Martin Doel, FETL Professor of Leadership in FE and Skills, Institute of Education, UCL

After eight years at the helm of the Association of Colleges, Martin Doel left in 2016 to take up the world’s first university chair in FE leadership. FE Week paid him a visit in his new post at UCL to find out how his life as an academic is shaping up.

Since leaving the Association of Colleges, one of the hardest things former chief executive Martin Doel has had to do is manage his own diary.

“It sounds pathetic” he admits, “but I realise now how much work Cheryl used to do for me, sorting out the world at the AoC.”

He’s also had to work out what gets him out of bed in the morning, without a team to lead – or “serve”, as he puts it. As chief executive of the AoC, and before that throughout a multitude of leadership roles in the RAF, his motivation was “a wish not to let down those people who look to you as the head of the organisation”. As a professor, conversely, “you’ve got to find the motivation to get on and do things from within yourself and your own intellectual curiosity”.

So 18 months into his three-year FETL professorship, where has curiosity led the 60-year-old ex-air commodore?

First, Doel wants to carve out a clearer definition of further education for the public, because “it defies easy definition”. Having spent years lobbying politicians on behalf of the sector, he movingly describes FE as “a survivor” which “does almost anything or everything. It’s mistreated. Neglected.

And when it’s not neglected, it’s subject to direction from people what don’t necessarily know much about what it is.”

Doel is a clever, thoughtful man, who despite having held academic posts before, at King’s College London during his time in the RAF, is patently uncomfortable with his current incarnation as a professor (or perhaps with sounding like one, to the ex-colleagues who will likely read this interview).

Every time he uses an even slightly erudite turn of phrase, he apologises for sounding “a bit pretentious” – as he does after he sums up, by lamenting that FE has “no unifying narrative”.

But his argument is simple: “There’s this act-react-act-react deal with the next crisis, you know; the register of approved training providers has gone wrong, the adult education budget procurement is causing problems. LearnDirect falls over. And there’s a scandal.”

I don’t think you can define the whole of further education; it encapsulates so many different things

In what feels like a slightly backhanded compliment, he assures me “Nick [Linford] and FE Week do a great job in this”.

But what we don’t often do is look at the pattern underneath it, the trend, which is where people like Doel come in. He sets his own research agenda: “academic independence is still alive and well”, he announces, as if genuinely surprised.

In that admirable yet infuriating way that academics refuse to simplify, the conclusion to the question he posed two minutes earlier is frustratingly lacking: “I don’t think you can define the whole of further education; it encapsulates so many different things.”

What individual institutions can do, however, is get a “firm sense” of their core purpose, which allows them to evaluate opportunities more wisely – and turn them down if they don’t fit.

“One of the key things that enhances your ability to deal with complexity is having a firm sense of yourself,” he says.

So what else has he been working on, apart from, in conjunction with FETL?

“Feeling our way forward” to work out what the chair’s role should be, and figuring out how to “be a good colleague” to the other academics at IoE, he jokes.

But he’s also been pondering how to turn the “moment” vocational education is enjoying, into a “long-term direction of travel”. His colleagues at IoE call it a “vocational turn” – a phrase he’s not quite comfortable with. “Older hands in further education” will say the sector has been here before; “it’s a hundred-year problem”, as the Sainsbury report showed.

So what could give the technical education revival more permanent status? T-levels is one element.

“We have a moment where practical learning, technical education comes to the fore, and then what I call academic drift, or the gravitational pull of the academic, pulls it back in again,” he explains. “So I think it’s really, really interesting to see whether or not T-levels become, for instance, distinctive, really distinctive.”

This will depend on several factors, assessment being one. If they’re assessed in the same way as A-levels, he warns, by written exams, “they will just become A-levels in STEM subjects. That’s not the same as technical professional education.”

Assessment has to fit a context in which “practice precedes theory”. Judgment skills should also be valued; as an ex-airforceman, he uses an example of servicing a plane. While there is a “right way and a wrong way” to do it and you don’t want people “experimenting on the wrong bits of it, I do want them to be innovative”. In a military context, if all the systems aren’t operating, but you want to know to what extent a plane can fly, “judgment skills become important”.

If you’re going to do an epoch changing approach to our educational system, you don’t try and do it in the lifetime of one parliament

Another factor is the difficulty level. He envisions T-levels as “high status”, which means they should be “difficult to complete and difficult to deliver”.

In other words, they are “not for the 50 per cent of the population that don’t do academic”.

