The providers which have won adult education budget contracts from Greater Manchester Combined Authority have been revealed.
The providers will share up to £25 million of the authority’s total devolved AEB, which is worth an annual £92 million from August, after winning contracts under a competitive tender.
Contracts will run from 1 August 2019 to 31 July 2020, with the option to extend them annually until 31 July 2022.
Ten of the 17 winning providers received an Ofsted grade two at their last inspection, and three received a clean sweep of ‘reasonable progress’ ratings in early monitoring visit reports.
However, one provider, the Education and Skills Partnership, received two ‘insufficient progress’ ratings alongside two ‘reasonable progress’ ratings in its monitoring visit report; although one of the latter ratings was for its adult education provision.
Three providers – Groundwork Rochdale and Oldham, Maximus People Services, and The Training Brokers – have yet to be inspected by the watchdog on their educational provision.
Like the last national AEB procurement, colleges and local authorities will have the rest of the budget grant funded to them.
FE Week previously reported in January the 36 providers which had progressed to the final round of procurement in Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
The first stage of procurement, a supplier assessment questionnaire, was completed in December, and 36 bidders met the GMCA’s minimum scoring criteria to make it through to the second stage, where they were invited to tender for part of the authority’s AEB funding.
GMCA has awarded AEB funding to a total of 36 providers, including 19 which did not tender for funding. The amounts for each contract has not yet been revealed.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency will hand over control of the adult education budget for areas to such as Manchester, Wigan, Trafford, and Rochdale to GMCA in August.
Meanwhile, it will also devolve control of the AEB for six other areas to their respective combined authorities: West of England, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Greater London, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, and West Midlands.
North of Tyne and Sheffield City Region combined authorities are due to take over the AEB for their areas in the 2020/21 academic year.
FE Week revealed in May which providers had won a procured AEB contract from West Midlands Combined Authority, which had set aside £28 million of the £125.6 million total budget for procured provision.
The same month we published the 30 winners of the Greater London Authority AEB tender, which was worth £130 million of the total £306 million budget.
As well as the 19 winners in the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority tender for £15.11 million of its £50.35 million AEB.
The full list of winners from the GMCA tender are:
- Access to Music
- Babington Business College
- Back 2 Work Complete Training
- Gloucestershire College
- Groundwork Oldham and Rochdale
- Mantra Learning
- Maximus People Services
- Pathway First
- PeoplePlus Group
- SeeTec Business Technology Centre
- Standguide
- System Group
- The Education and Skills Partnership
- The Growth Company
- The Training Brokers
- Total People
- Workers’ Educational Association
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