Your weekly guide to who’s new, and who’s leaving.
Dame Martina Milburn, the chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, has joined the board of City and Islington Westminster Colleges in central London.
A former journalist, Dame Martina became chief executive of the BBC Children In Need appeal in 2000, a post she held for four years before moving to the Prince’s Trust, which has an annual turnover of £66 million.
She says she is “passionate about quality vocational teaching and offering students an outstanding learning experience”, and hopes to bring her experience in leading large-scale organisations, community relations and managing change programmes to her new role on the board.
She said: “In my personal and professional life I have seen first-hand the excellent work undertaken at the City and Islington and Westminster Kingsway colleges.
“In fact, I was so impressed by their work I recommended the college to my nephew when he was looking for somewhere to study.”
Westminster Kingsway and City and Islington Colleges merged to form the new group on August 1, 2016. With a combined enrolment of over 26,500 students and a combined income of £85 million, the two founding colleges now form the largest FE institution in London.
The current principal of Myerscough college, Ann Turner, has been appointed as the new chair of the Lancashire Colleges.
TLC comprises 12 further education and sixth-form colleges in Lancashire, securing funds for education and training, and supporting collaborative work and projects.
Ms Turner has been principal at Myerscough College for more than a decade, since 2006. During this time she has helped establish the college’s reputation as one of the UK’s leading specialist land-based and sports colleges.
Alongside her principalship, she is the current chair of Landex, the national association for land-based colleges, as well as a director of the National Land-Based College, Cultiva, and a rural advisor to the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership.
Speaking of her appointment, Ms Turner said: “Individually, colleges have such a positive effect on the lives and education of the county’s young people and adults, but working together we achieve even more. I’m excited to take on this role and driving forward the next chapter for the Lancashire Colleges.”
Ms Turner will take over from existing chair David Wood, who has been in the role 11 years, bringing in more than £20 million in additional funding for Lancashire during his tenure. He will step down in March 2017.
Wes Johnson has been appointed principal at Lancaster and Morecambe College, based in Lancashire.
Mr Johnson will step down from his existing role as campus principal at the Penrith-based Newton Rigg College after almost five years at the helm.
Mr Johnson joined Newton Rigg college in 2012 following its acquisition by Askham Bryan college and, under his leadership, has seen student numbers grow from 350 to
around 1,000.
He has overseen a number of improvements to the college during his tenure, including the installation of a £3 million dairy unit at the home farm, updating existing buildings on the main campus, and a new equestrian centre.
Mr Johnson commented: “I look forward to taking up my new role, working with the local community and industry to ensuring the technical and professional qualifications the college delivers meet the needs of both individuals and businesses, and drives forward the economic wellbeing of the region.”
If you want to let us know of any new faces at the top of your college, training provider or awarding organisation please let us know by emailing news@feweek.co.uk
The government has finally announced the eight Institute for Apprenticeships board members (listed below), with the chair to be confirmed at a later date.
This will come as a relief to the sector after FE Week’s front page last week reported concern that the government remained silent on board members and other permanent leadership posts, under three months before the Institute become “fully operational”.
This has been welcomed by chief executive of the Association of Colleges David Hughes, but the immediate response from the independent training provider sector was one of disappointment that it is not represented (see quotes below).
The government has also published the long-awaited IfA operational plan which “sets out how the Institute for Apprenticeships will take forward the programme of reform and raise the quality of apprenticeships.”
A spokesperson for the Department for Education said: “One of the Institute’s main jobs when it starts operating in April 2017 will be to support the government’s drive to deliver three million quality apprenticeships by 2020 and that businesses get the skilled workforce they need to prosper, so it is vital that employers are well represented. That is why the board will be made up primarily of employers, business leaders and their representatives.”
FE Week can also reveal that the first deputy director for the new apprenticeships policing body has been appointed.
Anastasia (Ana) Osbourne, formerly employed in the Enterprise Directorate at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, was introduced as the IfA’s new ‘deputy director of approvals’, to an audience of over 100 delegates at a private Trailblazer Conference.
The conference, which was run by the Department for Education, took place in Birmingham and was attended by employers who have been designing apprenticeship standards.
According to the Department for Education’s deputy director job pack, the deputy director of approvals will carry out four main functions.
Ms Osbourne will be expected to “coordinate and support the operation of the approvals process for apprenticeship standards and technical education standards”.
She will also “work with route committees and others to ensure excellent quality assurance practice governs the approvals process including induction, standardisation, monitoring, review, risk assessment and feedback mechanisms”.
