Public services students become first in the country to undertake prison work experience

Six students from City College Norwich are the first in the country to complete a week’s work experience behind the walls of a prison.

The group, who are on the extended diploma level three public services course at the college, undertook the placement at HMP Norwich as part of a scheme aiming to engage young adults with careers in the prison service.

Students had the chance to work in the control room and offender management unit, and had an insight into processes such as visitation, education and rehabilitation. They also completed a fitness test required of all prison staff, and witnessed the work of security sniffer dogs.

At the end of the placement, the students gave a presentation to justice secretary Elizabeth Truss, highlighting what they had learned, and talked about how they found the overall experience.

Patrick Setters, who worked at Norwich Prison before joining City College Norwich as a public services lecturer, said: “There is a recruitment shortage for prison staff and this is one way of helping to address that. I believe this scheme will help to recruit dedicated people who are aware of the challenges which will therefore retain staff.”

 

Featured picture: (L-R) Davina Wright 18, Jake Sumner 18, Robson Summers 18, Isaac Mace 18, Thomas Crouch 20, Scott Richards 18

Wellbeing applies to staff as well as students

Improving staff wellbeing is not only vital to college success, it’s our moral duty as FE leaders, says Stuart Rimmer

At the recent AOC annual conference, its president Ian Ashman declared 2016/17 the year of mental health in FE. This was an important, welcome and long overdue step that has been superbly received by the sector.

At the conference I was invited to deliver sessions on the broader topic of wellbeing, including launching the AOC Eastern Region Further Education Wellbeing Guide. It was great to see a rebalancing of the conference sessions away from an exclusive focus on skills and involving a more holistic approach to post-16 education.

At my college we have made huge gains in supporting wellbeing and mental health for students, but I admit we need to do much more to increase support for staff.

We must begin to look after ourselves from the inside out

If we are to be effective in tackling and improving wellbeing in our students, our staff must be sufficiently equipped, both in terms of personal resilience and wellbeing and with the tools and knowledge to pass onto others. We must begin to look after ourselves from the inside out.

We have introduced a ‘happy balance’ programme, initially with a focus on learners: being in an area of deprivation and with many of our students struggling with basic physical and mental needs, it was imperative that we implemented our student programme quickly.

It was relatively easy to introduce via our tutorial programmes and we partnered with Action for Happiness; adopting its ‘10 keys to happiness for students.

It has become apparent that in an ideal world staff should have come first: our staff teams are in need of more coaching, tools and knowledge, both for themselves and others.

So we are extending the programme, addressing the three elements of social, mental and physical wellbeing, to our staff.

Developing a prescription for how we can improve conditions for our teams is more challenging than for students.

At times talking to staff about their wellness can be uncomfortable and risk being perceived as a nanny-state intervention, or just one more thing to do in a busy institutional schedule of requests.

How we practically and, in some respects, philosophically approach who is responsible for improving wellbeing in the workplace is worthy of discussion. Is improving wellbeing the duty of a paternalistic college or should the individual use opportunities to help themselves? The answer is both.

Spending time and resource improving staff wellbeing is both vital to college success and our moral duty as FE leaders

We have developed activities and resources and offer a practical guide, including hints, tips and reading for self-help plus supportive intervention where needed. The importance of training and knowledge, myth-busting, meditation, counselling support, exercise, getting outside, eating well and socialising are all addressed to encourage staff to proactively improve and maintain their wellbeing.

Having recently completed the Health and Safety Executive’s stress survey, our FE staff are clearly experiencing some difficult times both inside and outside of work.

We have a long way to go. Last year we established that every member of staff would be given a wellbeing target as part of their appraisal. The targets were self-determined and ranged from running marathons through to simply setting aside time for a lunch break; from training in understanding anxiety through to yoga and mindfulness sessions.

In a sector of constant change, with mergers, area-based reviews, curriculum upheaval through Sainsbury and apprenticeship reform, performance tables and the ubiquitous pressure of Ofsted, spending time and resource improving staff wellbeing is both vital to college success and our moral duty as FE leaders.

We should want our staff to come to work happy and lead positive, flourishing lives. Increased happiness also leads quickly to improved performance too, which soon begins to feel like a win-win.

I’m hoping that 2017 can also be FE’s year of staff wellbeing and one in which we all, including principals, begin to find our ‘happy balance’.

 

Stuart Rimmer is principal and CEO at Great Yarmouth College

Gazelle Group on its last legs after its director and most members quit

The Gazelle Colleges Group is on life support following a precipitous drop in membership, months of inactivity and the departure of its executive director.

At its peak, the group, formed in 2011 to promote enterprise in colleges, had 23 members – each of which paid many thousands of pounds in annual membership fees.

