Issue 125 | February 2022

LEVELLING UP WHITE PAPER PUBLISHED

On 2 February, the government published its long awaited White Paper, entitled ‘Levelling up the United Kingdom’ . The White Paper contains 12 policy objectives, which are also referred to as ‘missions’ in a technical annexe to the White Paper called ‘Missions and Metrics’. This provides an ‘underpinning analytical framework’ for each of the policy objectives. Proposed initiatives for post-16 education and skills are mainly found in the 5^th and 6^th missions. Given their potential to play a key role in the government’s levelling up agenda, many have found it surprising that FE colleges are mentioned by name only twice in the White Paper’s 298 pages. The 12 policy objectives say that, by 2030:

• Pay, employment and productivity will have risen in every area of the UK, with each containing a globally competitive city, and the gap between the top performing and other areas closing.
• Domestic public investment in research and development outside the South East will have increased by at least 40%, and over the current Spending Review period by at least one third. The increased public spending on research and development is expected to lever at least twice as much private investment.
• Local public transport connectivity across the country will be significantly closer to the standards of London, with improved services, simpler fares and integrated ticketing.
• The UK will have nationwide gigabit-capable broadband and 4G coverage, with 5G coverage for the majority of the population.
• The number of primary school children achieving the expected standard for their age in reading, writing and maths will have significantly increased. In England, this will mean 90% of children will achieve the expected standard, and in the current worst performing areas, the percentage of children meeting the expected standard will have increased by over a third.
• The number of people successfully completing high-quality skills training will have significantly increased in every area of the UK. In England, this will lead to 200,000 more people successfully completing high-quality skills training annually, driven by 80,000 more people completing courses in the current lowest skilled areas.
• The gap in Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) between local areas where it is highest and lowest will have narrowed, and by 2035 HLE will rise by five years.
• By 2030, well-being will have improved in every area of the UK, with the gap between top performing and other areas closing.
• Pride in place, such as people’s satisfaction with their town centre and engagement in local culture and community, will have risen in every area of the UK, with the gap between top performing and other areas closing.
• Renters will have a secure path to home ownership with the number of first-time buyers increasing in all areas. The government’s ambition is for the number of non-decent rented homes to have fallen by 50%, with the biggest improvements in the current lowest performing areas.
• Homicide, serious violence and neighbourhood crime will have fallen, particularly in the worst areas.
• Every part of England that wants one will have a devolution deal with powers at, or approaching, the highest level of devolution, with a simplified, long-term funding settlement.

Proposals for post-16 education in the White Paper include the following:

• Educational Investment Areas: The government has identified 55 ‘education cold spots’ in England where school outcomes are the ‘weakest’. These are primarily in the north, the midlands, east and parts of the south west and they will be designated as ‘Education Investment Areas’ (EIAs). Over the next decade, EIAs will receive targeted investment, support and action to help children succeed. 95% of EIAs are outside London and the South East. All local authorities that contain one of the government’s existing 12 Opportunity Areas will be designated as EIAs. A list of the 55 EIAs and the criteria for selection can be found here. In addition to the extra investment, schools in EIAs that have been judged to be less than ‘good’ by Ofsted in successive inspections could be compulsorily moved into high performing multi-academy trusts (MATs). This will be subject to a separate consultation in the spring.
• ‘Elite’ 16-19 schools: New ‘elite’ 16-19 free schools will be established in EIAs. These are intended ‘to help ensure that talented children from disadvantaged backgrounds will have access to a college, school sixth form or 16-19 academy, with a track record of student progression to ‘leading universities’. Provision will be focussed explicitly on academic education. However, this proposal has not been universally welcomed. Concerns have been expressed that these new schools will emulate existing highly selective grammar schools in respect of their intake. This means they could actually teach fewer poor students since, like many other selective schools, they will recruit heavily from wealthier neighbouring areas that are not in an EIA. It is also unclear how the new initiative will complement the government’s post-16 capacity fund, which is intended to enable existing high-performing sixth forms and sixth form colleges to expand and recruit additional students. The proposal also ignores the fact that it is predominantly FE colleges that offer A-Level provision for disadvantaged learners. No analysis or evidence of the need or demand for the proposed new institution is provided, or of the impact they will have on the existing 1,414 sixth forms and colleges located in the 55 areas designated as EIAs, of which 303 have fewer than 200 students (the DfE’s benchmark for a sixth form to be financially viable). Neither does the White Paper set out the level of funding that will provided for these new ‘elite’ institutions. And just for good measure, research published by FTT Education Datalab on 11 February in a report entitled ‘What’s the point of more elite sixth forms?’, provides evidence which suggests that these schools will have only a negligible impact on the government’s levelling up ambitions.
• 16-19 specialist maths schools: Alongside the new ‘elite’ 16-19 free schools, there are plans to open 8 new 16-19 specialist maths schools linked to universities. These will join the 3 already in operation.
• Supporting Families Programme: An extra £200 million will be invested in the government’s ‘Supporting Families’ programme in England, to help ‘create strong, stable families where children thrive’. This, says the White Paper, means that a total of £695 million will be invested to improve the lives of up to 300,000 vulnerable families and to help tackle the challenges families face that can hold children back from attending and achieving at school, or that may put them at risk of neglect or harm.
• National Youth Guarantee: The government will provide £560 million worth of investment to help fund the activities young people said they want to be able to participate in outside of school. These include youth clubs, sport, opportunities for volunteering and other activities aimed at youth development.

