A pledge to double the number of businesses that hire apprentices has been announced by the Liberal Democrats, ahead of its full manifesto launch tomorrow.

The policy was unveiled tonight and FE Week asked, before publication, what the party was taking to be its start figure for this. We were told in response that they plan to double 190,153.

This ambitious base figure was originally provided by the government in February, for the number of firms expected to hire apprentices in next 12 months, following the launch of the apprenticeship levy last month.

The Liberal Democrats spokesperson said the party will aim to achieve its target, in part by boosting the number of apprenticeships in “new sectors of our economy, like creative and digital industries”.

Most recently available government figures showed that 22,980 employers posted vacancies between last August and March this year – which was actually down by 810 from the same period the previous year.

The total number of employers that posted vacancies over the whole of 2015/16 was 37,560.

The party’s press briefing note added the party would invest £7 billion “in our schools and colleges”.

“The Liberal Democrats will reverse cuts to frontline school and college budgets by protecting per pupil funding in real terms and introduce a fairer national funding system, which includes protection so that no school loses out,” the spokesperson said.

The pledge follows a “real-terms” commitment to protect 16 to 19 FE funding per pupil announced by the Liberal Democrats last week.

The party said it will protect FE per pupil funding “in real terms” at £660 million, and “invest in continuous professional development for teachers” through a £165 million cash commitment.

The party’s shadow education spokesperson Sarah Olney told FE Week at the time of the announcement: “Students are being left behind as our educational system is cut to the bone.

“This extra £660 million to protect FE will ensure that students are not taken for granted.”

FE Week checked that this was just referring to 16 to 19-year-old learners, and what in that case did that mean for older FE learners.

A spokesperson said: “The figure is for pupils up to the age 19. But we will be setting out other commitments to support adult learners in our manifesto, which will be out in due course.”

FE Week previously asked the Liberal Democrats if they supported the Association of Employment and Learning Providers’ own manifesto call, made on May 3, for the next government to commit to four million quality apprenticeships over the life of the next parliament.

This would be up from the conservatives’ pledge, before the 2015 general election to create three million by 2020.

A Liberal Democrats spokesperson said in response: “We welcome this ambitious target to grow the number of high quality apprenticeships in the next parliament, and will be setting out our own plans to for an increase in apprentice numbers when we publish our manifesto.

“In the coalition government, Liberal Democrats championed apprenticeships and were proud that more than two million apprenticeships started over that time.

“We believe that high quality apprenticeships are an essential part of building the UK skills base.”

Labour announced, in its manifesto published today, that it would set a target of doubling the number of completed apprenticeships at NVQ level three by 2022.

It would also “set targets to increase apprenticeships for people with disabilities, care leavers and veterans, and ensure broad representation of women, ethnic minority groups, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community, and people with disabilities in all kinds of apprenticeships”.

The Conservative Party is expected to unveil its manifesto later this week.

 

Update, May 17:

The Liberal Democrats have unveiled their full manifesto plans for FE.

The party said that in government it would:

• Create individual accounts for funding mature adult and part-time learning and training, and provide for all adults individual access to all necessary career information, advice and guidance.
• Aim to double the number of businesses which hire apprentices, including by extending apprenticeships to new sectors of our economy, like creative and digital industries.
• Develop National Colleges as national centres of expertise for key sectors, such as renewable energy, to deliver the high-level vocational skills that businesses need.
• Work with the Apprenticeship Advisory Group to increase the number of apprentices from BAME backgrounds, ensure gender balance across industry sectors, and encourage underrepresented groups to apply.
• Identify and seek to solve skills gaps such as the lack of advanced technicians by expanding higher vocational training like foundation degrees, Higher National Diplomas, Higher National Certificates and Higher Apprenticeships.
• Ensure that all the receipts from the Apprenticeship Levy in England are spent on training, aiming to fund a wider range of types of training.
• Aim to meet all basic skills needs including literacy, numeracy and digital skills by 2030.
• Facilitate across the UK an effective and comprehensive system for credit transfer and recognition of prior learning and qualifications.

Labour has unveiled its plans for the future of FE and skills in its official general election manifesto just out.

Central to this is the plan to “introduce free, lifelong education in FE colleges, enabling everyone to upskill or retrain at any point in life”.

Key points include plans to:

• Introduce free, lifelong education in FE colleges, enabling everyone to upskill or retrain at any point in life.
• Abandon Conservative plans to once again reinvent the wheel by building new technical colleges, redirecting the money to increase teacher numbers in the FE sector.
• Share the broad aims of the Sainsbury Review, but ensure vocational routes incorporate the service sector as well as traditional manufacturing
• Improve careers advice and open up a range of routes through, and back into, education, striking a balance between classroom and on-the-job training, to ensure students gain both technical and soft skills
• Bring funding for 16 to 18-year-olds in line with Key Stage four baselines
• To implement the Sainsbury recommendations, correct historic neglect of the FE sector by giving the sector the investment – in teachers and facilities –  it deserves to become a world-leading provider of adult and vocational education.
• Restore the education maintenance allowance for 16 to 18-year-olds from lower and middle income backgrounds
• Replace advanced learner loans and upfront course fees with direct funding, making FE courses free at the point of use, including English for Speakers of Other Languages courses.
• Encourage co-operation and leadership across colleges and sixth forms, improving curriculum breadth and quality
• Setting a target, backed up by funding, for all FE teaching staff to have a teaching qualification within five years.
• Extend support for training to teachers in the private sector
• Increase capital investment to equip colleges to deliver T-levels and an official pre-apprenticeship trainee programme.
• Maintain the apprenticeship levy while taking measures to ensure high quality by requiring the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to report on an annual basis to the Secretary of State on quality outcomes of completed apprenticeships
• Set a target to double the number of completed apprenticeships at NVQ level three by 2022
• Give employers more flexibility in how the levy is deployed, including allowing the levy to be used for pre-apprenticeship programmes
• Guarantee trade union representation in the governance structures of the Institute of Apprenticeships
• Protect the £440 million funding for apprenticeships for small-and medium-sized employers who don’t pay the levy
• Set targets to increase apprenticeships for people with disabilities, care leavers and veterans, and ensure broad representation of women, and people with disabilities in all kinds of apprenticeships
• Consult on introducing incentives for large employers to over-train numbers of apprentices to fill skills gaps in the supply chain and the wider sector
• Reverse cuts to Unionlearn
• Set up a commission on Lifelong Learning tasked with integrating further and higher education

More to come…

Staff are understood to be facing up to 10 per cent pay cuts at a north east college with “real financial challenges” – although questions remain over whether this will also be applied to senior managers.

Lecturers and staff were reportedly warned last week that Darlington College’s finances are in a perilous state, and a consultation has been launched on its controversial saving plan.

The college wouldn’t show FE Week the consultation document this afternoon – or confirm if the pay cuts, feared to be up to 10 per cent, would also apply to senior managers.

The University and College Union insisted it amounted to poor treatment of staff who had helped transform the college’s Ofsted performance from ‘inadequate’ to ‘good’ – particularly if top managers do not share the pain on salary drops.

Speaking on behalf of its angry members, UCU regional official Iain Owens told FE Week: “The people who delivered the improved Ofsted result are being rewarded with a pay cut.

“The principal’s words about how difficult things are for everyone ring hollow, if she is not being hit with the pay cut or change in duties that she believes staff should suffer.”

An inadequate Ofsted verdict on the college prompted a visit from the FE Commissioner two years ago, with the resulting report recognising “a renewed energy to address the issues”.

This positive view was confirmed in June last year, when Ofsted recognised widespread improvements by rating it ‘good’-overall.

When asked to comment on the pay-cut plans, first reported on in the Northern Echo, principal Kate Roe said: “This has been a very difficult decision to reach and a very painful decision.

“However, the reality is the college faces real financial challenges, which won’t go away. All cuts are painful no matter where you sit.”

She added the “savings” would not affect the choice of courses available to school leavers, apprenticeships or adult learners at the college – which was allocated just over £5 million for 2016/17 by the former Skills Funding Agency as of March.

“The declining number of 16-18 year olds and the cuts in government funding mean we have had no choice but to do this,” Ms Roe said. “We have started a consultation with staff and we are open to alternative suggestions.”

Most recent accounts available for the college, up to the end of July last year, indicated a positive balance of £6,045,000, but it is understood that the financial issues have come to a head through the planned merger with Stockton Riverside College.

This was one of three mergers proposed through the Tees Valley area review of post-16 education and training. That review, part of wave one of the national programme, was just the second to complete in May 2016.

A proposed partnership between Redcar and Cleveland College and Middlesbrough College is still underway, while a link-up between Hartlepool FE and sixth form colleges has been called off.

High-profile colleges that failed to get onto the government’s new register of apprenticeship training providers the first time round are still advertising vacancies, as they nervously wait for permission to deliver them.

The revelation, which Birmingham Metropolitan College and Solihull College openly admitted to, comes as FE Week has learned the results of the second round of applications for the register of apprenticeship training providers may be announced this week.

In March, the Education and Skills Funding Agency published the first ever RoATP list of providers, who would be eligible to deliver apprenticeships from May.

A number of large colleges with significant apprenticeship allocations were rejected, but subsequently told they had another chance of getting on in a second application process.

Two of these were Birmingham Metropolitan College and Solihull College, who have continued to advertise apprenticeship vacancies on their websites in the hope they will make it on to the register to deliver their starts from June.

When asked about this, after FE Week spotted the advertisements (pictured above), BMet’s principal Andrew Cleaves said it “made no sense” for his college to stop promoting vacancies, given they are the largest provider of apprenticeships in Birmingham.

He told FE Week: “We are a major provider of apprenticeships and have confidence of getting back on to the register.

“We continue to promote apprenticeships of course, but we absolutely won’t sign anybody up until we get back on the register.”