But FE Week investigations have found that just six members now remain – City College Norwich, Activate Learning, Barking and Dagenham College, Highbury College, Glasgow Kelvin College, and South West College.

Significantly, the group’s former executive director Carolyn Chapman-Lees left the group in June – a fact which FE Week discovered when we attempted to email her, as the Gazelle website still lists her as its main contact.

The group, which is registered at Highbury College Portsmouth, was subject to an FE Week investigation in 2014.

This revealed that the five founding member colleges had each paid more than £530,000 to the group since it was launched.

This included a payment of £120,000 for the “purchase of educational concept” by Gateshead College.

Among Gazelle’s activities was the Pantrepreneurship Challenge, run by the fair-trade underwear brand Pants to Poverty in partnership with the group.

However, the underwear company was dissolved in October, as reported in FE Week.

Despite heavy criticism about the waste of public money, no return-on-investment analysis was ever published.

FE Week this week asked Stella Mbubaegbu, the principal of Highbury College and one of Gazelle’s two remaining directors, to justify the huge sums of public money paid to the group. She declined to comment.

However, Gazelle’s other director, Alan Sherry, principal of Glasgow Kelvin College, said the group is now operating on a collective basis to “share best practice and skills across the member colleges” with no paid leader.

He added the group was not actively seeking new members and that its website, which has not been updated since April, should have been taken down. Its Twitter account has also been dormant since December 2015.

Policy expert Mick Fletcher, who voiced his skepticism about the group in FE Week as early as March 2012, said Gazelle was “not the first example of unwise investment by FE colleges and probably won’t be the last”.

He added: “Two things stand out: one is the scale of the sums gambled by the founding members, but perhaps even more significant is the sheer credulousness of a few leaders who built a business fantasy on the back of some interesting but unremarkable approaches to curriculum innovation.”

City College Norwich is the only founding member that is still be part of the group. Warwickshire College Group left last May, New College Nottingham quit in July 2015 and North Hertfordshire College pulled out in May 2015, while Gateshead College also left in 2015.

The current Gazelle Colleges Group company was formed in February 2016, following the liquidation of its predecessors, Gazelle Global and the Gazelle Foundation.

These had “ceased trading” by May last year, when Ms Chapman-Lees told FE Week Gazelle Colleges Group was the “new legal entity”.

Ms Mbubaegbu and Mr Sherry are its only two directors, according to Companies House, after a third – Margaret Constantine – resigned in July.

Membership fees were initially £35,000 a year, but these were slashed to £15,000 in September 2015 following a membership review.

Former Gazelle executive chair Fintan Donohue retired at the end of 2015 after more than four years at the helm.

FEATURE: College students take schoolchildren on Lapland adventure

A trip to Lapland over the Christmas period is considered the ultimate festive holiday, and over 40 local schoolchildren had the chance to go there thanks to students at a North Lincolnshire college – with a bit of imagination, of course. Samantha King reports.

Pupils from St Bernadette’s Catholic Primary Voluntary Academy flew first class, prepared food for Rudolph and met Santa himself during a recent winter getaway – all without leaving the walls of North Lindsey college.

Organised by level two travel and tourism students, the imaginary Lapland trip was part of their assessment in events management for providing a service to the children.

Travel and tourism lecturer at the college and organiser of the annual trip, Angela Gillen, said: “We have three rooms going, the grotto, the aeroplane cabin and Santa’s workshop. The students decide what they want to do in each of those rooms, how it’s going to look and who’s going to take which role.

They use leadership skills and build their confidence, all which goes to helping them in the future really, and also they’re being assessed at the same time.”

The primary school pupils were separated into three groups of 15, with each spending around half an hour in each location. Accompanied by students from the college, they were asked what they wanted for Christmas and entertained through a variety of activities.

The trip began with a simulated flight on the college’s real aeroplane cabin, with each pupil issued their own passport as they stepped on board and enjoyed refreshments.

An in-flight visual programme was also played during the journey, giving the young passengers a scenic view of a winter landscape. There was even on-board entertainment, with one student dressing up as Elsa from ‘Frozen’ and performing a song.

Once at their destination, the children arrived at Santa’s grotto, before enjoying a festive story and participating in Christmas crafts in the workshop room.

Jade Scott-Deeley, a student at the college, said: “All our hard work paid off with the grotto and preparing all the activities. It was really nice to see all the children today and seeing their excitement for Christmas.”

Ms Gillen who played the role of Santa on the day, added: “The event has been going for a couple of years, and so far, we’ve had level three students running it. We thought this year the level two students would benefit because they don’t always get the opportunities that the higher-level students get. They’ve absolutely smashed it.”

The annual event has a reputation amongst local schools, with many requesting the chance to undertake the imaginary trip themselves, and there’s now quite the waiting list.

