A refugee who fled Afghanistan alone at the age of 16 has been crowned ‘outstanding individual learner’ at this year’s Festival of Learning awards.

The Royal Society of Arts in London will be the setting for today’s prestigious awards ceremony at which nine learners, employers and training providers will be singled out for their “inspirational” lifelong-learning stories.

Among them will be Habib Rezaie (pictured above), who arrived in the UK as an unaccompanied asylum-seeker 10 years ago.

He was taken into care by Leicester City Council, and didn’t speak a word of English because he had not attended school in his home country.

Judges pointed out that Mr Rezaie was forced to work long hours to catch up with his peers – but his hard work paid off and he earned a place on Leicester College’s ICT course.

After that, he eventually achieved a 2:1 in his degree in business computing at De Montfort University.

Alongside his studies, Mr Rezaie volunteers at After18, a Leicester charity which supports unaccompanied asylum seeking children and young people.

“Education is the most important thing in my life as it gives me hope for the future and allows me to make a positive contribution to my community,” he said.

The Festival of Learning, led by the Learning and Work Institute with support from the NOCN, is now in its 25th year.

Jonathan Beebee will be presented with this year’s ‘learning for work award’.

He sustained a severe head injury at 19, and was told he would never fully recover. But defying the doctors’ verdict, he pushed on and enrolled into the Lloyds Bank Social Entrepreneurs programme at the School for Social Entrepreneurs in Hampshire.

Twenty years on he runs a social enterprise called PBS4, which supports people with learning disabilities.

Mark Goodwin will meanwhile receive the ‘social impact award’.

Judges claimed his “determination” to include all types of learners in his sports classes led him to establish England’s first mixed-ability rugby team, and inspire many more across the country.

Under the inclusive model, players with learning difficulties and physical disabilities play full-contact rugby alongside their able-bodied peers.

The ‘project award’ goes to Refresh 2 Impress, a bespoke three-day course designed by South Gloucestershire and Stroud College “tailored for learners over 50 years of age”.

More than 300 adults have benefited from the opportunities this learning presents, according to the judges.

Sabeena Shah will pick up this year’s ‘tutor award’.

The judges said that when growing up, Sabeena was “not encouraged to study, let alone think about teaching”, but when she graduated with a law degree in 2011, she decided to teach students facing similar challenges.

Sabeena now manages and teaches the access to law level three qualification at Barking and Dagenham College.

Taylor Bird will be given the ‘young adult learner’ award.

Bullied at school due to learning and physical disabilities, she left with very few GCSEs. But she “flourished” at Walsall College and worked hard to complete entry-level English and maths qualifications as well as level two and three art and design.

She won a place on a photography degree and has now set up her own photography business with plans to expand into her own studio.

Picking up the ‘employer award’ will be James Electrics Contracting, which works closely with local training providers in Devon to offer “high-quality work experience opportunities for learners”.

It offers training to nine apprentices, trainees or work-based learners each year.

Talk English, a project which helps people with poor English skills improve their spoken and written communication and become more involved in the community, will be handed the ‘president’s award’.

And Stephen Bush will be honoured with the ‘patron’s award’ after he took early retirement from a long career in social services to become his mother’s carer.

He is now a “passionate advocate of adult learning, believing it can play an instrumental role in staving off dementia”.

Anne Milton, the skills minister for skills, said it was “such a pleasure to be able to congratulate this year’s Festival of Learning award winners”.

Stephen Evans, the chief executive of the Learning and Work Institute, added: “I congratulate every one of this year’s winners, and indeed everyone who was nominated.”

Level two apprenticeships should be fully funded by the government at every age group, the AELP has said.

This bold but uncosted recommendation is part of a “major” policy submission discussing the way the apprenticeship reforms are “undermining” the prime minister’s social mobility agenda.

If actioned, it would mean the government was paying for around 70 per cent of apprenticeships.

The AELP also wants 16- to 18-year-old apprentices to receive full funding regardless of level.

To offset this cost, the body wants the government to “raise the employer co-investment on a new sliding scale”.

This would start “with 10 per cent at level three, 20 per cent at level four, 30 per cent at level five, 40 per cent at level six and 50 per cent at level seven apprenticeships for apprentices over the age of 19”.

But in an exclusive interview with FE Week, the AELP’s boss Mark Dawe admitted his association had not fully costed the policy.

“We haven’t done a detailed costing because we haven’t got all of the data to hand but we do know that level twos were fully funded in the sense that there was no employer contribution,” he said.

“Now obviously funding rates have changed so it needs to be run through again and I think the whole point of what we’re saying is that at the higher levels there are clear benefits to the employee and the employer and the real focus needs to be on those first steps at level two.”

Pressed on whether the recommendation would undo the government’s attempts to introduce employer contributions, Mr Dawe admitted it would, “but only for level two”, which he admitted made up a “significant” number of all apprenticeships.

It is too early to simply reintroduce full funding for all apprenticeships

It is also meanwhile “up for debate” as to how the full funding would be rationed at level two, for example by going back to an allocations based model.