Finally, her position awards her responsibility for building “effective relationships with stakeholders” and working with “analysts and others to develop occupational maps”.
Reactions
Update (Monday, January 30):
The Department for Education biographies for the Institute for Apprenticeship board members did not identify anyone from an independent training provider.
However, FE Week has subsequently been made aware that Paul Cadman is chief executive of Crosby Management Training.
Crosby Management Training does not have a direct contract with the SFA, but does subcontract from Dudley College and Walsall College, through contracts worth £281,380 combined.
AELP told FE Week this morning that its criticism of the weighting of appointments towards colleges, and not ITPs that are direct providers, still stood.
Another highly profitable training provider has suddenly gone bust in mysterious circumstances, leaving hundreds of learners on the hook for thousands of pounds of student debt.
John Frank Training, a London-based provider with a satellite office in Preston, went into liquidation on November 30, leaving no assets, despite recording a profit of £1.3 million in the first half of 2016.
The Skills Funding Agency is now investigating the circumstances of the firm’s sudden collapse – but its former learners are struggling to claw back their loans cash.
These students took out loans to pay for their training, but never actually saw the money, as loans money gets paid directly to the provider. In this case it was JFT, which went bust with a loans black hole of nearly half a million pounds.
The SFA is currently refusing to write off their debts, even though they won’t get the training through JFT.
The provider, run by its owner John Frank, used the government’s advanced learner loan scheme to deliver and subcontract courses in areas such as IT and health and fitness, and had been allocated £10 million in loans facilities over the last two years.
Of this, £6.4 million was paid for around 2,200 learners to complete their training with the provider.
However, up to another £464,000 of SFA funding is thought to be effectively missing, which FE Week understands should have covered another 500 learners who are yet to complete their training – and may not now get the chance.
One of the learners who has been left out of pocket approached FE Week alleging the government had been “negligent and incompetent” in the aftermath of JFT’s demise.
John Frank Training website
“I’ve emailed the SFA three times and got no response and the loan company haven’t been helpful,” she said. “They finally emailed me on December 22 to say transfer your loan to a new provider. I’ve tried to do this but you can’t transfer if you have already started a programme.”
She added that the responsibility lies with the SFA, and asked “surely I should be refunded or transferred? It isn’t my fault he closed down overnight”.
The learner claimed that up to 500 students had been left in a similar position: expected to pay back loans for courses they can’t now complete.
FE Week was told that the affected students will not be able to cancel the loans, but if they are able to transfer to another provider, their training would be paid for.
It is understood that accounts presented to the provider’s meeting of creditors showed that JFT made a profit of £1.3 million between January and August last year, a period of good business. Just a few months later, in November, the company was wound up.
A spokesperson for the SFA, which is among JFT’s creditors, owed around £42,000, said it was “looking into” the issues with JFT.
“Our priority is to help ensure learners can continue with their courses with minimal disruption, and we are actively working to identify suitable alternative training providers or colleges with whom learners can complete their studies,” she said.
“The Student Loans Company has already written to all affected advanced learner loans-funded learners. Any learner with questions or concerns should contact us at SFA advanced learner loans.”
The Student Loans Company declined to comment on the matter, other than to say “it is the role of the SFA to regulate and authorise providers”.
Lee Morris of Marshall Peters, the liquidator, said: “As liquidator, we have a duty to investigate issues with transactions and to identify whether there were antecedent transactions which can be clawed back into the estate for the benefit of creditors. I cannot tell you where that investigation is up to, because it could jeopardise future outcomes.”
A number of other providers who used JFT as a subcontractor, as well as awarding organisations and other creditors, have confirmed to FE Week that they have launched internal investigations of their own into their dealings with the provider [see box outs].
JFT’s former operations consultant, Craig Hughes, spoke to FE Week about the company’s downfall and said he believed “over 500” learners were affected.
He said the set-up at JFT had been a “very closed-up shop”, and alleged that John Frank dealt with all of the finances himself.
After JFT went bust, Mr Hughes said he wanted to distance himself from the company “as much as possible” because it was “an awful situation”.
Mr Frank is understood to spend much of his time in the south of Spain, where it is believed he bought a house last summer.
FE Week has made repeated attempts to contact him without success.
However, a former employee said he had passed on our enquires and that Mr Frank had told him that he did not wish to comment.
The SFA has previously recognised they have a problem overseeing loans funded provision, particularly where much of it is subcontracted.
