 praised leaders including Ms Foreman who became acting principal in November 2016 and head teacher in April.
The report, published in June, made UTC Cambridge the first of the 14-19 institutions to come back from a grade four.
The government has rejected a call from an influential parliamentary group for at least one end-point assessment organisation to be in place before an apprentice can start on a standard.
The refusal came as part of its response to a Commons select committee report on apprenticeships, published this morning.
But the government argued this would be “counter-productive”, and said that “98.9 per cent of all apprentices due to complete by March 2018 have an EPA organisation in place”.
It also claimed that “all apprenticeship standards will have an EPA organisation available before apprentices reach their end-point assessment – particularly as many of these apprenticeships will take several years to complete”.
This appeared to contradict recent warnings from sector leaders that the first wave of apprentices were reaching the end of their courses without a final test in place.
Sue Pember, director of policy at Holex, told FE Week last month that she was aware of apprentices who had finished their programmes but had “been unable to complete and qualify” due to a lack of anyone to deliver the final assessment.
FE Week analysis of apprenticeship starts in 2016/17 revealed that the proportion on standards without an EPA organisation in place had fallen – from 10 per cent in 2015/16, to three per cent in 2016/17.
But because the overall numbers were up, so too was the number of apprentices on courses without assessors – from 450 who started in 2015/16, to 790 in 2016/17.
The sub-committee report, which was formed from the education and business select committees and was chaired by former MPs Iain Wright and Neil Carmichael (pictured above), gave a total of 36 conclusions relating to all aspects of the apprenticeships programme.
A number of them focused on the need for further measures of success, beyond the 3 million starts target, to create a greater focus on quality.
These included a call for “far clearer outcome measures for individual apprentices”, including “programme completion, progression to higher levels and subsequent achievement of secure relevant employment”.
In response the government said it would be publishing an annual report based on the “high-level indicators of success” outlined in its benefits strategy earlier this year, with the first report due “late 2017”.
The government also rejected a number of recommendations that called for changes to important aspects of the reform programme.
These included the recommendation that Ofqual should externally quality assure all EPAs – although the government said it would “keep the implementation of external quality assurance under review”.
And in response to the recommendation that the government “explore ways of restructuring the levy on a sectoral and regional basis” it said a “single national rate maintains simplicity and clarity for all employers”.
It’s time the sector took control of its own destiny, argues Ali Hadawi
Over the years, my sense of frustration with how policymakers and regulatory bodies view further education colleges has only increased. It can be disheartening that the wonderful impact of FE on individuals, society and the economy is not widely acknowledged.
One way to manage this is to claim people don’t understand FE, or that policymakers don’t care, or that Ofsted is out of touch. But I believe FE has the potential to construct a new reality for itself, in which it leads the debate.
The sector needs a unified, evidence-based approach to informing practice in teaching, learning, assessment, improvement, management, leadership, engagement, change, impact, productivity, skills gaps… the list is endless.
There is much research, with a robust evidence base, by practitioners and academics in and on FE, but it too often remains in an academic bubble, as highlighted by Martin Doel in his recent interview with FE Week.
For example, there is academic research to show lesson observations do not, in themselves, lead to improvement in practice. But the sector doesn’t use this, as far as I am aware, to work with Ofsted on coming up with a better methodology for judging quality.
Rather than waiting for the DfE to tell us that our practice should be informed by research, we need to take the initiative and embed research within our colleges.
There are several bodies already involved and each plays a valuable role. We have for example the Association for Research in Post-Compulsory Education, the British Education Research Association, the Learning and Skills Research network, Teacher Education in Lifelong Learning and the British Educational Leadership and Educational Research Society, to name but a few. The Education and Training Foundation and the Further Education Trust for Leadership also engage in research.
Colleges need not only to be better plugged in, but to see ourselves as part of the same continuum. Whether curriculum managers, assessors, lecturers or principals – we should see research as an important part of our business.
I was recently chagrined to find that one of our lecturers was conducting – and funding – a doctorate off his own back. This is our failing as a college, for not having clearly communicated that we are keen to support research and would welcome requests for funding.
Colleges could react by complaining once again that we are being left out, or we could take the initiative and do it ourselves
If we actively support college practitioners to engage with local universities in researching relevant areas of policy and practice – whether it be assessment mechanisms, funding methodologies, leadership, or teaching and learning practices – within five years we could have a body of evidence with which to challenge Ofsted or policymakers.