Proposals for skills in the White Paper include the following:

• Access to higher level skills training: By 2030, 200,000 more adults per year will be supported to access the higher-level skills training they need to progress in work. This is the White Paper’s 6^th ‘mission’. Within the overall 200,000 figure, 50 local authority areas that have been identified as ‘low skilled’ will be given additional resources to help 80,000 adults each year to achieve Level 3 (or above) qualifications.
• Skills Pathfinder Areas: Three of these ‘low skilled’ local authority areas (Blackpool, Walsall and Barking and Dagenham) have been selected to become ‘skills pathfinder areas’. These are areas that have a both a high level of unemployment and a high level of job vacancies. A number of additional initiatives will be introduced and funded in these areas including, for example, actions to help ensure that local employment services are more closely aligned with local skills training services.
• Institutes of Technology (IoT’s): IoTs will be allowed to apply for a Royal Charter. The criteria and application process will be set out in the spring. The White Paper says that IoTs will become the ‘pre-eminent organisations for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education and training in England’, and that ‘satisfying the requirements to be awarded a Royal Charter will help place IoTs on a par with the UK’s world-leading universities’.
• Devolution: By 2030, every part of England that wants one, will be given a devolution deal with ‘powers at or approaching the highest level of devolution’ along with ‘a simplified, long-term funding settlement’. This is the White Paper’s 12^th ‘mission’. The government’s preferred model of devolution is one with ‘a directly-elected mayor who has a ‘clear and direct mandate covering a well-defined geographical area’.
• Devolution of the AEB: However, even if they do not have an elected mayor, all local authority areas in England will be given the opportunity to take control of their Adult Education Budget (AEB). Those areas that take up the offer will be expected to provide input intolocal skills improvement plans (LSIPs), which will, in turn. influence the type of courses offered by colleges and training providers in the area. The White Paper also refers to ‘trailblazer deeper devolution deals’ with Combined Authorities being able to bid for more powers. These could include the devolution of all FE and skills funding for the area.
• Future Skills Unit: A Future Skills Unit will be established to ‘identify and analyse the current and future skills needs of local businesses, the skills already available in the area and the most effective way of establishing pathways between training and good jobs’. The Future Skills Unit, says the White Paper, will complement the work of the existing Skills and Productivity Board. This was set up by the Department for Employment (DfE) last year to provide ‘expert advice on how courses and qualifications should align to the skills that employers need’. It is at present unclear how the role of the new Future Skills Unit will differ from that of the Skills and Productivity Board, or that of Local Skills Advisory Panels. Presumably because of the potential overlap, a DfE spokesperson has been reported as saying that once the Skills and Productivity Board has completed its current tasks it will be subsumed into the new Future Skills Unit.
• Skills Bootcamps : An additional £550 million will be provided over the next 3 years to expand the Skills Bootcamps programme. This, says the White Paper, ‘will enable thousands more adults to access up to 16 weeks of free, flexible training and get the skills needs to secure careers in sectors such as digital and construction. The extra funding will also enable Skills Bootcamps to offer greater support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) which, in the future, will only be asked to contribute 10% of the cost of training their staff, rather than 30% as at present.
• UK Shared Prosperity Fund: The UK has left the EU and no longer receives EU structural funds. However, the UK is no longer required to make recurrent payments into the EU central budget from which the structural funds are paid out. The UK historically has always paid more into the EU central budget than was received from it. The government has therefore resolved to replace EU structural funds with a new UK Shared Prosperity Fund. In the fund’s pre-launch guidance, the government says that in 2022/23 and 2023/24, £2.6 billion from the fund will be used to support the White Paper’s policy objectives, including proposals to invest in ‘improving communities and place’, and to fund ‘further investment in people and skills’. All local authority areas in each of the UK countries will receive a conditional allocation from the Shared Prosperity Fund. To access their allocation, each local authority will be required to set out their priorities for expenditure in an investment plan and to identify the outcomes of the measures they are expecting to deliver with the funding they receive.
• ‘Multiply’ numeracy programme.: £559 million is being made available over the current Spending Review period to provide support for adults to gain or improve their numeracy skills.
• Supported Internship Programme : The government will provide an additional £18 million over the next three years to double the capacity of the Supported Internship Programme. This helps thousands of young people with additional needs and who have an Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) to obtain the skills they needed to get jobs and to help sustain them in paid employment.

