Issue 130 | July 2022

A WEEK OF RESIGNATIONS AND RESHUFFLES AT THE DEPARTMENT FOR EDUCATION (DFE)

The week commencing 4 July saw three different Education Secretaries in post. On 5 July, Nadhim Zahawi, who was Secretary of State for Education, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer after Rishi Sunak resigned. He was replaced as Education Secretary by Michele Donelan, who was previously Minister for FE and HE. She resigned on 7 July after just 36 hours in post and was replaced as Education Secretary by James Cleverly.

There were other changes at the DfE. On 6 July, Alex Burghart, the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills resigned and was replaced on 7 July by Andrea Jenkyns, who takes on a wider ministerial brief for Skills, Further Education and Higher Education. On 6 July, Will Quince and Robin Walker resigned from their schools ministerial posts. Mr Walker was replaced by Brendan Clarke-Smith as Minister for Children and Families on 7 July. On 8 July Mr Quince returned to the DfE as Minister of State for School Standards, following Boris Johnson’s resignation as Prime Minister on 7 July (although Mr Johnson will remain in post until his successor is appointed).

It will be interesting to see how long the new ministerial appointees remain in post, since the new Conservative party leader and Prime Minister will no doubt wish to form their own Cabinet and make their own ministerial appointments (if only to reward their backers). Meanwhile, much to the chagrin of the new ministers, civil servants at the DfE are reported to have ‘downed tools’, having apparently taken the view that the period up to the election of the new Prime Minister should be regarded as ‘purdah’, (ie no policy changes should be implemented) as is the case in the run-up to a General Election.

CEO OF THE AOC WRITES TO NEW EDUCATION SECRETARY 

On 20 July, David Hughes CBE, the Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), wrote to the new Education Secretary for England, James Cleverly, outlining his views on what the ministerial priorities for FE colleges should be. The letter covers areas such as staff pay, the impending Office for National Statistics (ONS) reclassification of the legal status of colleges, capital project funding, Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) and T-Levels. A copy of Mr Hughes letter can be found here. Hopefully, Mr Cleverly will remain in post long enough to read it. Whether he takes any notice of it will be another matter.

OFSTED UPDATES THE EDUCATION INSPECTION FRAMEWORK AND FE AND SKILLS INSPECTION HANDBOOK

On 11 July Ofsted published details of updates to the Education Inspection Framework (EIF) and corresponding changes to the Further Education and Skills Inspection Handbook. The updates and changes will take effect from this September and include the following:

• As was stated previously in Ofsted’s Five Year Strategy for 2022-27, a new ‘sub-judgement’ on how well colleges are contributing to meeting local skills needs will be introduced. This, says Ofsted, is a key component of the government’s national roll-out of Local Skills Improvement Plans and a now a legislative requirement set out in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. The sub-judgement made by inspectors will be ‘limited’, ‘reasonable’, or ‘strong’ and will contribute to the overall judgement of the provider’s quality of education and its leadership and management. Ofsted will not apply this sub-judgement to provision delivered by Independent Training Providers (ITPs).
• A new grade descriptor has been added to the quality of education judgement, which acknowledges that although settings no longer face Covid restrictions, the long-term impact of the pandemic is likely to have an impact on the quality of provision in colleges for some time to come. The updated inspection handbook says inspectors will need to take this into account when arriving at their judgements.
• In September 2019, Ofsted put in place transition arrangements which allowed a provider that was in the process of changing a part of its curriculum provision to still receive a ‘good’ grade, provided other aspects of its provision were good. The transition arrangements were due to end in September 2020 but were extended to September 2022 because of Covid. Ofsted has now confirmed that this extension period will end this September and has removed the relevant section from the updated inspection handbook. However, Ofsted says that this does not mean that providers will now be expected to meet every single criterion in the updated handbook criterion to be judged as ‘good’.

OFSTED PUBLISHES CORPORATE REPORT AND ACCOUNTS.

On 14 July Ofsted published its 2021/22 Annual Report and Accounts. The Report and Accounts differ from the Ofsted Annual Report in that the former focuses on financial and other performance indicators, whereas the latter focuses on inspection activity findings. The 2021/22 Annual Report and Accounts says that:

• Ofsted’s budget was 25% lower than 2010 in real-terms.
• Ofsted underspent its core funding for inspections by just over £10 million. This was because the full programme of routine inspections was suspended until September 2021 because of the pandemic.
• Ofsted paid out £473,000 in redundancy, early retirement, and other ‘exit’ costs.
• Ofsted’s ability to meet its own inspection targets was affected by the impact of the pandemic on providers, and by Ofsted’s own capacity being reduced due to staff sickness and isolation periods. However, Ofsted still managed to carry out 719 of 758 (95%) of the inspections it had planned.
• Ofsted staff turnover increased to 14% in 2021/22 compared to 9% in 2020/21.
• To offset staff shortages, Ofsted has resumed the part-time employment of inspectors who are also employed in full-time roles in schools and colleges. Ofsted had previously stopped using them during the pandemic so that they could fully concentrate on meeting the demands of their full-time jobs.
• Against this, the government wants to reduce the numbers employed in the civil service to 2016 levels over the next three years and Ofsted has been asked to draw up proposals for headcount reductions.