Since August, the SFA has banned new subcontracting contracts for advanced learner loans, with a complete ban coming into force from August 2017.
In addition, growth requests for advanced learner loans were paused in September last year, while in November the SFA introduced caps for how much loan money can be allocated to a provider.
For example if an approved loans facility is £500,000 or less, a maximum growth limit of £250,000 will apply.
ALL ABOUT JOHN FRANK TRAINING AND THE MAN IN CHARGE
As well as being a sole director of JFT, John Frank was also appointed a director of Anydriver School of Motoring Limited on July 23, 2012, though that company is also now dissolved.
JFT was founded in December 2011 and had a registered office in Preston, according to Companies House.
It was a major provider of training, with an SFA advanced learner loan facility – some of which was subcontracted – of £4,329,224 in 2015/16 and £5,000,790 in 2016/17.
According to the SFA register JFT were also a subcontractor for apprenticeships and traineeships across four providers, with contracts totalling over £700,000.
Clive Morris, from the firm Marshall Peters, was appointed as the company liquidator for voluntary winding up last November.
FE Week understands that John Frank is currently living in Liverpool with his family, but that he is often to be found at his property in Marbella, Spain.
LEAD PROVIDERS
JFT was a named subcontractor for four lead providers, according to the latest Skills Funding Agency list of declared subcontractors, from July 2016.
The largest contract was for £260,000 with Softmist Limited, a training procurement consultancy specialising in government-funded work-based training, which trades under the name Skillspoint. It was acquired by national outsourcing organisation Staffline Group in 2014.
In a statement, the director of Softmist told FE Week: “We have launched an internal investigation on this matter.”
Summerhouse Equestrian and Training Centre LLP had a £216,000 contract, and confirmed to FE Week that JFT was their subcontractor for apprenticeship and traineeship provision, but not advanced learner loans.
Peter Thompson, its development and operations director, said: “Our first priority is always to protect the learners.
“Summerhouse has worked with the affected learners, their employers and two other training organisations to, where possible, transfer the programmes to another provider to ensure learners are not disadvantaged.”
Ixion Holdings Limited, a not-for-profit group of companies that is a subsidiary of Anglia Ruskin University, had a contract worth £144,441 with JFT, and gave it an award for ‘outstanding subcontractor’ in 2015.
Chief operating officer (skills, employment and enterprise) Jacqueline Oughton told FE Week: “John Frank did not have a contract in 2016/17 with Ixion Holdings.” She declined to comment on past contracts.
Rochdale Training Association, a company which provides lifelong learning, development and business support services, had a contract with JFT worth £121,000 last July.
But a spokesperson said this week it only had four students with JFT at the time of liquidation.
Chief executive Jill Nagy declined to comment because “we have such little dealing”.
CREDITORS
At its liquidation JFT owed £373,064 to 41 creditors, according to a statement of company affairs uploaded to Companies House last December.
This ranged from £200 owed to City and Guilds, to £67,830 to Ruby Elite Training, which specialises in personal training qualifications.
The creditors also included government bodies, with a sum of £42,888 owed to the Skills Funding Agency, £2,500 to HM Revenue & Customs in VAT, and £10,000 for PAYE.
A training provider named 360 GSP, which is located in Wembley, London, and which specialises in information technology, is owed £40,460 and a spokesperson told FE Week about its experience, saying: “Sadly, this is correct and John Frank Training left many learners in a position without a learning provider.
“We have continued to provide training to the John Frank learners to allow them to complete their courses, as we felt that it was not right to leave the learners high and dry.”
The spokesperson said JFT sudden end came as “a shock”, but 360 GSP has been working with the SFA to provide “alternative arrangements” for learners, and it hopes to “finalise this shortly”.
“We did not sub-contract with John Frank Training, we were a delivery partner responsible for providing training to the learners and we too were negatively affected by John Frank Training going into liquidation,” they said.
A spokesperson for the liquidators confirmed that it is investigating whether any transactions took place before JFT folded, which could give cause for cash for the creditors to be “clawed back”.
AWARDING ORGANISATIONS
A number of awarding organisations were also listed on JFT’s website.
A spokesperson for NCFE said: “JFT is a centre that was approved under our normal approval process to deliver several of our qualifications.
“It did not register any learners on any of the NCFE qualifications it was approved to deliver.
“We are aware of the allegations that have been made against this centre.
“In such circumstances, where there may be an impact on learners, we follow our routine investigations procedure.
