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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’.

Following a comprehensive review of English and maths Functional Skills, led by the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) at the government’s request, new Functional Skills qualifications will be introduced in 2019 with a view to making them more robust and more credible. The ETF’s review, ‘Making maths and English work for all’, found that work could be done to improve the relevance and content of Functional Skills, as well as improve their recognition and credibility in the labour market. The government wants to ensure everyone has an appropriate opportunity to improve their maths and English skills and achieve a qualification that employers recognise.

As I start my eleventh week at AELP (not that I am counting), you will be unsurprised that much of our focus of late has been around readiness, namely provider and employer readiness as part of the ramp up of activity to be ready for the start of the apprenticeship reforms on 1May. As we enter into April, the formal start of the reforms are less than a month away and despite lots of activity there are still numerous challenges for providers and employers to navigate through, the outcome of the procurement activity for non-levy delivery being a significant question and an area we get asked about with unsurprisingly regularity.

The Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA) formally began its role on 3 April with the broad remit to monitor the design, delivery, end point assessment (EPA) and quality assurance of apprenticeships, including standards and assessment plans. Two documents were also released in parallel – the Strategic Guidance to the Institute for Apprenticeships and the Apprenticeships Accountability Statement. The former is to provide the high level guidance to the IfA around the fundamental reforms taking place. The latter sets out the responsibilities of each organisation with a role to play in the reformed apprenticeship system. This includes assessment bodies, providers and employers as well as other organisations such as Ofsted and Ofqual.

We were very pleased to hear that the Department for Education (DfE) has confirmed the initial outcome of the Applied General Review is that this category of qualification will remain. It was announced that the DfE will work with Ofqual going forward, to ensure Applied General qualifications are robust in providing appropriate skills and knowledge. The DfE will be retaining Applied Generals in official performance tables.

Together with the Campaign for Learning, we launched our new report: “Reforming Technical and Professional Education: Why should it work this time?” in Westminster yesterday, in a roundtable session that was attended by further education industry bodies, colleges and employers. In launching the paper, the author Mick Fletcher set out nine recommendations, to ‘promote technical education as a strong and prestigious alternative to the academic route, and to succeed where earlier attempts have failed’. The recommendations for the government are:

This NCFE-sponsored report, published with the Campaign for Learning and written by independent policy consultant Mick Fletcher, raises important questions for the roll-out of the Post-16 Skills Plan and for the reforms to technical education more broadly. The report, entitled “Reforming Technical and Professional Education: Why should it work this time?” includes nine recommendations of activity that the government should undertake if it is to achieve its aims. At NCFE, we believe that the principles behind the reforms outlined in the Post-16 Skills Plan are admirable; aligning the skills system to the needs of employers, eliminating ‘low value’ qualifications, and ensuring financial sustainability of the system. The promise to develop ‘a high quality technical option’ that would have equal status with the academic route, and increase the numbers engaged with technical education, is very attractive and we are hopeful that the new T-Levels will help to deliver on this promise.

The Post-16 Skills Plan, and the ‘Sainsbury Report’ it builds on, promises big changes in vocational education that will help build a valued and valuable alternative to the academic route of A levels followed by university.  It has been widely welcomed by the sector, not least because it reasserts a central role for college based technical programmes that have recently seemed side-lined by the political obsession with apprenticeships. These proposals however are only the latest in a long line of attempts to ‘reform’ vocational education that have generally ended in failure, and one is entitled to ask ‘will it be any different this time?’ On the positive side there is no doubt about the political commitment to reform; the cross party consensus is perhaps best symbolised by a Conservative government embracing a report from a former Labour minister. There is support from the sector too, perhaps encouraged by the clear role for ‘education professionals’ alongside employers in developing the system and the recognition of a need to build on rather than bypass existing institutions. But is it enough?