Along with FETL’s creation of the public policy professorship at UCL IoE, there are positive steps towards greater communication between the college and university sectors.
Earlier this year, I was invited to join the board of the Association for Research in Post-Compulsory Education, as their only college principal. It recognises the need to engage with the practitioner base; we must now engage and recognise the need for this work.
The DfE recently launched its research schools programme, allocating significant funding to support the application of research in schools, and encourage them to apply for funding to conduct their own projects.
Colleges could react by complaining once again that we are being left out, or we could take the initiative and do it ourselves.
Some steps colleges could take include:
Communicate to staff that you welcome research proposals – we get a 50-per-cent fee waiver for any member of our staff doing a higher degree at our local university
Set up a committee to handle these requests
Engage with your local university’s education department – and encourage their researchers to spend time in real world of FE
Reach out to the research organisations above to see how you can feed into them
In short, if we’re going to influence policy, we need to take control of our own research agenda.
Ali Hadawi is principal and chief executive of Central Bedfordshire College
Employers want to make the new T-levels work, but they will need clear, practical support, writes Stephen Evans
The new T-levels will rely on employers in a number of ways: to help shape content, deliver work placements, and, by getting these right, giving them credibility in the labour market.
The scale of the ask is clear: the government expects around 180,000 work placements per year for T-level students. These will be substantial, lasting 45-60 days with a 315-hour minimum – longer than many employers are used to.
Employers have found themselves in almost as many driving seats as Lewis Hamilton
But it’s not just T-levels where we’re asking employers to engage, lead and offer work placements. The same also applies to apprenticeships, traineeships, work experience, schools, higher education, and work placements for those out of work and supported by Jobcentre Plus.
Employers have found themselves in almost as many driving seats as Lewis Hamilton. Given this, are we – to overstretch the analogy – heading for a high-speed crash?
The good news is that lots of employers really want to help. Learning and Work Institute research showed that employers are positive about the idea and want to be involved. They are keen to help young people, and they see the value of helping to develop the talent pipeline.
However, they are concerned about how it would all work in practice. Our research also highlighted a clear risk of employer fatigue from the range of initiatives they are being asked to be involved in. Ultimately the employers we spoke to care less about the names of individual initiatives, and more about meeting their future skills needs and supporting the next generation.
Making sure that we have the right number of placements in the right place at the right time will also be a challenge, particularly in rural areas – matching the supply of work placements in each sector to the demand from learners. Provision of placements today varies by sector: it’s more common in childcare and health and social care, but less so in sectors with higher levels of self-employment like construction.
We found that financial incentives would have limited impact; employers told us they wanted to be involved and that dealing with other factors, like hassle, bureaucracy, and lack of support, were more important.
I think there are three areas where we need to prioritise action to turn employer interest into engagement:
Make it simple. Many employers are put off if things get overly complex – after all, they’ve got businesses to run. We need to be upfront about what we’re asking and make it easy to take part. This also means fitting around what works for employers, and being flexible with timetabling.
Offer support. Lots of the employers we spoke to wanted clear guidance about what makes a good work placement and support for putting it in place.
Join things up. What we ask of employers for T-levels needs to be joined up with what is being asked around apprenticeships, traineeships and so on. This includes coherence of language; different departments and programmes have different definitions of what a work placement or work experience is.
As others have pointed out, we’ve had a lot of so-called once-in-a-generation changes in the last 20 years. But this does feel like a moment in time. The spotlight is on the technical education reforms and many other changes are underway. Employers are willing to play their role in developing the workforce of the future, but they will need clarity, support and coherence to make that a reality.
Stephen Evans is chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute
The government must cover the additional travel costs of T-level work placements to ensure rural colleges are not at a financial disadvantage, argues Jo Maher
At some point between the T-levels work placement pilot and the latest published government guidance, there seems to have been a change in thinking about how travel costs are to be funded.
On face value it’s little more than a hint, but if it’s indicative of the government’s direction, it could devastate the work experience programme for rural colleges.
Here’s the issue: the recent capacity development fund (CDF) documentation included a line indicating that the government would not be opposed to some of the funds being used for student travel in rural areas.
Student travel is not programme capacity development, however, and leaving rural colleges with no option but to draw from the CDF to subsidise travel would be a double hit.
Several FE institutions are taking part in a pilot placement scheme this academic year, part of the T-levels development process. They will then inform the Department for Education’s guidance on what good placements look like.
