Here’s your weekly round-up summarising the top education stories from the sector’s press including FE Week and the TES.
FE Week 16 June
Learner destination worries over homepage proposals (p5) – proposals for new destination measures for learners at colleges have worried Association of Colleges (AoC) officials.
The Department for Education (DfE) consultation of the measures proposes publishing learners progress in Tech Levels, or academic subjects, as well as average grades for learners – ‘Colleges and school sixth forms would also be expected to show the progress made by students who joined them without a C in English and/or maths, what proportion of their students drop out, and what proportion of their students go on to further study, a job or training at the end of their courses’.
The worry is that these measures rely on national data which causes problems for colleges in the way this data is collected, and the robustness of the information. The DfE consultation ends on the 4th July, with the DfE bringing in measurement changes for the 2016 performance tables.
Employers fail on Apprenticeship wages (p2) – Apprentices are among workers who’ve been hit worst by ‘minimum wages cheat’ employers.
25 employers have been ‘named and shamed’ as paying their employees less than minimum wage, with ‘more than one’ of the firms underpaying apprentices the £2.68 minimum hourly rate (the Department for Business Innovation and Skills won’t give precise Apprenticeship figures).
This can’t be good news for the Government’s Apprenticeship drive; will we see further punitive measures against these exploitative employers?
Give ‘grandfather’ funding option, says CBI (p6) – in response to the new pilot for the funding of Apprenticeships , the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) ‘has told the government that employers should be able to ignore Apprenticeship reforms by “grandfathering” through existing funding arrangement[s]’.
The CBI’s response to the reforms highlight their concerns for employers to keep their options open, and, where they’ve already a relationship with existing funding agencies, this should be allowed to continue.
BIS have responded by saying that they are currently analysing all responses to the funding consultation, and the ‘next steps will be announced in the autumn’.
Could this highlight the need for a mixed funding model for the future of Apprenticeships? Will BIS listen to the option of the CBI, or has the direction of travel on this policy already been set?
College providing virtual answers in class (p7) – the integration of cutting edge technology in vocational education and training moves onward, as shown by this case study of learners at the College of North West London.
Learners on a variety of construction, decorating and allied trades are using Virtual Reality software when being taught, with plans to roll out the facility to engineering students too. Students download the software to their own smartphones and personal devices, and then use it to simulate a wide range of course skills, such as interacting with customers, or identify the parts of a central heating system. The software also ‘recognises’ certain tools filmed by the smartphone, and displays a video of how these work.
Martin Biron, head of construction, who is implementing this software, said of the benefits to the college ‘It would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds for the college to build a new training salon, but one man did it for next to nothing in the virtual world, and we will hopefully introduce that into the teaching programme from September’.
This is a real example of innovations in learning technology saving a college money, whilst still offering a flexible learning solution to its learners. Expect this to become the norm over the next few years.
TES 13 June
Trailblazing Colleges given the green light (p48) – this week saw the launch of a new type of FE institution: the ‘Career College’.
These colleges recruit 14-19 year olds directly, and involve local employers designing and delivering their curriculum. They offer a mixture of vocational qualification and GCSE programmes to this age group, with a range of work experience opportunities.
The first career colleges have opened at Hugh Baird College (Liverpool) - offering catering, construction and tourism courses, and Oldham College (Manchester), ‘specialising in the digital and creative industries’. A further 7 Career Colleges are in the pipeline for delivery in the next 12 months – with 65 other organisations including universities, businesses and other colleges having voiced an interest in the scheme.
In the same week we heard of announcements of the Government’s plans for ‘National Colleges’, and with Labour looking at ‘Centres of Vocational Excellence’, we can see politicians are determined to create an FE system that supports their vision of vocational education.
FE Week 23 June
Colleges under fire on gazelle’s £3.5m - questions are being asked of the prestigious Gazelle group of entrepreneurial colleges, after it has emerged that research has shown that membership does not seem to give learners an advantage.
Gazelle has collected around £3.5million from colleges, and this level of contribution – with seemingly no return on this investment, attracting questions from the Universities and College trade union. Gazelle Chief Executive Fintan Donohue stated in response that ‘in the long term our expectation is that the creation of entrepreneurial learning and leadership will deliver enhanced Ofsted ratings — and among our 23 colleges, 18 are already rated as good or outstanding for leadership and management’.
The Gazelle group is a well-established and respected group – could this be the undermining of their premier position among providers?
Progression payment for Traineeships (p3) – the government has launched its consultation on the funding of Traineeships, proposing that providers are paid on the basis of their learners getting onto a job or an Apprenticeship.
The consultation will also propose bringing together the funding of 16-18 and 19-24 year olds into a joined up funding system, as they are currently calculated by different agencies (the Education Funding Agency & Skills Funding Agency), and using different methodologies depending on the age of the learner.
Party Political Promises around FE (p5, 10, various articles) – with the General Election drawing ever nearer it’s been a busy week for announcements from the political parties, with the Liberal Democrats leading the way, pledging in their manifesto to protect education spending from ‘Cradle to College’.
This ‘would mean an extra £10bn of education spending would be protected based on this financial year’ funding education for 2 to 19 year olds, as currently only education spending until age 16 is protected by the government.
Although welcomed by many commentators in the sector, there is concern that to pay for this, there may be further (additional) cuts elsewhere (19+ funding for example?).
Labour were next by announcing proposals to drop JobSeekers Allowance (JSA) for 18 to 21-year olds, replacing it with a means-tested ‘youth allowance’ dependent upon a young person singing up to training up to level 3. Ed Miliband announced the measure at the launch of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR)’s ‘Condition of Britain’ report, stating ‘Britain’s young people who don’t have the skills they need for work should be in training not on benefits’.