“We have now invoked this procedure and are taking all the appropriate action.”
Pearson, which is also a creditor of JFT to the tune of £4,304, told FE Week that it was looking into the dissolved company.
“Pearson monitors the quality of all the centres we work with through a rigorous and published process,” said its spokesperson.
“We are currently looking into concerns about this centre so cannot comment further on this case.”
He added that Pearson would “do all we can to support learners in finding a suitable alternative centre to complete their qualifications”.
Active IQ told FE Week: “We have assisted separate training providers in supporting some affected learners who have managed to complete their studies elsewhere.
“To date we have had no response from repeated attempts at communicating directly with John Frank Training Ltd and approval was withdrawn from this centre at the end of November 2016 as a result of lack of response.”
A spokesperson for the YMCA said: “We approved them as a centre a few years back but they’ve never registered a single learner with us and we removed them from our provider list last November. We’re now in the process of updating our website.”
The proportion of learners on apprenticeship standards without an approved assessment organisation is dropping rapidly, according to new figures.
Statistics published in October showed 42 per cent of all starts (1,790 out of 4,240) until July had no assessment organisation to choose from – a situation that former top skills civil servant Dr Sue Pember described as “diabolical” (pictured).
However, FE Week has crunched the numbers in the latest government data, released on Thursday (January 26), and found that the proportion of courses without assessors had fallen by more than half to 18 per cent in October.
In all, 82 per cent of apprentices were on standards with at least one approved assessment organisation at the end of October 2016.
There were 9,550 overall starts on the new standards by the end of that month, which meant that 1,680 apprentices were still forced to start on programmes that didn’t have any end-point assessment organisations in place.
And 950 of these without an end-point assessor – representing 10 per cent of all starts – were on standards that had their first start back in 2014/15.
The lack of assessors is significant because all apprentices on the new standards, which are gradually replacing frameworks, are required to pass an end-point assessment to complete their apprenticeship.
These must be carried out by AOs that have been cleared for the task by the government, on the Skills Funding Agency’s register of apprentice assessment organisations.
Dr Pember told FE Week in October that it was “diabolical” to allow an apprentice “to start a programme without explaining not only what the end test will contain, but where it will be, what shape it will take and who will be the organisation to oversee and manage the process”.
There are currently 159 standards approved for delivery, of which 81 have at least one assessment organisation in place, while 78 are without.
So while the number of standards with an assessment organisation in place is rising, the proportion without is still hovering around the 50 per cent mark.
The latest statistical release included provisional data on apprenticeship starts between August and October 2016, as well as final data on starts from previous years.
It showed that the number of standards to have attracted at least one start has increased to 90 – up from the 56 in October’s SFR.
And while 35 of these standards have not yet secured an assessment organisation, compared with 33 in October, this represents a significantly smaller proportion than before – 39 per cent compared with 59 per cent.
Six of these standards had their first starts in 2014/15, meaning that some apprentices have been studying for more than two years without knowing how they will be assessed at the end of their apprenticeship.
Five of these standards – electrical/ electronic technical support engineer, manufacturing engineer, mechatronics maintenance technician, product design and development engineer, and product design and development technician – were developed by the automotive Trailblazer group led by Jaguar Land Rover.
A spokesperson for Jaguar Land Rover told FE Week: “Although EPA is outstanding, we are still very confident that the solution will be in place when it is required.”
The sixth standard, relationship manager (banking), was developed by the financial services Trailblazer group led by Barclays.
A spokesperson for the bank told FE Week that it had no concerns about the lack of an end-point assessment organisation for the standard.
The Department for Education said in October that it was working with the Skills Funding Agency to encourage more assessment organisations to apply to the register.
Independent training providers will have every right to feel aggrieved that they are not represented on the new board of the Institute for Apprenticeships.
The government sensibly wants a relatively small number of board members, and the plan has always been for the majority of them to be ‘employers’.
But it clearly felt provider representation was still important, as two of the eight spaces went to college principals.
Would it not have been useful, as well as symbolic, to have given one of those spaces to someone from the independent sector, especially considering it delivers the vast majority of apprenticeships?
Sure, there will be a much larger stakeholder group, which we are told will help the board access wider sector expertise.
But the lack of board representation will be viewed as symptomatic of wider lack of understanding at the heart of government about the independent sector contribution.
Let’s hope this is just an oversight, and when practically possible the imbalance can be addressed.