OFQUAL PUBLISHES DETAILS OF ADAPTATIONS FOR EXTERNAL GSCE, AS AND A-LEVEL EXAMS THIS SUMMER

External exams are to be reintroduced for GCSEs, AS and A-Levels this summer. Following a consultation held last year, on 7 February Ofqual published details of the support that students taking exams this summer will receive to help mitigate the impact of Covid on their learning over the last 2 years. The pandemic has impacted particularly badly on the learning of students from poorer backgrounds. Research conducted by FFT Education Datalab and published on 21 January has revealed that disadvantaged students had missed an average of eight weeks of learning since autumn 2020, to which can be added the two months they were learning remotely when schools and colleges were closed in early 2021. Support and adaptations to help mitigate the impact of Covid on student performance in this summer’s exams include the following:

• Generous grading: Exams will be graded more generously. Ofqual says that although it is looking to reverse the exceptional grade inflation that occurred in 2020 and 2021, grade boundaries will be set roughly between 2019 pre-pandemic levels and boundaries in 2021, when teacher assessment was used to set grades. Under teacher assessment, more students passed exams and achieved higher marks, including the top grades, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This decision to award external exam grades more generously has been welcomed, but concerns have been expressed that this will not be enough to ensure fairness for students taking exams this year who will not only have experienced varying levels of disruption to their learning over the past two years, but also face receiving lower grades than those received by students in 2020 and 2021 for the same standard of work.
• Changes to coursework: Non-exam assessment and fieldwork requirements will be adjusted.
• Optional content: There will be less content and fewer topics for students to learn in some GCSEs.
• Support materials: Students will get formulae and equation sheets in some exams.
• Advance information: Exam boards will give advance information on the focus of exams for most subjects to help students revise. The advance information is being released to help focus study ahead of exams, but will not provide the exact questions that will appear on the exam papers. Ofqual has provided details of subject-by-subject support for each GCSE, AS and A-Level exam, but the support materials and information being provided in advance that are specific to individual exam boards will only be available on their websites via the links below:
• AQA
• OCR
• Pearson Edexcel
• WJEC Eduqas

ADAPTATIONS FOR VTQ EXAMS AND ASSESSMENTS THIS SUMMER

With regards to vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs), the Ofqual simply says that ‘where needed, awarding organisations (AOs) will be allowed to make adaptations to assessments and referred centres to the paper published on 2 December entitled, ‘Guidance for centres: awarding VTQs in 2021 and 2022’.

16-19 DISADVANTAGE GAP WIDENS DURING THE PANDEMIC

Research conducted by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) and published earlier this month in a report entitled ‘Covid 19 and Education Gaps in England 2020’  has revealed that the gap in grades between students aged 16-19 from disadvantaged backgrounds and their better off peers widened in 2020. The increased gap, says the report, was ‘a result of A-Level students gaining a whole grade more from teacher assessments than those who studied qualifications such as BTECs, which disadvantaged students are more likely to take’. The report also found that disadvantaged students aged 16-19 were on average the equivalent of 3.1 A-Level grades behind their more affluent peers across their best three qualifications in 2020, compared to 2.9 grades in 2019. Students in 16-19 education in long-term poverty (defined as those who spend at least 80% of their school lives in receipt of free school meals) saw much larger disadvantage gaps, which widened to 4 grades in 2020, compared to 3.7 in 2019. This, says the report, means that they will have lost out when competing for university places and that the government needs to take urgent action to ensure that students taking BTECs and other alternatives to A-Levels do not lose out again in 2022.

COVID WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT FUND EXTENDED

On 14 February, the DfE sent an email to college leaders announcing that financial support from the Covid Workforce Development Fund for colleges experiencing serious problems as a result of staff being ill with Covid and/or needing to self-isolate, will be extended until 8 April. This is the third time the DfE has extended the time frame for colleges to make applications for support from the fund. Current guidance for colleges on how to make claims is available here. The latest data for colleges on staff absences published on 8 February says that on 3 February around 2.5% of college teachers and leaders, and 1.9% of teaching assistants and other support staff were absent.

PRIME MINISTER ANNOUNCES END OF REMAINING LEGAL COVID RESTRICTIONS IN ENGLAND

On 21 February the prime minister, Boris Johnson, presented the government’s ‘Covid 19 Response: Living with Covid’ plan for England to the House of Commons. Mr Johnson said it was time to ‘move from government restrictions to personal responsibility’. Of particular relevance for colleges is that from 21 February, the guidance for staff and students in education settings to undertake twice weekly asymptomatic testing is removed. Other measures in the announcement include the following:

From 24 February:

• The legal requirement to self-isolate following a positive test will end (although as in the case of other infections people who are ill are advised to stay home).
• The legal requirement for close contacts who are not fully vaccinated to self-isolate will end.
• Routine contact tracing will end.

From 1 April:

• Free universal symptomatic and asymptomatic testing in England will mostly end. There will be some limited ongoing free testing available for at-risk groups. The government will set out further details on which groups will be eligible. Free symptomatic testing will remain available to social care staff.
• The current guidance on domestic voluntary Covid-status certification will end and the government will no longer recommend that certain venues use the NHS Covid Pass.

The Cabinet Office has produced a document giving full details of the government’s ‘Covid 19 Response: Living with Covid’ plan, a copy of which can be found here.