I was involved in setting up one of these pilots, which included a separate budget line for travel, perfectly logical given that travel costs can vary wildly, depending on the proximity of the college to its partner employers.
The CDF has taken a different approach. Available from April 2018 to July 2019 to build up capacity and capability for “substantive work placements”, it will be allocated “based on the number of qualifying students in the 2015 to 2016 academic year, at a funding rate of £250 per qualifying student”.
Yet it states that “for some students, particularly in rural areas where the placement may require additional travel, using some of the funds to support student travel and subsistence would be acceptable”.
Rural colleges face particular challenges in this area. Not only do their students often face long journeys to college and work placements – they are also hampered by the timings and availability of bus services.
Some students may have to travel for an hour into town, where the college is located, then take another bus to the employer. Some bus routes finish around 5pm, causing problems for students getting home at night.
£250 per student will already be tight. It must cover planning and relationship building, any personal protective equipment, visits and support
Meanwhile, the fact that rural colleges often lack access to large employers in close proximity compounds the travel difficulties and increases oversight costs.
Boston College, for example, is located in an area with 96.3 per cent small businesses, most of which will be able to take no more than one student at a time on work placement.
Meanwhile, we have to use the CDF to develop relationships with several hundred new employers.
The requirements on what must be delivered using the CDF are stringent – and rightly so. The development phase must include occupationally specific work placements delivered to a “structured work plan”, which are “adequately supervised” and monitored by site visits, for no fewer than 10 per cent of the number of qualifying students.
But £250 per student will already be tight. It must cover planning and relationship building, any personal protective equipment, visits and support, on top of transport costs.
We are keen to make this process work – and despite all the challenges of building new relationships with hundreds of employers, we are putting our backs, hearts and souls into the endeavour.
Which is why this perceived change is so concerning, because it appears to be structured in a way that will severely disadvantage rural colleges and those working with small employers.
We can draw hope from the fact that T-levels are still in the development stages. If the government is intent on its 45-day minimum work placements, it must invest sufficiently into the programme to enable all colleges to provide a quality learning experience for all students.
Ofsted has completed its first monitoring visit at Learndirect, as the provider attempts to improve on its ‘inadequate’ rating before its funding ends next July.
The nation’s largest FE provider has been under the microscope ever since it shocked the sector with a grade four that seemingly came out of the blue.
FE Week can reveal that inspectors returned last week for the first time since the debacle unfolded, and will continue to monitor its progress until a full inspection is conducted next year.
“These visits are common practice for providers we have previously found to be ‘inadequate’,” a spokesperson told FE Week. “Ofsted will monitor and reinspect it within 15 months of publication of its last full inspection report. A monitoring visit report will be published on our website in due course.”
However, Andy Palmer, the provider’s chief executive, hinted last week that the ESFA may decide not to terminate the funding if Learndirect improves its grades.
“At this moment in time, the ESFA has confirmed that funding for adult skills provision will not be available after July 2018, due to the Ofsted grade four,” he told FE News. “However, the company is focused and determined to improve this position to a grade two within the current financial year.”
Both the ESFA and the Department for Education declined to comment on the notion.
Learndirect’s accounts did however leave major question-marks hanging over its future, after figures showed how its long-term survival hinges on the success of its sister companies, including Learndirect Apprenticeships (LDA), over the next 12 months.
Its parent company, Pimco Holdings Ltd, is saddled with debts of £48.5 million, on top of a loan of £2.9 million from Lloyds Development Capital (LDC), both of which need to be paid back in November 2018.
There is a further loan from LDC of £48.8 million which will be repayable in May 2020.
The accounts did suggest Learndirect was still a “going concern”, and in order to survive, Pimco has secured a “working capital facility” of up to £5 million from its bank lenders, which will be available until November 30, 2018.
Pimco’s ability to repay, refinance or extend these loans will depend on the performance of its subsidiaries – Leanrdirect Ltd, LDA, and Learndirect Professional – over the next 12 months.
While the government currently stands by its commitment to terminate Learndirect’s funding in July 2018, the provider said it would “continue to reduce the exposure that it has from costs related to delivery of ESFA-funded learning” by reducing its numbers of delivery centres and staff.
The NAO will look into claims the DfE gave Learndirect special treatment, allowing it to keep its contracts for much longer than usual despite its grade four.
The outcome is expected to in “winter 2017-18”, while the PAC is also planning to hold a subsequent hearing on the fiasco.