Apprenticeship starts published by the DfE this morning show a slight increase, when comparing provisional figures for the first quarter of the academic year (August to October).
Latest figures out today show provisional starts at 155,600, compared to 153,100 over the same period a year ago.
This comes as the latest vacancy numbers taken from the ‘find and apprenticeship’ government website showed a 20 percent fall (12,810 fewer) in the first quarter of 2016/17 compared to the same period last year. And Traineeship vacancies fell 29 percent (610 fewer).
As the figures below also reveal, applications to become an apprentice rose 35 percent (up 150,770) in the same period.
So as the volume of vacancies from employers shrunk the number of people applying continued to rise.
Mark Dawe at AELP has expressed “concern” at the latest vacancy numbers, adding: “We need to make sure that the incentives for employers are sufficient to make sure that more apprenticeship opportunities become available.”
FE Week has spoken to various sector insiders, and one unsubstantiated theory is that some ‘levied-employers’ are waiting for the apprenticeship reforms to take place from 1 May, when they will be able to start using their credit. And the ‘non-levied employers’ might also be waiting until May given their fee contribution for apprenticeship standards will fall from a third to 10 percent.
Apprenticeships and skills Minister Robert Halfon said: “Apprenticeships offer people a ladder of opportunity to get on in highly skilled jobs. With 780,000 apprenticeships started since May 2015, we are well on our way to turning this country into an apprenticeships nation.
“I want to build on this success and keep increasing the prestige and quality of apprenticeships to ensure they are on par with traditional academic options.”
The former secretary of state for business, innovation and skills has told FE Week he is “delighted” that the government’s industrial strategy green paper places a serious focus on improving adult education, in an exclusive interview.
The new document out on January 23 acknowledged a “growing challenge” with training for older people.
It committed to exploring “ambitious new approaches to encouraging lifelong learning”, which could include how to make the training costs people face “less daunting”; and provide better information to ensure older people who are retraining learn skills actually needed by employers.
Speaking ahead of a speech this evening at a London event organised by the Workers’ Educational Association, Sir Vince Cable praised prime minister Theresa May for “buying into” the industrial strategy, and using it to broaden out the focus on vocational education.
“I think what is crucial here is recognising that adult education matters, over and above traditional university campus learning and narrowly vocational learning through apprenticeships and so on,” he told FE Week.
“That broader adult education message had got lost, I tried to bring it back but if this government are serious about running with it then I am absolutely delighted.”
However, he also warned that there would also be “various challenges” – citing funding as his foremost concern.
“The adult sector is under quite a lot of pressure and the government has indicated where additional money is going to come from,” he said.
Sir Vince added that devolution could be another sticking point.
“Adult education as I understand it is going to go into combined authorities.
“Some of them may be very enlightened, but whether Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham and the rest do something with it very much depends on leadership at that level.”
He added: “It becomes increasingly important to know what the local mayors and their advisers are doing.”
Sir Vince served as David Cameron’s secretary of state for business, innovation and skills in the coalition government from May 2010 to May 2015, when he was succeeded by Sajid Javid.
In speaking to FE Week on January 25, he emphasised that in his view “true” adult learning should be broad and relevant to many.
He said: “True adult learning as is people who are trying to rediscover their confidence having been out of the labour force, it’s fully retired, it’s people who are marginalised, people who are very busy and only have time for bitesize learning – not going off and doing traditional university courses.”
Sir Vince said that “until recently” the focus has been too narrow with too much emphasis on apprenticeships, but it is not too late for the government to make positive changes.
He added: “I think it’s actually very welcome that we’re looking at this continuing education in a much broader sense.
“We’ve had this long battle with adult education to get away from the very narrow belief in accreditation not understanding the importance of broader adult learning, and if that’s where this industrial strategy helps with that then that’s very welcome.”
He said that he would also be encouraging his former adviser Giles Wilkes, who is now in Number 10 and leading on the industrial strategy, to maintain the focus on adult education.
“He’s an intelligent guy who gets the point,” he said.
In another exclusive interview with FE Week, which will be reported in this week’s paper, apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon discussed how the industrial strategy placed reviving adult education firmly back on the agenda.
Mr Cable said he “hadn’t picked up” that the minister was “singing from the same hymn sheet”, but added, “if that’s the case then I’m absolutely delighted”.
Sir Vince said: “My parents, who left school at 15 to work in factories and then progressed in life through FE and adult education, were part of that night-school tradition, and they inspired my own belief in the importance of lifelong learning.”