Whether T-levels manage to live up to the hype will be pivotal, he admits, as “there will come a point if the reality is not consistent with the brand, that trust is lost”.

He insists that the development process should be performed in “a really consultative way but also a careful way, thinking about it more deeply” and take four or five years.

“If you’re going to do an epoch changing approach to our educational system, you don’t try and do it in the lifetime of one parliament,” he explains.

One observation that should hearten the sector is that he finds it hard to see how any schools would be easily able to deliver a T-level, due to the need for “industry-standard facilities” and close links with industry. If you don’t have all that, he says, “then it shouldn’t be a T-level”. Colleges, on the other hand are “absolutely” the place to deliver them.

He posits T-levels as access routes to apprenticeships, which should be grouped into “families that correspond with the route” and envisages a “really big piece of work aligning the apprenticeship standards with T-level routes”.

All well and good, but how does he envision these ponderings having an impact on the world of policy? Is anyone listening?

One perk of the post, he explains, is that he’s “inside the academic machine” at the “world’s leading educational research organisation”. This has two benefits: one, he can begin to impact some of the other academics working at UCL about further education and skills. Two, he can connect with academics already working in the field.

But will anything penetrate outside the ivory (or concrete, in the case of UCL) towers?

The key, he insists, is that his is a “public policy professorship”. Academics “quite often write for each other and solve problems for each other but it never gets out and affects practice”. Moreover, much of current FE research “isn’t as connected to practice in colleges and providers as it could be and most often it’s not done by people in the sector.”

His remedies seem relatively mundane: the usual round tables and lectures. But I can’t help thinking, as he outlines his vision, that it’s unfair of me to put lofty (sector-changing) expectations on this professor of FE with a mandate for public engagement, just because he’s the first of his kind. In fact, quite the opposite.

Doel laments the demise of the “old further education staff college” where college managers would go for study retreats during the 1990s, and which gave the sector an “intellectual home”. Similar organisations have since come and gone: “We just cycle through these things.”

One can’t help but wonder whether this professorship isn’t precisely one of those things and just as he hits his stride, bam! it will come to an end. Let’s hope the powers that be have a contingency plan mapped out…

It’s a personal thing

What do you miss most about AoC?
Having a PA to sort out my diary. And having a team that I felt I worked for.

Where was your favourite RAF posting?
RF Brunton and Witton, when I was station commander at both and merged them with a third station. But it wouldn’t be my favourite place now. It was the right place for me at that time. Every time you have a good moment in life, it’s a good moment at that time.

Being in Cyprus could equally be my favourite when I was in my late 20s, on top of the mountain, 45 miles away from a grown-up, working in a local community. Or it could have been in Germany, when I was deputy base commander and we were supporting operations in the Balkans and had people going into northern Iraq.

Where would you escape to for a month?

Trancoso, Bahia state, Brazil. It’s a resort embedded in a village in an undeveloped part of Brazil. We went to Brazil for three weeks when I finished the AoC, instead of going to the AoC conference last year.

We lived in a treehouse, but the rooms are very luxurious. The weather was in and out, Brazilians are really friendly. Just completely chilled.

What’s your favourite film?

Lawrence of Arabia. Lawrence came from close to where I lived, in the New Forest, and his story is just fascinating.

He’s a flawed character but the way he went back after the First World War and became a private soldier there, an aircraftman in the Air Force, but at the same time was sending letters to Churchill. Then he had a role in designing power boats, which were used for rescue boats in the Second World War.

And you know, the film is just stunning visually, when you see him come out of the desert. I saw it as an early teenager. Sitting in a cinema, when you’re from a working-class background, which is one of the few things you could afford to go out and do, when you were about as big as a spot on Clint Eastwood’s chin, in the complete dark. It was all about the immersive experience.

What is the action plan for T-Levels?

FE Week’s resident policy expert, Gemma Gathercole, dissects the DfE’s latest document…

More than a year after the post-16 skills plan, and seven months on from the announcement of more funds to support its implementation, the DfE has published an update in the form of its T-levels action plan. But what does this action plan tell us, what are the next steps and, critically, which questions remain?

My overriding takeaway from the action plan is consultation: a word that gets no fewer than 10 mentions and is critical to successful implementation. However, what I think is more interesting is what’s open for consultation and what seems to be fixed. This will be the first opportunity for the sector and for employers, who weren’t part of the independent panel, to have their say.

