FE Week, 10 November

Agency review puts 1,600 quals in the funding firing line (p3) – The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has listed ‘nearly 700’ qualifications it will remove from public funding and a further 972 at risk of losing their fundable status in its Annual Review of Qualifications, published on its website.

The Agency has published the lists of qualifications with 100 funded enrolments a year or fewer, with a call for Awarding Organisations who want to keep these qualifications funded to make their case by the 4 December.

Rest assured that NCFE are working through the lists that have been published, and where we feel the qualifications should be eligible for public funding, we will make our case to the SFA.

Local Authorities losing NEETs track say MPs (p4) – the Government’s Public Accounts Committee is looking into participation amongst 16 to 18 year olds under the Raising of the Participation Age (RPA) legislation. They’re concerned about the large number of young people that the Department for Education (DfE) or Local Authorities aren’t keeping track of, and who are Not in Education, Employment or Training (‘NEETs’).
This follows publication of a National Audit Office (NAO) report entitled ‘16 to 18-year old participation in education and training’, which showed a big disparity between local authority areas and the percentage of young people for whom the government had no information about their status’.

The DfE has also promised action on careers advice, possibly a cause of the large number of NEETs, as young people aren’t informed of the options available to them post-GCSE – the Committee Chair Margaret Hodge MP stating that Ofsted’s annual report showed that “one-in-four young people would have made a different choice if they had known about the options they had before them”, adding: “You’ve got a problem here."

HMRC tax apprentices — no ICT skills necessary (p4) – Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) new Level 3 Apprenticeship programmes will not require learners to learn ICT skills, a spokesperson for HMRC stating that it had “an entire division of highly skilled IT staff” with “separate development programmes”.

According to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) ‘ICT qualifications may be included in an apprenticeship framework or standard, where the developer believes they are necessary for the job. Qualifications in ICT are not a mandatory part of all apprenticeships.’

TES 7 November

Modern Languages will be dead in the water (p46) – although ostensibly about modern foreign languages, this article in the TES has wider implications. It warns that Sixth Form Colleges may be about to fall of a ‘fiscal cliff’ around funding, as transitional funding protection will come to an end in 2015, with some 6th Form colleges losing around 20% of their funding as it is bought in line with other 16-18 funding arrangements.

This effectively means that these colleges will have to do more with less money, and limit the provision they can offer. Institutions are saying that ‘it will affect less sellable subjects’ as smaller cohorts of learners become less cost effective to deliver too, and niche provision becomes less appealing to Sixth Form centres.

FE Week 17 Nov

Clegg’s UCAS-style 16 to 18 plan ‘already in place’ (p2) – Following Nick Clegg’s announcement about launching a ‘UCAS style’ national database for apprentices at the Skills Show, the head of UCAS has pointed out that such a service already exists.

Chief Executive Mary Curnock Cook pointed out that the admissions service had already expanded UCAS Progress, which caters for post-16 choices, to offer ‘national coverage of vocational and academic courses in England and Wales.’
The Deputy Prime Minister’s statement has received a mixed response from the sector, with Lynne Sedgmore, executive director of the 157 Group, saying: "This announcement reaffirms the original commitment made by the Deputy Prime Minister, but adds little more detail. We will be keen to see how it will work in practice."

Vocational education on party leaders’ agenda (p7) – all 3 major political party leaders spoke at this week’s Confederation of British Industry (CBI) annual conference, each in turn commenting on vocational education. David Cameron preside the 2 million apprenticeship starts in the current parliament, and reiterated his aim to secure 3 million starts by 2020.

He added "The ambition I have is that all our young people, leaving school at 18 rather than 16 should be thinking ‘which path am I going to take?’ Is it either a path to university and to a degree or is it an apprenticeship and the potential of doing a degree through that apprenticeship as well."

For his part, Ed Miliband stated that a ‘revolution’ was needed in vocational education to deal with a "discontent among the British public", with Nick Clegg stating the need for good careers advice and guidance.

It's reassuring that the political leaders are pinning their hopes on the vocational education system as an overall solution to youth unemployment, and moving away from the more traditional route of promoting University and Further Education as the option for learners post-16.

Ofqual boss issues stability plea on Functional Skills (p12) – Ofqual Chief Glenys Stacey has called for Functional Skills qualifications to remain as stable as possible in light of a rebrand by Skills Minister Nick Boles.

This follows his statement that Functional Skills would still continue to be available for learners, and not withdrawn as previously thought. Glenys responded in a letter urging the Minister to tread carefully ‘The brand of a qualification is important. It takes some years for qualification titles to become understood and trusted, particularly by employers and others who are not close to the education system. In general, our view is that we should keep the qualifications system as stable as possible, to allow qualifications time to prove themselves’.