The first permanent employee of the Institute for Apprenticeships has finally been appointed, after ongoing delays and an absence of information about who would run the important new body.
Anastasia (Ana) Osbourne, formerly employed in the Enterprise Directorate at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, was introduced as the IfA’s new ‘deputy director of approvals’, to an audience of over 100 delegates at a private Trailblazer Conference on January 24.
The conference, which was run by the Department for Education, took place in Birmingham and was attended by employers who have been designing apprenticeship standards.
The lucky audience witnessed both a welcome to the event and a presentation from Ms Osbourne in her new post, which is just one of six deputy director positions that will help to ensure the Institute fulfils its role of ‘policing’ apprenticeships.
Individuals appointed to the other five jobs will cover assessment and quality; corporate effectiveness; data; funding; and standards, creation and review.
According to the Department for Education’s deputy director job pack, the deputy director of approvals will carry out four main functions.
Ms Osbourne will be expected to “coordinate and support the operation of the approvals process for apprenticeship standards and technical education standards”.
She will also “work with route committees and others to ensure excellent quality assurance practice governs the approvals process including induction, standardisation, monitoring, review, risk assessment and feedback mechanisms”.
Finally, her position awards her responsibility for building “effective relationships with stakeholders” and working with “analysts and others to develop occupational maps”.
Delegates at the DfE conference were also informed that operational plan for the IfA would be published and its board members announced “before the end of the month”.
However, FE Week now understands that both of these announcements are expected tomorrow (January 27).
Check back with FE Week then for further details.
Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden recently attacked the government’s creation of the IfA as “a complete shambles”, claiming in an exclusive FE Week expert piece that it was “in danger of becoming a huge scandal”.
He said: “Even though it will be charged with implementing a flagship policy, it has yet to advertise for a permanent chief and deputy chief executive, and we now have less than three months before it goes live.
“The muddle has been there from day one … What is paralysing the department?”
However, when challenged by FE Week on the reasons for delaying hires to the IfA, the DfE refused to admit that deadlines had been missed.
“The roles of permanent chief executive and deputy at the IfA will be publicly advertised in due course, following the appointment of the board members,” said a spokesperson.
“The current post-holders were appointed on an interim basis to drive forward the creation of the IfA ahead of its launch in April.”
The new Digital Apprenticeship Service is ploughing ahead, and all levy-paying employers will be able to register next month.
Having been given a thorough “private beta assessment” by the Government Digital Service, the online service, which lets levy-payers access their accounts and make payments online, has been cleared for use, the Department for Education has said.
The next step, a DfE spokesperson told FE Week, will be to invite “some employers” to register on the system “over coming weeks”.
She said: “We will work with these employers to continue testing and improving the service, before we invite all levy-paying employers to register in February 2017.”
It is understood that levy-payers will be able to set up accounts on the DAS, choose the types of apprenticeships they want to run, the number of apprentices they take on, and appropriate training providers.
The levy will only be paid by businesses with a payroll of more than £3 million, which represents less than two per cent of employers in the country. The money will be ring-fenced, so it can only be spent on training apprentices.
The next step will be to invite “some employers” to register on the system “over coming weeks”
Gary Tucker, DAS’ service manager, explained the rigorous process his team went through to make sure it would meet employers’ needs before handing it over to GDS in a blog in December.
“Over the past three months, the service has been thoroughly tested from end to end by 100 employers and their provider partners.”
This testing covered, for example, registration, the process of “adding an apprentice to reflect the agreement between the employer and the provider”, and “submitting provider data to evidence training and trigger payments”.
FE Week revealed last October that the government expected to spend at least £12.5 million on delivering the DAS.
This would cover the costs both to the Skills Funding Agency and to suppliers of services such as web development and user research.
Sector leaders will be hoping the new service is more successful than the SFA’s FE Choices website, which was shut down in October 2015 after just three and a half years in operation.
The website performed one of the DAS’ functions in allowing users to compare the performance of providers – though this was aimed towards the public, rather than as a service specifically for employers.
An FE Week exclusive six months after it launched in January 2012 revealed that only 6,230 people had accessed it. Our Freedom of Information inquiry also revealed that FE Choices had cost the taxpayer over £2.3 million.
The website itself had cost £630,000 to build, with the remaining £1.7 million spent on gathering and producing of data.
The high cost was picked up on by Private Eye, which asked whether FE Choices “may be one of the most expensively pointless government websites yet”.