ESFA RESPONSIBILITY FOR POST-16 POLICY AND DELIVERY TO BE ASSUMED BY THE DFE

On 5 August last year it was announced that an independent review of the effectiveness of the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) had been commissioned by the Cabinet Office. The review has now been completed and on 15 February the DfE published the findings and its response. These are as follows:

• The final summary report of the review’s findings
• The DfE’s response to the review’s recommendation
• Changes to the way the DfE will operate from 1 April 2022

The report of the review findings concluded that the ESFA has ‘too much post-16 policy and delivery within its remit’, and that its focus should be ‘solely on funding in order to help ensure that public funds are properly spent and that value for money for the taxpayer is delivered’. Consequently, from 1 April this year, the ESFA’s responsibilities for T- Levels, higher technical qualifications at Level 4 and 5, apprenticeships and flexi-apprenticeships, traineeships, the National Careers Service, the adult education budget (AEB), WorldSkills, UTCs, and non-financial regulatory functions for academies, will transfer to the DfE. However, ‘provider market oversight’ functions will remain within the ESFA.

From 1 April, the DfE will establish a ‘single consolidated unit for all post-16 skills policy’ to provide ‘more coherence and consistency in post-16 education’. The DfE will also establish a new internal ‘further education higher education and employers (FEHEE) group to bring together all post-16 policy and operational policy in a single strategic centre’. This will be headed up by Paul Kett, the DfE’s Director General for Higher and Further education. However, there will not be a single FE and HE funding body.

ESFA PUBLISHES DETAILS OF HOW THE EXTRA FUNDS FOR 16-19 STUDY PROGRAMMES SHOULD BE SPENT

In last year’s Spending Review, the government announced that an extra £800 million would be made available to fund an additional 40 learning hours for students on 16-19 study programmes and T-Levels. This has the effect of increasing the national FE base rate for students aged 16 and 17 in England from £4,188 to £4,542. On 9 February the ESFA published further details of how this extra funding should be spent. The document says that the primary purpose of the extra funding is to provide more time for teaching and learning. However, it goes on to say the funds can also be used to provide such things as individual help with exam preparation and study skills, enrichment activities, and supporting student well-being and mental health. The caveat is that the money must be spent on meeting individual students’ needs, rather than spent on activities for whole groups of students (for example, tutorials). Colleges will be required to submit a short report at the end of each year to enable the ESFA to check that the extra funding has been spent in line with the guidance. The extra funding has been welcomed by college leaders, but they also say that the extra cost of pay awards, national insurance increases, rising energy costs and other inflationary pressure means that college finances will continue to remain under severe pressure.

POST-16 EDUCATION AND SKILLS BILL TO BECOME LAW

On 21 February, the government’s Post-16 Education and Skills Bill passed through its final Report and Third Reading stages in the House of Commons. During the debate, a total of 35 amendments were submitted. However, only 3 were put to a vote, one of which involve delaying the defunding of most BTEC courses for 4 years rather than 1, which was defeated. The only main alteration made to the bill was as a result of a government-backed amendment giving the Office for Students (OfS) powers to publish regulatory reports and decisions with protection from defamation claims. The Bill will now be submitted to the Queen for the Royal Assent, after which it will become law. This will give the government the powers to put in place the policy objectives set out in last year’s Skills for Jobs White Paper.

SKILLS BILL PROPOSAL THAT IFATE AND OFQUAL SHARE REGULATORY RESPONSIBILITY FOR VTQS RAISES CONCERNS

The proposal in the Post-16 Education and Skills Bill continues to give the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) both the authority to approve new vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) and the shared responsibility with Ofqual to regulate them has led to concerns that this could lead to a conflict of interest (see page14 of the policy summary notes here). Critics argue that because IfATE is a non-departmental public body directly accountable to ministers, the proposal undermines the concept of independent regulation that parliament intended when Ofqual was established. Critics also say that having two regulators splitting responsibility for certain types of VTQs has the potential result in confusion. A spokesperson for the DfE has defended the proposal, saying that it will create a ‘single approval gateway for technical qualifications’, but then went on to confirm that Ofqual will retain its statutory responsibility for recognising awarding organisations in England across all categories of both academic and technical qualifications. The DfE has yet to provide any formal guidance on how the shared responsibility for the regulation of VTQs will work in practice.

PRINCIPALS IN TRAILBLAZER AREAS WANT JOINT RESPONSIBILITY WITH CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE FOR LSIPS

Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) are an integral part of the Post-16 Education and Skills Bill and are intended to ensure that colleges align the courses they offer to local employers’ needs. The Bill says that only employer representative bodies can lead on LSIPs, but this should be done in collaboration with colleges and other training providers. Eight Chambers of Commerce have been chosen to pilot the development of the plans in eight trailblazer areas. However, the leaders of 12 colleges located in the 8 trailblazer areas have written to the Secretary of State for Education in England, Nadhim Zahawi, calling on him to give colleges joint full responsibility with the Chambers of College for the development of LSIPs in their areas. In the letter they say they want equal responsibility so that they are not simply recipients of the plans.