He confessed he had not consulted with his members on the policy as it was an “early proposition” for debate.

The plan has not been met with great support from the FE sector’s other top association boss.

“The report raises some important issues which are worth following up, but it is too early to simply reintroduce full funding for all small employers and all apprenticeships,” said David Hughes, the chief executive of the Association of Colleges.

“That’s just one of the many changes to the apprenticeship programme in the last year and it is important that the government monitors and discusses the overall impact of those changes,” he said.

Beyond this proposal, AELP’s paper raises 14 other points it believes the government needs to address in its apprenticeships reforms in order to remove the “obstacles” to social mobility.

For instance, the AELP contends that “the rigid implementation” for 20 per cent off-the-job training is “reducing our recruitment of level two apprentices”, and that the training time for maths and English which is required “in addition” places “the heaviest burden on employers”.

Levy-paying employers are meanwhile “prioritising existing employees for apprenticeships instead of recruiting new entrants and giving young people an opportunity, further restricting opportunities for young people”.

“The message came out from Downing Street over the summer that social mobility was still the number one priority for the government after securing a good deal for Brexit,” Mr Dawe writes.

“Education ministers therefore need to get a firm grip on the apprenticeship reforms to stop a potential haemorrhaging of young talent missing out on opportunities that employers were previously willing to offer.”

Read AELP’s full paper here.

Jeremy Corbyn will address this year’s Association of Colleges annual conference.

The annual event at at the ICC in Birmingham is one of the key events in the FE calendar, and takes place this year from November 14 to 15, and the resurgent Labour leader is one of the headline speakers.

Other highlights announced include Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman, and writer and broadcaster Matthew Syed.

“It is great news that we have the leader of the opposition coming to speak to delegates for the first time,” said David Hughes, the chief executive of the AoC.

“It’s another important recognition of the crucial roles which colleges play, for the economy, for communities, families, young people and adults.

“Colleges remain at the heart of their local communities and the national economy – that’s why the theme of the conference is colleges mean business.”

Delegates will also have the opportunity for in-depth discussions on the key issues of the day, including apprenticeships, curriculum reforms and T-levels.

The winners of AoC’s prestigious Beacon and Student of the Year Award will also be announced.

FE Week will be the premier media partner, and we will, as ever, report live from the event throughout, and produce a paper from our hotel suite on-site.

Booking is open for the conference, with information available at http://www.aocannualconference.co.uk/.

Half a million pounds is on offer to run a new leadership training programme for senior FE managers looking to step up to top jobs.

The Education and Training Foundation put a tender out three days ago, and it’s on the hunt for a provider with “an excellent track record” in executive leadership to develop a project it is calling ‘Preparing for the CEO role in the further education and training sector’.

It’s the latest entry to a suite of new FE leadership training programmes the ETF operates, and will initially run for four months between November 6 and March 10 next year.

The details of the tender, seen by FE Week, state that applicants should “normally be designated second-tier managers” with a minimum of two years in post.

They must also be “ready to step up to the CEO role”, something that needs “a recommendation for the programme by their principal/CEO and chair of the board”.

The ETF aims to deliver training to at least 50 delegates.

“We expect an initial cohort of 25 minimum to complete the programme and a further cohort of 25 minimum to begin the programme before 10 March 2018 and reserve the right to extend the contract for a period of up to and including a third financial year,” it said.

The project spend could end up paying around £10,000 per trainee if the minimum recruitment target is met.

The exact contents are up for negotiation, but it is expected to take the form of two or three-day residential courses “with structured, supported learning activity between”.

Costs for the course will be “partly subsidised” by the ETF, a spokesperson for the foundation told FE Week, but the tender documents reveal that the delegate fee “will be set at £3,000 each with no discount options”.

In March, the foundation announced a leadership programme for existing principals and chief executives, backed by £1.27 million of government cash.

The project, headed by the ETF’s associate director for leadership, Sir Frank McLoughlin, was designed to boost the capacity of individual principals and chief executives, and got underway in June.

A programme to help chief finance officers become commercial leaders, backed with another £500,000 in funding, was also launched this year.

These are understood to be the first new leadership programmes specifically for the FE and skills sector since the demise of the former Learning and Skills Improvement Service in 2013.

LSIS, which emerged from the former Centre of Excellence for Leadership, ran a number of programmes for FE leaders including a senior leadership and management development programme and a programme for new principals.

The spokesperson told FE Week that the new aspiring principals project is “aimed at helping to build and create a pipeline of senior leaders for the future”, in an area the foundation “has been asked by many in the sector to play a part in”.

Tenders will be evaluated by an ETF panel, which will “judge past performance on the evidence provided of impact both on the individual and the organisation, reputation for excellence in design and delivery of executive training, and the ability to work flexibility with clients to meet their needs”.

While the project is expected to end in March, the ETF said that, subject to the availability of funding, it would “like to include a right to extend any contract for up to a maximum of three further years”.

The closing date for the tender is October 13.