The consultation will be launched by the end of 2017 and will cover a range of issues from the implications of this policy for current provision, to design principles for the T-levels themselves. I am sure they will be widely welcomed.

How many young people will be able to make an informed choice about whether to follow an academic or technical route at 16?

I also note a subtle change of tone in this action plan, which I’m sure will be welcomed, from the focus on consultation, to the need to discuss implications with a wide audience including providers and awarding organisations, making this the most inclusive document yet on the skills plan proposals. The planned “college-based route” is now called the “provider-based route”.

Perhaps of most interest to providers is the announcement of who will be able to offer provision and when. Although the intention to phase in the T-levels by sector and by the number of providers available to deliver has been openly discussed, the action plan explicitly sets out that phasing. Only a small number of providers will offer the first three pathways from 2020 and selected providers will offer the first routes in 2022.

The majority of providers will only offer T-levels from 2024. But which providers are these? We’ll have to wait a little longer to find out, as the DfE will publish further information later in the autumn for the 2020 process, and in spring 2018 for 2021.

There are also four big questions that remain largely unanswered and answering them will be crucial to the success of the policy.

The first is on bridging provision – where is the policy and does it really support learners to move between the academic and technical pathways?

There is only one mention in the action plan and that’s “coming soon”. Without the existence of bridging provision or understanding of how students move between the pathways, the policy risks creating silos that serve to limit ambition rather than support progression.

READ MORE: Will T-levels falter through a lack of work placements?

Regarding the “transition year”, or more specifically, what provision will be available for those not yet ready for level three study, what does the policy cover and does it have to be a year? Here we’re better served by mentions in the plan, and there is reference to research already undertaken.

But the detail is what matters here, so there will be much for the promised consultation to deliver on, and while the timetable focuses on the development of T-levels, it’s important that this transition year is available for implementation.

And what of plans for level four and five provision: what does the plan look like, when is it going to be delivered and how will it support progression?

Getting this right is hard, as the action plan recognises provision at this level is more complex, offered by a wider range of providers and supporting a wider range of learner ages and needs. However, our skills shortages do not start and end with young people; we have shortages among technician-level staff and in some sectors a rapidly retiring workforce. There’s little progress to be seen in the action plan and not even a promise to consult. More work is needed.

Finally, and perhaps the most critical question yet: how many young people will be able to make an informed choice about whether to follow an academic or technical route at 16? Is this binary divide practical?

I look forward to reading the long-awaited careers strategy promised for the autumn; perhaps I’ll even be able to answer my own question.

Gemma Gathercole is head of funding and assessment at Lsect

Outgoing ESFA chief takes “personal responsibility” for Learndirect decisions

The outgoing head of the ESFA has claimed personal responsibility for the decision not to terminate Learndirect’s adult education budget contract after its ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating.

Although the DfE’s permanent secretary Jonathan Slater denied at the same meeting that the UK’s largest training provider had been given special treatment, Peter Lauener insisted it had been his decision to “take a different approach”.

The ESFA rule is to “typically terminate the contract and seek a better provider, subject to protecting the interests of learners”.

However, even though he first became aware at the end of March of Ofsted’s intention to hand out a grade four, Mr Lauener made the decision to allocate Learndirect £45 million of funding to pay for current and new courses for 12 months until July 2018.

Meg Hillier, the chair of the public accounts committee, asked Mr Lauener if Learndirect “was too big to fail” during a meeting on October 12.

“No, it wasn’t,” he replied. “In fact, we had a contingency team set up to allow us to put in place our standard closure arrangements if we judged that was the right thing to do.

“But, and I take personal responsibility for this, I looked at the case very carefully, and I felt the right thing to do in terms of continuity of provision for learners and other service users – Learndirect runs two big testing processes with significant numbers of people getting tests for citizenship and teacher skills tests – so I took the view that we should take a different approach in this case.”

Mr Slater added that his decision not to issue a three-month termination notice came about because of the impact for learners and because Learndirect had received grade three ratings in several categories despite an overall grade four – something Ms Hillier described as “hardly a ringing endorsement”.

“Learndirect have written to me welcoming the NAO and their team in to look at their books, so their books will be open to the NAO too as I understand it,” she went on.

“And we will no doubt consider whether we will invite them in as well and it’s likely to be in January so just to give you warning. I think, Mr Lauener, it will be your successor we have to invite.”

Mr Slater then jokingly encouraged her to “invite him back”.