FIRST FLEXI-JOB APPRENTICESHIP AGENCIES ANNOUNCED

Flexi-Job Apprenticeships are intended to help firms in sectors with occupations where short-term contracts or other non-standard employment models are the norm to take on apprentices (for example, in the creative industries, digital and construction). These will be ‘portable’ meaning that the apprentice can take their learning and progress with them as they move between employment contracts and change employers. A competition was launched last August, inviting organisations to become a Flexi-Job Apprenticeship Agency. Applicants were able to bid for a share of £7 million Flexi-Job fund to support them with their start-up costs. Following an assessment of the applications received, on 10 February, the DfE announced that 15 organisations had met the criteria to be entered onto the new Register of Flexi-Job Apprenticeship Agencies and that a total of £5 million in grant funding had been allocated to 10 of these organisations.

Flexi-job Apprenticeship Agencies will replace apprenticeships training agencies (ATAs) which, until 2018, could be set up to deliver flexible apprenticeships. ATAs still in existence have been advised that they will need to apply to join the new register when the application window next opens. The new Flexi-Job Apprenticeship Agencies will have responsibility for recruitment and employment of flexi-job apprentices and will be required to source placements lasting at least three months with a series of employers. Apprentices must still complete the minimum duration required by their apprenticeship standard. The first of the new flexi-job apprentices are expected to start at the end of this month (February).

NEW LEARNING AND SKILLS TEACHING APPRENTICESHIP SPECIFICATION

IfATE regularly carries out reviews of apprenticeship content to decide if they need to be revised. Employer views are always central to these reviews. Following an IfATE review, a new version of the Level 5 Learning and Skills Teaching Apprenticeship has been published, incorporating the changes proposed by employers. These changes include the following:

• The Level 5 Diploma in Education and Training and the Level 2 Safeguarding qualification will no longer be mandatory parts of the apprenticeship. This, says IfATE, will give employers more freedom to choose the right qualifications for their staff.
• There are now 9 required duties, 20 areas of knowledge, 25 skills areas and 6 ‘behaviours’ that all FE teachers will be required to demonstrate (see web link above).
• The end point assessment (EPA) process has been aligned with that of other similar apprenticeships.

The Learning and Skills Apprenticeship Trailblazer group has worked closely with the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) and its membership body, the Society for Education and Training (SET), to ensure that the new Learning and Skills Teacher Apprenticeship (which will be available later this year) continues to meet the eligibility criteria for Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills Status (QTLS).

NEW MODEL FOR DETERMINING APPRENTICESHIP FUNDING BANDS

Following three consultations held since February 2020, IfATE has developed a new model for allocating apprenticeship funding bands, along with new funding model guidance. Earlier this month, IfATE invited around 20 trailblazer groups to pilot the new model. Subject to prior agreement with IfATE, all trailblazer groups will be given the choice of using either the existing funding model (as updated by the ESFA on 11 February), or the proposed new model for submitting funding information. However, the trailblazer groups participating in the pilot will be expected to use only the new funding model.

NEW OFS DIRECTOR OF FAIR ACCESS CALLS ON HE PROVIDERS TO HELP SCHOOLS IMPROVE PUPIL ATTAINMENT 

On 8 February, John Blake, the new Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students (OfS), made his first speech to university and college leaders. His speech was entitled ‘Next steps in access and participation’ and was delivered at an event hosted by Impetus, (an organisation which, says its website, ‘transforms the lives of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds by ensuring they get the right support to succeed in school, in work and in life’). In his speech Mr Blake said that universities and colleges have a ‘moral duty’ to help improve the wider community they are located within, and that improving attainment in local schools is ‘an essential part of that work’. He referred to the research conducted last May by the Education Policy Institute (EPI), which says that disadvantaged pupils are on average 18 months of learning behind their peers by the time they take their GCSEs, and went on to say that rather than just recruiting them, more needs to be done to support HE students from disadvantaged backgrounds while they are at university or college. A copy of the slides Mr Blake used in his speech can be found here.

Mr Blake pointed out that encouraging ‘strategic engagement’ with schools is already a part of the regulatory guidance on access and participation plans the OfS requires HE providers to have if they want to charge higher tuition fees. He reminded those attending that each provider’s plan must be published and contain targets and investment plans to increase participation in higher education from under-represented groups, and to reduce gaps in outcomes between white and black and disabled and non-disabled students. He reminded attendees that universities and colleges have been asked to review their plans by September 2023, and have been told that they may face sanctions (including fines) if they are deemed not to be following their access and participation plans or doing too little to eradicate ‘poor quality courses’ with inadequate student outcomes.

NEW REPORT CALLS FOR GREATER COLLABORATION BETWEEN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

Over the last 9 months, the Civic University Network and the Independent Commission on the College of the Future have been engaging with leaders and policy-makers across the HE and FE sectors in all 4 UK nations to elicit responses to one key question. This is: How can college and university relationships be further developed across the four nations of the UK to better support individuals, employers and communities? Earlier this month a report on these responses was published, entitled ‘Going further and higher: How collaboration between colleges and universities can transform lives and places’.   The report says that ‘Further and higher education must no longer be pitted against each other, either nationally or locally, if post-16 education and skills systems across the UK are to deliver on pressing societal challenges such as closing skills gaps, supporting economic recovery, and delivering on net-zero goals’. The report also calls on colleges, universities and governments across the four UK nations to commit to ‘creating joined-up education and skills systems with a focus on shared responsibility for the sectors to deliver for people, employers and their places’. The report makes a number of recommendations, as follows:

Recommendations for sector leaders, which focus on creating strong local networks:

• Agree the institutions who are involved in the network and embrace the local geography and specialisms that already exist.
• Develop a cohesive education and skills offer for local people, employers and communities built around lifelong learning, ensuring inefficient duplication and competition is reduced.
• Move beyond personal relationships and agree how the whole institution is involved in collaboration, with clear roles and shared responsibility for partnership.