“The kids get lots out of it,” said Ms Gillen. “Every year we try and make it bigger and better to the point where we have schools ringing us up asking if we’ll put it on for them. There’s a bit of a waiting list for schools to do it.”

 

Featured picture: Pupils strap in for the flight to Lapland

Blackpool college uses animal organs to up STEM intake

A college looking to recruit more pupils to take STEM subjects held a gruesome day of live surgery for a group of local schools.

Blackpool and the Fylde College hosted the event to give prospective pupils hands-on experience of specialist careers, hosting a live surgery experience where they performed operations on animal organs.

It wasn’t all blood and guts however, with other activities on offer including designing and building a rocket car and curriculum staff from engineering, computing and science areas giving skills presentations.

According to the Higher Education Funding Council, the college is the largest provider of higher education STEM courses in England, training people for careers in a range of specialised fields including aerospace, automotive, maritime engineering, energy, and health.

Jane Mahon, partnerships and careers manager at the college, said: “STEM subjects are really important but are sometimes overlooked by pupils so it’s good to show them the exciting career options available to those who study technical and professional subjects.

“These are the skills learned by innovators like Neil Armstrong or Steve Wozniak, who went on to change the face of the world as we know it.”

 

Featured picture: Pupils get stuck into some animal organs

Movers and Shakers: Edition 194

Your weekly guide to who’s new, and who’s leaving.

James Staniforth has been appointed principal and chief executive of the Shrewsbury Colleges Group.

The newly formed group, comprising Shrewsbury Sixth Form college and Shrewsbury college, has become Shropshire’s largest combined A-level and vocational education provider since it completed its merger in July.

Mr Staniforth will take up the new role, leaving his current position as principal at Strode College in Somerset, and bring with him a wealth of experience from senior roles within sixth form and further education colleges.

In the role, he says he is “committed to making Shrewsbury Colleges Group a centre of academic and vocational excellence” and aims to develop a “regional and national reputation”.

He added: “I am delighted to be joining Shrewsbury Colleges Group and to have the opportunity to work with the staff, governors and the community to move the college to the next stage post-merger.”

Mr Staniforth will take over the role from the current principal and CEO, Lyn Surgeon, after Easter 2017.

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Satwant Deol has been appointed principal and CEO of the Henley College.

The college, which is based in Oxfordshire, achieved an Ofsted rating of ‘good’ in its most recent inspection, and teaches nearly 2,000 full-time students from schools across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.

She will take up the role from her current position as managing director of the Technical, Creative, Academic and Professional (TCAP) Company at Highbury college, where she held responsibility for strategic direction, marketing and budgets of the learning company, as well as leadership of the curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment.

Prior to this, she held senior roles across a number of London colleges, where, amongst other initiatives, she set up a mentoring scheme for under-achieving BAME students.

She began her career in software development, and became the first woman to lead an all-male development team in her role as head of department at Coventry University.

At The Henley, she hopes to put her experience of technology to good use, with plans to “get more young women into science, engineering and technology subjects” as well as establishing herself in the local community.

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Joe Mulligan has been appointed principal of South Wiltshire University Technical College (UTC).

Mr Mulligan is currently assistant principal at Bristol Technology and Engineering Academy, and will take up the new principalship on the January 17.

In the role, he has ambitions to make the UTC the number-one choice for local students who have a passion for STEM subjects.

He claims he is most looking forward to “working with the students and teachers” and is “getting to know the city and employers linked with the UTC”.

Mulligan, who grew up in Essex, left school at 16 to take an apprenticeship in aircraft maintenance, and even pursued a degree in mechanical engineering before eventually going into teaching.

Speaking of his decision to take up the role, he said: “Bristol is firmly established now, results are good and I wanted the opportunity to develop another UTC and make it my own.

“I really believe that Salisbury has so much potential.”

 

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

If DfE is listening it must act now

Employers are telling a large and successful provider of 16-18 engineering apprentices they will switch to adults once the funding reforms kick in.

Most 16-18 frameworks see a significant rate cut from May, and for the first time employers with 50 or more staff will have to pay for them.

Then there are the new replacement apprenticeship standards, which offers no age specific incentive to the provider.

Plus, according to Jon Graham at JTL, the £1,000 16-18 employer incentive is proving nowhere near enough to persuade them to take a young person over an adult.

As I suggested to Robert Halfon last year, the loss of a ring-fenced 16-18 budget means there is little the government can do to stop the funding
switch to adults.

The minister, who has so far proved to be a good listener to sector concerns, needs to take action quickly.

He should remember too that the Conservative Party stressed in its 2015 manifesto it was committing to the creation of 3 million starts by 2020,
so “young people acquire the skills to succeed”.

We can’t wait for a Technical Education reform magic pill from 2019.

The DfE must step in and take back some control now, else there will be tens of thousands of disappointed young people
in just a few months from now.