Mr Lauener is due to retire from his post at the end of November, but insisted he would be “happy” to come back and face the committee.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have said that,” joked Mr Slater, the DfE’s most senior civil servant.

Mr Lauener added: “We considered very carefully what was the best thing to do. Our starting point with an Ofsted ‘inadequate’ expansion is the presumption what we would terminate the contract with three months’ notice.

“We’ve had 27 cases in the last two years, but in four of those, not counting Learndirect, we’ve terminated with more than three months’ notice – with between four and six months’ notice.”

Ofsted’s report on Learndirect was made known to the DfE in March, but was not published until August when the company failed in both a judicial review to quash the report and a gagging order to prevent FE Week from publishing the story.

The National Audit Office has opened an investigation into the affair, and how the government has handled it.

The provider’s chairman, Ken Hills, said the provider would fully comply with any investigation in a letter addressed to comptroller and auditor general, Sir Amyas Morse, dated September 14.

“I would welcome the NAO undertaking an investigation as a means of correcting gross reporting inaccuracies and establishing a clear evidence case for a more informed political and public debate around a complex issue,” he wrote.

Learn from recent history to avert apprenticeship disaster

Government figures have revealed a dramatic 61-per-cent drop in apprenticeship starts between May and July, compared with the same period last year, following the levy launch. As the sector waits to see if this forces a major rethink, FE Week’s deputy editor Paul Offord looks back to another apprenticeship policy catastrophe that sparked a quick U-turn.

The massive drop-off of apprenticeship starts comes as no surprise.

It has long been made clear to us by many providers, employers and those lobbying on their behalf, that the reformed system, rolled out from May 1, would have a slow start and many unintended consequences.

The idea of introducing what amounts to a tax that should force more companies to invest in training was a sound one, but the decision to let employers choose to spend it all on senior management training, allied with the ongoing farce around non-levy allocations, has left us in a mess.

Then-business secretary Dr Vince Cable, who now leads the Liberal Democrats, faced a nightmare scenario that bears comparison back in December 2013.

The advanced learner loans system had been launched that April – only for students aged 24 and above – which was a first for further education.

Take-up was disappointing across the board, but particularly for apprenticeships, which saw just over 400 applications over seven months.

People clearly weren’t prepared to pay their own cash for apprenticeship training in the same way they would for a degree.

I had only recently started as a reporter with FE Week, and the palpable sense of fear from government that this was going to undermine its drive to drastically increase apprenticeship numbers, was clear to me even then, as a relative novice to further education.

On that occasion, Dr Cable, the self-proclaimed “saviour” of our sector, acted promptly and scrapped loans for apprenticeships.

We are now faced with a situation where some employers, rather than learners, appear reluctant to invest in training or will simply save on existing training budgets for managers.

FE Week first reported the unstoppable rise in the management frameworks over a year ago, and today reveal it’s has overtaken business administration to become the second most popular. 

Now, or rather since May, graduates can for the first time become funded apprentices, meaning big employers will look to invest as much as possible of the money they are being forced to invest in training, on upskilling older employees through, for example, management apprenticeship degrees.

This appears to be the shape of things to come in the post-levy world, as our editor Nick Linford warned in his editorial in this week’s paper, when what we actually need is for more young people to develop skills from a lower level to properly support the UK economy as Brexit approaches.

Something needs to change fast and removing levy and co-investment charges for all 16-18 year-old apprenticeships would be a good place to start for a government apparently determined to improve social mobility.

Governments are, perhaps understandably, always reluctant to admit to having made mistakes.

However, it seems to me that Dr Cable, his then-skills minister Matthew Hancock, and the old Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, set a good precedent for taking decisive and much-needed action.

Let’s hope the skills team now led by our current minister Anne Milton, who has after all repeatedly promised to listen to and act on sector concerns, will be prepared to learn from recent history.

BREAKING: First official apprenticeship levy figures show a 61% fall in starts

Total apprenticeship starts for May, June and July fell a staggering 61% compared to the same period last year.

Provisional figures published by the DfE this morning, as part of the Statistical First Release, include the apprenticeship starts after the levy system began on the 1 May.

All apprenticeship starts from May (with the exception of 16 to 18 year-olds at employers with fewer than 50 employees) will have involved, for the first time, a mandatory financial contribution from the employer, either from the levy account or the 10 percent co-investment.

