Blog posts for author:Andrew Gladstone-Heighton

As Nick Linford is right to point out in his recent blog , the non-levy tendering process has been fraught with own goals and confusion in setting out how a large amount of apprenticeship provision could be delivered. If the government is serious about its manifesto commitment to grow apprenticeships, then it’s going the right way to significantly damage the provider base that will deliver these. As the (revised) deadline for tender submissions has passed, we now enter a nervous waiting period as we see who has been successful in receiving their allocations, and indeed, if the allocations received meet the amounts tendered for.

Today, the Association of Employers and Learning Provides (AELP) set out their recommendations for government to address as part of the apprenticeship reforms.  The 14 recommendations centre on enhancing of social mobility and broadening apprenticeships opportunities. The recommendations are timely, coming just 4 months after the implementation of the apprenticeship Levy, and after the recent iteration of the tendering process for non-levy procurement. Everyone engaged in the delivery and assessment of apprenticeships is mindful of the consequences of the ‘new world’ of levy funding.

With August sharp becoming one of the wettest months of the year, the Department for Education (DfE) released their own deluge of information and documents, in time for us in the sector to wade through and pick out anything of value. One of the many things released was the long overdue DfE/Frontier report: Economics Assessing the Vocational Qualifications Market in England.

We’re starting to see the relevant ministers within the Department for Education settle into their respective briefs, with some of the fog of uncertainty around some reforms beginning to lift. The now confirmed Minister of State for Apprenticeships and Skills, Anne Milton, stated at the recent AELP conference that she was here to ‘listen and learn’, and seemed to be in favour of a period of stability to allow the current reforms to be rolled out.

Here’s a cautionary tale. Theresa May’s former chief of staff, Nick Timothy, resigned over the weekend after demands from the Conservative party members. Along with his colleague Fiona Hill, Nick was seen as the co-architect of the (first) 2017 General Election. They initially worked together at the Home Office, and became Theresa May’s special advisers during this time.

Well, what a night. When the exit polls were announced a 10pm, it was a shock to us all - the General Election has resulted in a ‘Hung Parliament’.

The general election has come at an interesting time. The uncertainty of Brexit, weakened wage growth and the need to upskill our domestic skills base are just some of the challenges that we currently face as a nation. Amid all of this, education reform is once again a high profile item in the various major parties’ manifestos.

In a move that has been anticipated in the education sector for some time, the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) have been merged to form the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). Following the Skills Portfolio being brought back into the Department for Education (DfE) after the cabinet reshuffle last year, the ‘Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) brings together the existing responsibilities of the Education Funding Agency (EFA) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA), creating a single funding agency accountable for funding education and training for children, young people and adults’.

As we move into the new era of the Apprenticeship Levy, what does this mean for the public sector and those schools affected? With budgets already stretched to breaking point, is there even capacity to make the most of this additional taxation? So, we’re now living in the brave new world of the Apprenticeship Levy. All employers whose wage bill is over £3 million will have to pay a 0.5% tax, which can then be drawn down to pay for an apprentice or apprentices. This isn’t just for private companies either – in order to drive adoption of apprenticeships (and support the government’s target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020), public sector organisations, including schools, will also have to pay this levy.

With less than 4 months to go until the first awards are issued, we received clarification this month on what a ‘pass’ is in the new maths and English 9-1 graded GCSEs and also what’s meant by a ‘standard’ and ‘strong pass’. In a letter to Neil Carmichael MP, Chair of the Education Select Committee, Secretary of State for Education Justine Greening set out that she ‘wanted to provide certainty about how this new grading will work and, in particular, the consequences for individual pupils of achieving a grade 4 or grade 5’.