Recommendations to governments across the four nations to build better education and skills systems:

• Set an ambitious 10-year strategy to ensure lifelong learning for all and to deliver on national ambitions.
• Balance investment in FE and HE to ensure the whole education and skills system is sustainably funded so that colleges and universities can work in the interests of their local people, employers and communities.
• Equal maintenance support across loans and grants for HE and FE students, regardless of age, personal circumstances, or route into education.
• Tackle the ‘messy middle’ by defining distinct but complementary roles for colleges and universities to avoid a turf war over who delivers various types of education and training.
• Create a single funding and regulatory body for the entire post-16 education and skills system in each nation to deliver more aligned and complementary regulatory approaches that will ensure smoother learner journeys.

UCAS PUBLISHES ITS FINAL 2021 END OF CYCLE RELEASE

At the end of last month, the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) published its final 2021 End of Cycle release. The data in the release shows that:

• 606,645 people of all ages across the UK applied to higher education in 2021 (+5% on 2020), with 492,005 accepted (+1%).
• 81% of students gained a place in their first-choice university or college (up from 76%).
• 7% more UK 18-year-olds were placed. Overall, 38.3% of UK 18-year-olds gained a placed in 2021 (up from 37% in 2020 and 34.1% in 2019).
• Over 67,000 students aged 25 and above from the UK gained a place.
• Unconditional offer-making fell from a high of 15.7% of all offers made in 2020 to 3.3% in 2021, with ‘conditional unconditional offers‘ virtually eliminated within the 2021 cycle.
• Following the introduction of individual level Free School Meals (FSM) information in England as part of the UCAS admissions process, 20.9% of students eligible for FSM entered higher education, a record high. 2021 also saw a record proportion of students from the most disadvantaged areas enter HE.
• The number of applicants achieving the top A-Level grades almost doubled compared to 2020 (19,595 from 12,735) and nearly quadrupled from pre-pandemic levels (5,655 in 2019). As a result, 103,010 UK young people were accepted at higher tariff providers, up 11% from 92,650 in 2020.
• UCAS’ Career Finder apprenticeship searches increased by 50% in a year to 1.5 million.
• The UK remains globally attractive. Internationally, a total of 142,925 people of all ages applied (-5% on 2020), with 70,005 accepted (+1%). 111,255 people applied from outside the EU (+12%) with 54,030 accepted (+2%); while 31,670 people from within the EU applied (-40%) with 16,025 were accepted (-50%).

DfE announces proposals to curb the numbers entering higher education

The number of students accepted onto courses at university were historically subject to caps, but when tuition fees trebled to £9,000 in 2012, the cap on numbers began to be lifted. Within three years, all caps on numbers were abolished, meaning that universities could recruit as many students as they wanted. Many began to expand aggressively in pursuit of the potentially unlimited income to be derived from the higher-level fees. However, students paid these tuition fees by taking out a government (i.e. taxpayer) backed loan through the Student Loans Company (SLC). The tuition fees are paid directly and upfront to the university and, unlike in FE, without any reference to subsequent student retention and achievement rates. The loans are meant to be repaid once the student’s annual earnings exceeded a given amount.

The system has resulted in a massive increase in the numbers of students in England being accepted onto degree courses. It has also resulted in a large increase in the cost to the taxpayer as increasing numbers of students fail to earn enough to repay their loan (the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IfS) has estimated that as much as three-quarters of the £9 billion in tuition fee loans to students each year may never be repaid). As a result, on 23 February, the DfE announced that proposals are to be published later this month (February) that if implemented will, in effect, impose limits on the numbers of students in England entering higher education. The DfE says that aim of the proposals is to restrict the numbers of poor-quality degrees (defined as those with a high student drop out and a low proportion getting a graduate level job once they have completed their studies) so that they are ‘not incentivised to grow uncontrollably’, and to limit the increasing cost of student loans to the taxpayer. One of the proposals will include preventing students who fail to gain a GCSE Grade 4 in English and maths (around one third of those that take the exams) from accessing student loans. This measure could also be applied to students who fail to achieve two Es at A-Level, although there could be exceptions to this rule for certain groups, such as mature students. The DfE says that the proposals, when published, will be put out for consultation.