The Department for Education said: “Between February and April 2017, there was an increase in apprenticeship starts compared to the same point a year earlier (174,100 and 118,800 respectively), an increase of 47%. Between May and July 2017 (quarter 4 of the 2016/17 academic year), apprenticeship starts have decreased to 43,600 from 113,000 over the same period in the year before (quarter 4 of the 2015/16 academic year), a decrease of 61%.”

Responding to the dramatic fall in starts since May, a Department for Education spokesperson said:“Our apprenticeship reforms have put control back into the hands of employers so they will gain the skilled workforce they need to compete globally.

“We know that the last year has been a period of huge change for employers but it is right that they are taking their time to plan ahead and maximise the opportunities the apprenticeship levy can bring.”

READ MORE: Why employer-ownership isn’t compatible with social justice

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers told FE Week: “Sadly we saw these numbers coming long before the levy even started because of the way the new funding system has been designed.  Until we see the September starts, we don’t know whether the three million target is under threat but the numerical target isn’t really important here.  What is needed are changes that will restore incentives for employers to recruit young apprentices and a guaranteed minimum budget for non-levy payers’ apprenticeships which will ensure that there are opportunities in the many areas of the country without large employers.  

“AELP is receiving plenty of anecdotal and factual evidence from its members that the government’s own social mobility agenda is being undermined by the levy reforms with fewer lower level apprenticeships available to offer a ladder of opportunity and the damage is also being done in sectors that are crucial for the post-Brexit economy such as hospitality and health and social care. 

“We therefore need a proper debate about future funding systems and approaches in anticipation of the levy being used up by levy payers.  This has to take a hard look at the barriers which are putting off employers from taking on apprentices such as the level of financial contribution required from them and the amount of time mandated for off-the-job training within an apprenticeship.”

And Neil Carberry, managing director of people policy at the CBI tweeted this:

This was followed by a statement in which he said the “disappointing data” would “come as no surprise to companies, who have repeatedly made clear that the current design of the apprenticeship levy system is not effective”.

“Businesses believe in apprenticeships but there can be no argument now –  reform of the levy system is needed urgently to ensure its success,” he said.

And shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden had this to say on Twitter about today’s statistics:

WorldSkills 2017: A school visit to remember for Team UK

Singing, dancing, glow-in-the-dark shows and a bird of prey; Team UK’s first outing in Abu Dhabi certainly had it all as they visited a local school ahead of WorldSkills 2017.

For some the highlight was the energetic rendition of S Club 7’s smash hit ‘Reach for the stars’, and for others it was the Scottish highland dancing, but every moment of Team UK’s visit to Al Ezza School, in Baniyas East, will be one to remember for the competitors.

Mechatronics competitor Tom Revell and hairdressing competitor Bridie Thorne pose with pupils and the bird of prey

The visit came as part of WorldSkills’ One School One Country programme in which all the competitor nations and regions are assigned to a school where children then find out about their team, get to meet them just days before competition and present their findings to the competitors.

Team UK entered the school via a red carpet this morning, and were met with screaming applause from the pupils, who then quickly got into position to perform some authentic Arabic dancing.

They were then moved into the school’s main hall where both the UK’s and United Arab Emirates’ national anthems were sung before a barnstorming rendition of S Club 7, by one the school’s own pupils.

Cooking competitor Ruth Hansom with the schoolchildren

A glow in the dark act took place shortly after this, followed by a shadow show and then a presentation by the UK’s team leader Jo Maher, who took the schoolchildren through the history of our country, including traditional dishes like fish and chips, and celebrities like David Beckham.

Workshops followed, where the pupils could have a go at some of the competitors’ skill areas, such as jewellery making and restaurant services, and the UAE’s national bird – the saker falcon – was on hand to pose for photos.

“The whole day has been so much more than I expected,” said Kaiya Swain, Team UK’s competitor in beauty therapy who trains at Sussex Downs College. “They’ve put so much effort into it and it really has blown us all away.

“It has definitely got us pumped up for the competition. It was the boost that we all needed.”

Al Ezza School pupils performing their glow in the dark act

The event will also without a doubt live long in the memory of the schoolchildren.

“WorldSkills means we can share our culture and skills with everyone and learn more about many things,” said 10-year-old pupil Salama Salim.

To see WorldSkills competitors meet their young Abu Dhabi hosts for the first time, is an “emotional experience that emphasises the power of forging relationships that know no borders”, added Simon Bartley, President of WorldSkills.