To put it bluntly, employer ownership alone simply isn’t compatible with social justice.

Outstanding colleges might now expect a visit from Ofsted

Ofsted seems to be heading for a U-turn on a controversial policy that exempts providers rated ‘outstanding’ from routine inspection.

FE Week revealed in November that two colleges – Bridgwater and Taunton College in Somerset, and Hills Road Sixth Form College in Cambridgeshire – had not been inspected for a decade.

Since then, another college – Cirencester College in Gloucester – has been added to the 10-year list, and 14 other FE institutions are now in their ninth year of non-inspection.

All were graded ‘outstanding’ during their last visits from Ofsted, but significant changes in how the sector is monitored have occurred over the last decade – raising serious questions about the wait.

However, FE Week understands that Ofsted is now looking to change its policy, which currently states providers judged ‘outstanding’ at their most recent inspection are “not normally subject to routine inspection”.

It is understood the policy may change so that ‘outstanding’ providers join the same routine procedure as others, such as being subjected to two-day short inspections the way ‘good’ institutions are, or to give them their own procedure.

If given the go-ahead, the move would be a statement of intent for radical change at the education watchdog by new chief inspector Amanda Spielman (pictured), who took the reins from Sir Michael Wilshaw this month.

A spokesperson for the watchdog, however, said this week that it had “no plans at the moment to change this policy” and noted that it had been the government, not the inspectorate, that created it in the first place.

The previous government introduced the policy in the Education Act 2011, with the aim of allowing Ofsted the best opportunity to “focus its resources on underperforming providers”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said that while ‘outstanding’ providers are exempt from routine inspection, they are still subject to accountability through Ofsted’s risk assessments.

Risk assessments consider factors such as academic performance and student attendance, but there are fears the procedure does not reveal the full truth about all aspects of a provider, such as safeguarding.

FE Week asked Sir Michael about the 10-year gaps at the launch of Ofsted’s annual report last month.

The former chief inspector said: “Where the data shows a college is doing well, we obviously don’t do an inspection. We go into those institutions where the data is not very good, or there are concerns.”

But unions want the policy reviewed, arguing that it is dangerous for providers to go so long without a full inspection.

Malcolm Trobe, the interim general secretary at the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Ofsted does have to prioritise what they are doing but 10 years is way too long for them not to have picked up on a reinspection.

“The risk assessment procedure will not necessarily cover everything that is going on within the provider.”

The controversy of Ofsted’s inspection policy will also bring into question whether the ‘outstanding’ grade should be dropped altogether.

Ms Spielman said she would look to scrap the grade during a parliamentary hearing last year but because the government wrote the exemption for outstanding providers into law in 2011, parliament would need to repeal this law before the top grade could be removed.

Mr Trobe said he is hoping Ms Spielman will “open up the debate” on the matter now she is in post.

Navigating 2017

In 2016 the FE sector navigated very choppy waters – but for the New Year it is now full steam ahead. There is much to do to be ready for the developments 2017 will bring, and it is important to take stock of what was achieved in the past 12 months.

Click here to download the supplement

To help with this voyage through consolidation towards new plans, FE Week’s ‘Navigating 2017’ supplement rounds up the big changes of 2016 and the landmarks events to keep an eye out for in the year to come.

To begin, on page three we have the New Year’s resolutions of FE’s captain, the apprenticeships and skills minister Robert Halfon. He exclusively shares his vision for 2017 in detail, covering everything from funding reforms to the Institute for Apprenticeships and the Technical and Further Education Bill.

Then we examine the four biggest policy areas for the sector in detail and give the forecast for each over the coming year. We explore what is taking place in apprenticeship reform and funding, area reviews and devolution, study programmes and technical education, and performance tables and Ofsted.   

Pages four and five address the apprenticeship levy, covering the perspectives of providers and employers, and also revisit FE Week’s successful skirmish with the government in September’s #SaveOurApprenticeships campaign.

On six Billy Camden delves into the dark waters of the area review process, the first outcomes of which were only revealed last November. He covers delays, infighting, and the task ahead for new FE commissioner Richard Atkins.

Page seven turns to the devolution of the adult education budget, following the announcement in the Autumn Statement that the government is continuing with plans to devolve the AEB for London by 2019/20.

On pages 10 and 11, Paul Offord proves he knows the ropes when it comes to study programmes and the Skills Plan, tackling changes to English and maths for post-16 learners and the 15 pathfinder’ routes for technical education outlined by Lord Sainsbury.

The new post-16 accountability measures, which are in the offing this month, surface on pages 12 and 13, alongside a recap of FE Week’s first ever ranking table released in November.

Finally, pages 14 and 15 list some of the sector’s top skippers, who tell you what they see on the horizon for the coming year.