NHS continues to rely on the recruitment of foreign medical staff

For an example of the disconnect between the skills needs of employers and the availability of skilled labour, look no further than nursing. Critics argue that the failure to train sufficient nurses in has resulted in a shortfall of up to 100,000 nurses, as the NHS struggles to match the numbers of medical staff recruited to the growth in the UK population. To help meet the shortfall, NHS managers have, since 2016, set a target to recruit 5,000 foreign nurses annually. A recent freedom of information request has revealed that in the 2 years between 2016/17 and 2018/19, the NHS collectively spent around £3.3 million on 762 recruitment trips to 15 countries, with the Philippines being the focus of most recruitment campaigns. The cost per nurse recruited was around £9,000 per nurse. This is much less than the cost of training a nurse in the UK and has resulted in accusations that the UK is poaching medical staff other countries have paid to train, and which many can ill afford to lose. Concerns around comparability in training and adequacy language skills have also been expressed. Meanwhile, the government has set a target of training 50,000 new nurses by 2025. Free NHS training and bursaries for nurses and midwives was abandoned in 2017, and trainee nurses are now required to help pay for their own training by taking out a tuition fee loan (supplemented by an NHS Learning Support Fund, or funded apprenticeships for those eligible). Despite this, UCAS has reported that demand for nursing courses at UK universities has remained strong.  (See the UCAS report published on 20 January ‘Next Steps: Who are the ‘future nurses‘?‘ report for further details on this).

OFSTED PUBLISHES LATEST FE AND SKILLS INSPECTION AND OTHER MANAGEMENT DATA

On 10 February Ofsted published its latest suite of data reports covering inspection outcomes and other management information for FE and Skills providers over the period from September 2021 to January 2022. The suite of reports can be found here.

CONSULTATION ON TEACHERS IN FE COLLEGES AND ITPS TO BE SUBJECT TO TRA PROHIBITION ORDERS

The Teacher Regulation Agency (TRA) currently has the power to take action against teachers in schools, academies, sixth form colleges and in certain forms of youth accommodation and children’s homes who are found guilty of serious misconduct. Serious misconduct is broadly defined as ‘unacceptable professional conduct that may bring the profession into disrepute’ or ‘conviction, at any time, of a relevant offence’. Only cases of serious misconduct can be referred to the TRA. The TRA provides detailed guidance for employers on this, which can be found here. If a serious misconduct case is referred to the TRA, a professional conduct panel is formed which makes a recommendation on whether or not to issue a prohibition order. This would ban the individual from carrying out teaching work, usually for life. Their name would appear on the ‘prohibited list’ for employers, local authorities and teacher supply agencies and a banned teacher from the post-16 sector could not be reappointed in the pre-16 sector, and vice versa.

At present the TRA does not have powers to impose banning orders on those working in FE colleges. To address this, in 1 February the DfE launched a consultation on a proposal to extend the TRA’s powers to issue prohibition orders to anyone employed or engaged in teaching work in other post-16 settings, including FE colleges, special post-16 institutions, independent training providers (ITPs) and providers of online education, who is found guilty of serious misconduct. If this proposal is implemented, it would mean that the employers of teachers, assessors, tutors and lecturers in all post-16 education and training would have a statutory duty to decide whether to refer serious cases of misconduct for the TRA to investigate. Also, the TRA would be given powers to investigate referrals of individuals that commit serious misconduct while not employed as a teacher, along with powers to consider all referrals in respect of individuals who have at any time been employed or engaged to undertake teaching work in a relevant setting. This would allow the TRA to probe cases involving staff who work intermittently in teaching and those on career breaks, irrespective of the time that has passed since they last worked in teaching.

The consultation will run until 14 March and the documentation for submitting a response can be found here. This consultation also complements an earlier consultation launched on 11 January on updates to the current guidance for education employers on their statutory obligations in respect of safeguarding.

PRISONERS TO PARTICIPATE IN APPRENTICESHIP PROGRAMMES AND SKILLS BOOTCAMPS

Currently, prisoners are able to study, train and work while in jail, with around a further 5,000 prisoners allowed to work in the community through release on temporary license. On 11 February, the Ministry of Justice and the DfE jointly announced that new legislation is to be introduced that will allow prisoners to participate in apprenticeship programmes. The scheme will initially be piloted with around a hundred prisoners across England, but it is intended that by 2025 apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programmes will be rolled out across the wider prison service. Skills Bootcamps will also be open to serving prisoners due to be released within 6 months, and to those on temporary release.

FE STUDENTS GIVEN FREE ACCESS TO 10,000 E-BOOKS AND OPEN LEARNING RESOURCES

Kortext, which describes itself as ‘the UK’s leading student learning content and engagement platform’, has joined forces with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), which describes itself as the UK’s digital body for education and research, in a 12-month pilot scheme that will provide free e-books and other open learning resources to all FE and sixth form colleges across the UK. These will be made available to all JISC FE member institutions through the Kortext Open Resources Collection  of 10,000 open access books and other educational resources covering a broad range of subjects. Up to 1.7 million FE students will be able access to these resources free of charge. Details of how colleges can register for this can be found here.