Mr Cleaves added that if his colleges fails to get on the register again, then the advertised starts will “go to our many partners who do get on the register”.

John Callaghan, principal of Solihull College, echoed the reasons given by Mr Cleaves for why his college has continued to advertise apprenticeships.

He told FE Week: “We believe we will get on the register this time. The apprenticeships we are advertising now will be for starts in June, and if we fail to get on we would then put these starts through to someone that was on the register.

“I can categorically say that with no degree of uncertainty that we are not starting anybody in May but clearly we can’t just stop business.”

Mr Callaghan explained that if his college was to wait until the end of May to advertise apprenticeships, they would have to wait another four to six weeks to get the ball rolling again, effectively meaning “we wouldn’t be starting apprenticeships until late July or August”.

The ongoing RoATP fiasco has caused chaos in the FE sector since the initial list was published in March.

The selection process was branded an “omnishambles” by shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden, after FE Week revealed providers with no delivery experience whatsoever had found their way onto the register while huge, established colleges missed out.

One person operating from a rented office in Knutsford, Cheshire had succeeded in getting their three companies, Cranage Ltd, Obscurant Limited, and Tatton Solutions Ltd onto the approved ‘main route’ register – even though none of them had run government-funded apprenticeships.

But meanwhile, not a single college in Birmingham was included on the register until significant pressure forced ministers at the Department for Education to add one – South & City College Birmingham – in an updated list on April 13.

In all, FE Week estimates that at least 21 colleges that were eligible to apply, with a combined allocation of £44 million, did not make it onto the register.

Three colleges dropped from Ofsted ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ this week, in a bad week for FE.

The only silver lining was for Abingdon and Witney College, which maintained its grade two rating.

Southampton City College lost its ‘good’ rating following an inspection report published May 9 and is now deemed to ‘require improvement’, after being hit with grade threes in all categories.

Leaders and managers at the college were criticised for not being “successful” in improving the quality of teaching, learning and assessment to “ensure that it is at least good”.

Inspectors also found that too few employers are “adequately involved in planning the training of their apprentices”, while too many teachers have “insufficiently high” expectations of their students in lessons, and “do not ensure that students make the best possible progress”.

However college leaders and governors were praised for halting the “financial decline and stabilised the financial position of the college”.

In the north of England, Wakefield College also dropped to a grade three from its previous ‘good’ rating, in an inspection report published May 9.

The nearly 6,750-learner college was graded ‘requires improvement’ in all but one category – provision for learners with high needs, which was deemed ‘good’.

Its report said students’ attendance and achievements are “too low”.

“Too few students achieve the grades and develop the higher level skills of which they are capable,” inspectors added.

Governors and senior leaders were slammed for not using “management information well enough to evaluate the impact of managers’ actions during the year”. The report added they do not have a “clear view of the quality of provision and the progress that students make”.

Meanwhile, management of quality improvement at St Mary’s College in Lancashire was found to be “not rigorous enough to bring about the necessary improvements” as the sixth form college dropped to a grade three from ‘good’ in an Ofsted report published May 5.

Inspectors additionally said that performance management is “not sufficiently robust” and as a result managers and teachers are “not given specific enough targets to be able to hold them to account for the performance of their students”.

“In most subjects, too many students do not make the progress and achieve the grades of which they are capable,” the report added.

However, a newly formed senior leadership team has started to “refocus diligently on improving students’ outcomes” at the 1,000-learner college.

The “large majority” of students also pass their qualifications and successfully progress to higher education, further learning or apprenticeships.

Leaders at Abingdon and Witney College will be the only FE provider celebrating a full Ofsted inspection this week after it maintained its ‘good’ rating.

Inspectors gave the college ‘good’ in all categories except for apprenticeships, where an ‘outstanding’ judgement was achieved.

Ofsted said apprentices make “significant and sustained progress from their starting points”, and the “vast majority” of apprentices achieve their qualifications.

Teachers also receive “excellent support” to improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment, and managers “ensure that learners with high needs follow highly individualised learning programmes that meet their needs and develop their independence”.

To get to ‘outstanding’ Ofsted said leaders and managers must ensure that all adult learners have a “good understanding of how to keep themselves safe from the risks posed by radicalisation and extremism”.

Adult and community learning provider The Learning Partnership – Bedfordshire and Luton Limited, employer provider Voyage Group Limited, and private provider The Bassetlaw Training Agency Limited all kept their ‘good’ ratings following short inspections.

 

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Southampton City College	28/03/2017	09/05/2017	3	2
Wakefield College	27/03/2017	09/05/2017	3	2
Abingdon and Witney College	28/03/2017	08/05/2017	2	2

 

Sixth Form Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
St Mary’s College	15/03/2017	05/05/2017	3	2

 

Short inspections (remains grade 2)	Inspected	Published
The Learning Partnership – Bedfordshire and Luton Limited	22/02/2017	08/05/2017
The Bassetlaw Training Agency Limited	24/04/2017	08/05/2017
Voyage Group Limited	26/04/2017	12/05/2017