OFSTED PUBLISHES LATEST REPORT ON ‘EDUCATION RECOVERY IN FE AND SKILLS PROVIDERS’

On 20 July, Ofsted published its latest report on post-pandemic education recovery in the FE and skills sector. The report follows on from similar reports published last December and this April. Information in this latest report is based on inspections of further education colleges, sixth-form colleges, local authority and adult education providers and specialist colleges that were carried out between April 25 and May 27. Key points in the report include the following:

• Some providers had retained remote learning, even where there was no clear benefit from doing so.
• Staff shortages had resulted in some employers failing to release their apprentices for their mandatory off-the-job training and often resulted in apprentices having high workloads.
• Many adult learners did not return to their courses. Some providers closed as a result. This was most prevalent in adult community learning settings.
• Some apprentices were still on an agreed break in their learning or were still on programmes beyond their scheduled finish date. This was partly as a result of delays in providing required training and/or assessments, or because some apprentices were not yet ready for their assessments. Lack of End-Point Assessment Organisation (EPAO) capacity in some areas has contributed to a large backlog in carrying out apprenticeship end-point assessments (EPAs).
• Some apprentices had found better paid jobs and abandoned their courses altogether.
• Programmes had been ‘re-sequenced’ for many students, with the theory elements being covered first and practical skills left until later.
• There were high levels of anxiety among learners who sat exams this summer, many of whom were taking an external exam for the first time.

OFQUAL PUBLISHES ITS 2021/22 ANNUAL REPORT AND ACCOUNTS

On 14 July, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation in England (Ofqual) published its 2021/22 Annual Report and Accounts. Ofqual currently regulates 205 awarding organisations (AOs), and 12,250 qualifications. In 2020/21 Ofqual received government funding of £25.5 million. Ofqual says that because of the pandemic its main activities during the year were focused on supporting GCSE, AS and A-Level exams, VTQ exams and other assessments. This involved the implementation of a wide range of adaptions such as optional content or topics in GCSE subjects, advance information on the content of the exams, the provision of equation and formulae sheets and modifications to the requirements for non-exam assessment and practical work.

However, on 13 July, Robert Halfon, the Chair of the House of Commons Education Select Committee sent a letter to the new Education Secretary, James Cleverly and Ofqual Chair, Ian Bauckham, which said that his Committee was concerned to learn that several of the exam papers sat by students this summer did not reflect the advance information provided and/or contained other errors such as questions on topics not covered in the adapted curriculum. In the letter Mr Halfon said that this was due to ‘negligence’ and had resulted in ‘students facing unnecessary distress and anxiety’. He also called for financial penalties to be imposed on the exam boards concerned.

OFQUAL PUBLISHES RESEARCH FINDINGS ON THE USE OF TAGS IN DETERMINING 2021 STUDENT GRADES

On 14 July, Ofqual published a report on the findings of a survey on the use of Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs) in 2021 during the pandemic. The survey findings included the following:

• 50% of the 1,500 school and college teachers who were surveyed said that they felt pressured by senior leaders or parents and students to change their grades.
• 30% of teachers said that they had been put under pressure by their managers to reduce student grades, particularly where there were variances with the school or college’s previous external exam grades profiles.
• 50% of teachers said that managers signing off TAGS as part of the internal quality assurance process had actually changed their grades. 33% of staff said they were told that this was because the TAGs awarded in 2021 deviated significantly from the school or college’s previous grade profiles.
• 21% of teachers said they felt under pressure from students and/or their parents to revise grades upwards, despite being warned that this could constitute malpractice.

• Although schools and colleges were given substantial amounts of guidance from Ofqual, the DfE and exam boards on how to award TAGs, 41% of teachers said that they thought the support was unclear, vague, inconsistent, or contradictory, and in some cases completely inadequate.
• Virtually all teachers surveyed said they thought that the process for awarding TAGs was stressful, exhausting, and time-consuming (the median time taken to decide grades was 15 days). This was made worse because in 2021, teachers had to assess their students on what they actually knew, rather than predict their achievement, as was the case in 2020 when exams were cancelled altogether.
• However, 85% of staff rated their confidence level in awarding the correct grades at more than 75%.