IAC CALLS FOR RADICAL OVERHAUL OF EXAMS FOR 16-YEAR-OLDS IN ENGLAND

The Independent Assessment Commission (IAC) is, like the Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), a self-appointed, rather than a government appointed body. On its website, the IAC says that it ‘brings together academics, parents and students, as well as the National Education Union (NEU), the Chartered College of Teaching, the Edge Foundation and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)’. In 2019, the IAC conducted a pre-pandemic review of the exams system for 16-year-olds in England but did not publish its findings until 2 February this year. These can be found in report is entitled ‘Qualifications for a New Era: Equitable, Reliable Assessment’, which draws attention to the fact that when exams were last sat in 2019, more than a third of students (35.6%) taking GCSE English and maths achieved a grade that was lower than a Grade 4 (which is deemed by the government to be a ‘standard’ pass). This level of failure, says the report, was caused by the use of a standardised grading system, which ensured that the distribution of different GCSE grades stayed broadly the same from year to year. The standardised grading system was suspended in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic and GCSE grades were instead determined by teacher assessment. This resulted in a dramatic improvement of grades awarded overall. External exams will be reintroduced this year, but the IAC has called for GCSEs to be radically reformed. or preferably scrapped altogether. This, says the report, is because a single assessment at age 16 is inherently unfair. The report goes on to argue that GCSEs should be replaced by ‘a more equitable and reliable assessment system that optimizes the potential and protects the health and well-being of young people’ and gives them an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills from age 14 up to age of 19.

However, Dr Jo Saxton, the Ofqual Chief Regulator, said in response that GCSEs were not to blame for a third of students failing to get a grade 4 or better in English and maths, but they had helped highlight the ‘uncomfortable truth that many 16-year-olds lack the skills to get on in life’. Dr Saxton also defended the use of standardised grades, saying that the process had helped ensure that it was ‘no easier and no harder to get a grade from one year to the next’. She said that the real question to be addressed was how a young person could have reached the age of 15 or 16 and still be ‘struggling to read and express themselves in writing’. She added that there was also strong evidence to show that parents and students actually wanted to be able to take a qualification at age 16, and that GCSEs were ‘fit for purpose’ for this.

SCHOOLS ISSUED WITH GUIDANCE ON STATUTORY DUTIES IN RESPECT OF MAINTAINING POLITICAL IMPARTIALITY

In recent months there has been contentious coverage in the media of what some parents and commentators have said is political bias or inappropriate curricula being in evidence in certain schools. These have included such things as encouraging boys to participate in a ‘wear a skirt to school’ day, the elimination of all gender related pronouns, critical race theory sessions in which children are taught that white pupils are privileged and  black, Asian and other minority ethnic (BAME) pupils are their victims, encouraging children to miss school so they can take part in Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion protests (both of which, to varying degrees, have been alleged to be political), and more recently, primary school pupils being encouraged to write to their local MP to express how angry they are with the Prime Minister for breaking lockdown rules and his ‘continued lying to Parliament’.

The promotion of partisan political views in class is unlawful under the 1996 Education Act and, in response to complaints received, on 17 February Nadhim Zahawi, the Secretary of State for Education in England, issued guidance for schools (but, interestingly, not to colleges) on their existing legal and statutory duties in respect of maintaining political impartiality. A copy of the guidance can be found here. Although the document was not circulated to colleges, many observers think that it is implied that the guidance will be regarded as also being applicable to colleges and may be covered in Ofsted inspections. The introduction to the document says that guidance ‘does not seek to limit the range of political issues and viewpoints schools can teach’ but is intended to help those working in schools to understand their legal duties when covering political issues that go ‘beyond the curriculum’.

Various scenarios are presented in the document to help support an understanding of how the legal requirement can be met in ‘difficult and sensitive circumstances’, or ‘where the boundaries of what is and isn’t appropriate…may not be clear’. The scenarios, says the document, are meant to be ‘illustrative’ and are not ‘prescriptive guidance’. The guidance goes on to say that ‘No subject should be off limits, but teaching must be impartial and where teachers present controversial political views in a lesson, they must offer a balance of opposing views and not just present their own political views’. The guidance also draws a distinction between subject areas which may be a legitimate part of teaching, such as racism or colonialism, and promoting support for campaigning groups, such as Black Lives Matter. In addition, schools are asked to listen to and try to resolve any concerns raised by parents who feel their children have been exposed to an uncontested political view.

Meanwhile, some critics have argued that the government’s own stance on impartiality could be questioned. They point out that schools and colleges are placed under pressure to promote and teach ‘British values’ and to help implement the ‘Prevent’ strategy, and that schools and colleges are at risk of being downgraded in an Ofsted inspection if they are unable to demonstrate that they are doing so.

And finally…

A college principal was sitting in her office with her eyes glazed over. She was thinking about the recent storms and high winds, and what to do about the caravan in her back garden that hadn’t been there before.

She was woken from her reverie by one of the college senior managers who rushed into her office and said, ‘I’ve just had a phone call from one of the staff accompanying a party of our students on a field trip to Amsterdam. They’re at Schiphol Airport and he says that one of the students has fainted and fallen onto a luggage carousel. He said that airport paramedics are now waiting for the student to come round’.

‘Ring him back and find out how is the student is now’, said the principal.

The manager did so, and then turned to the principal and said, ‘The paramedics think that the student might have pneumsepticemiacardioecolistreptociivacillinovirus, but it’s hard to say’

Alan Birks – February 2022

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