“One School One Country demonstrates that the world can be as small and interconnected as we want to make it. Skills are uniting these young people, and this programme makes it possible for them to develop their knowledge and understanding of cultures and values beyond their own.”

Pupils guiding Team UK around their school

WorldSkills UK chief executive, Dr Neil Bentley, was part of the visiting party all day and took to the microphone to say thank you to the school for hosting the team before joining in with traditional Ayala dancing, also known as the ‘stick dance’.

“For me this is one of the aspects of the competition that gives us that real cultural exchange, it has been a unique insight into education in Abu Dhabi and that is what this whole WorldSkills journey is all about,” he told FE Week.

“The school itself has put so much effort into it, this is the epitome the competition.”

 

Everest trek will fund bursaries at adult education college

A member of staff from London’s Mary Ward Centre is trekking to Everest in an effort to raise money for student bursaries to help people who can’t afford course fees.

With a fundraising target of £20,000, Sue Cragg, the head of adult and community education at the adult education college, will walk for 12 days to reach Everest’s base camp.

The centre runs classes in everything from ukelele and zumba to psychology and enamelling, with courses costing around £100.

“Working at the centre you see the difference that doing a course makes in people’s lives, particularly for those unable to afford the fee,” Ms Cragg said. “People gain more confidence and feel less isolated, and it’s getting people qualifications and back into work or into better jobs.”

Leaving for the expedition on November 2, Ms Cragg has been in training for the past year, taking yoga and strength and conditioning classes, walking five miles a day and going on training holidays to the French Alps and Italy.

She has already raised £330 of her target through an online fundraising page, which will be used to heavily subsidise or cover the cost of class fees for struggling students.

Feature picture: Craggs on a training climb in Italy’s Aosta Valley

College referee campaigns to get more women into football

A college referee campaigning to get more women into football has taken her crusade to Westminster, reports Samantha King.

Sunderland College’s sports development officer, Lucy Oliver (pictured top right), was invited to speak at the House of Lords through her involvement with Women in Football – a group of professional women with strong links to the football industry, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.

The group counts among its members Dame Heather Rabbats, former non-executive director and board member of the Football Association, and Eva Carneiro, Chelsea FC’s former doctor, who were both in attendance to encourage support for the diversification of football.

Oliver

“It is the aim of the FA to double the participation of women and girls in football by 2020, and in order to do that, we need the full weight of the government behind us,” Ms Oliver explained. “This is the first time the issue has been brought before the House of Lords and we hope that this has created a real buzz around the topic which will provide a catalyst for further change and ultimately, equality in football.”

Closer to home, Ms Oliver – who has been a referee for 13 years and is an FA ambassador – has introduced a number of initiatives to build the confidence of young women taking part in sport at Sunderland college.

Since her appointment as sports development officer three years ago, she has brought in a Women’s Football Leadership Programme and the Women & Girls Football Hub as part of her role to develop the college’s sporting offer.

“We have to change the way people view male-dominated sports from an early age, so it’s absolutely integral to educate and engage with young women at the earliest opportunity,” she explained. “The work I do at Sunderland College is an important aspect of Women in Football’s campaign, and it means we’re giving the younger generation a chance to cast inequality and under representation in football to one side.”

“We have come a long way in football in terms of promoting female participation and challenging gender stereotypes, but we still have a long way to go before we can honestly say the issue has been fully tackled. One day, it will seem ridiculous that it was even considered unusual or controversial for women to be involved in football.”

Lucy blows the whistle on the gender divide

Construction industry giants answer students’ burning questions during college Q&A session

More than 80 apprentices and construction trade students from London South East Colleges have had the chance to speak with some of the UK construction industry’s biggest names during a recent Q&A session.

Hosted at the college’s Bromley campus, aspiring construction workers had the chance to ask a panel of six chief executives and managing directors questions on anything from what qualities they look for in employees to how to maintain a positive online footprint.

Among the panellists were Charlie Mullins OBE, the CEO of Pimlico Plumbers (pictured right), Shenaaz Chenia (left), the managing director of Saint Gobain, and Andrew Stevens, the CEO of technical and digital education providers CNet Training – who chaired the panel.

“Construction is becoming a multifaceted industry and employers only want to take on ‘good people’,” said Stevens. “They want the best possible candidates and they are willing to train them to become experts in their field. That’s how it works.”

“I have an interview for an apprenticeship coming up pretty soon and the panellists gave me some great ideas today,” said Scott, a motor vehicle student. “It was very interesting and they made some brilliant points.”