UCU SURVEY REVEALS EFFECT OF LOW LEVELS OF PAY IN FE

On 8 July, the University and Colleges Union (UCU) published a report called ‘On The Breadline: The cost of living crisis for England’s college workers’. The report’s findings are based on a survey of 2,700 members. 80% of respondents said that they felt more financially insecure than they were a year ago and more 82% said that their lack of financial security was impacting on their mental health. 42% said that their income does not cover the cost of living. Of these, 64% said they were heating their home less, 40% said they restrict the use hot water and 25% said that they were skipping meals to help make ends meet.

Meanwhile, pay negotiations between college unions and the Association of Colleges (AoC) have stalled. Unions have called the AoC’s latest recommendation for a 2.5% increase an ‘insult’, while some college managers have described 2.5% offer as being ‘unaffordable’. Unions are demanding a 10% increase in pay, improved workload and wellbeing protocols and a review of non-permanent teaching contracts (eg zero hours contracts) to increase job security. Unions are also balloting members on taking strike action if these demands are not met. Thus far, strike action has already been confirmed at 39 colleges across England. For its part, the AoC has asked the DfE for emergency funding to enable colleges to increase staff pay, but nobody is holding their breath waiting for a positive response. At this point it is probably worth mentioning that over the last ten years teachers in FE have seen a real-terms 35% cut in their pay and they are currently paid around £9,000 a year less than equivalent teachers in schools.

DFE CONFIRMS STRB RECOMMENDATION FOR AN INCREASE IN TEACHERS’ PAY IN 2022/23 

On 19 July, the DfE confirmed that it had accepted the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) recommendation that for 2022/23 there should be a 5% increase in pay for ‘experienced’ school teachers. This is higher than the offer of 3% in 2022/23 followed by a further 2% in 2023/24 initially put forward by the DfE. Also, the STRB recommendation for a 5% increase spans just one year, rather than the DfE’s two years. In addition, starting salaries for teachers in England will rise by 8.9% to £28,000 from this September, which is lower than the £30,000 initially envisaged by the DfE.  Teacher and head teacher unions have rejected the offer and are consulting their members on taking industrial action.

SUPREME COURT RULING WILL IMPACT ON THE AMOUNT HOLIDAY PAY FOR STAFF ON TERM-TIME-ONLY CONTRACTS

At an appeal hearing held on 20 July, the Supreme Court ruled that Ms Lesley Brazel, a music teacher employed at Bedford Girls’ School on a permanent term-time only contract was underpaid because of the way her holiday pay was calculated. The judgement in Harper Trust vs Brazel means that any worker who has a continuing permanent contract throughout the year, but only works for certain periods during that year (eg term-time only) must receive holiday pay based on the hours they work in a normal week, rather than paying them pro-rata based on the number of weeks they work each year. This means that, for example, if a teacher on a term-time only contract works the full-time number of hours each week in each term, they will be entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks holiday pay and possibly more. Schools and colleges will need to review their holiday pay arrangements for staff employed on such contracts to ensure they comply with the ruling. Where they do not comply, they are likely face legal claims from staff for back-pay.

FIRST T-LEVEL STUDENTS APPLY FOR PLACES AT UNIVERSITY

Around 1,300 students enrolled on the first three T-Level courses in September 2023 (Education and Childcare, Digital, and Construction) and will have finished their course this summer. Data published by the University and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) on 14 July shows that 490 of these students have applied for places on degree programmes. There has been a level of uncertainty about which universities were prepared to accept T-Levels. To help clarify this, on 23 May the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) published a list of 127 universities that were prepared to accept T-Levels, but not which T-Level subjects they would accept, presumably leaving it to students to find this out for themselves.

DFE PUBLISHES DETAILS OF SUCCESSFUL APPLICATIONS FOR WAVE 4 T-LEVEL CAPITAL FUNDS

On 19 July the DfE announced details of successful Wave 4 T-Level Capital Fund (TLCF) applications, which sees more than £74 million awarded to 86 colleges. The funding will be used to provide specialist equipment and/or or upgrade premises for T-Level programmes scheduled to commence in September 2023. These new allocations will increase total Wave 4 TLCF investment to more than £150 million and the total TLCF investment so far to in excess of £400 million.

ESFA PUBLISHES UPDATED GUIDANCE ON ELIGIBILITY OF PROVIDERS TO DELIVER T-LEVELS

On 21 July, the ESFA published its latest guidance on T-Levels which contains information for post-16 providers on the ‘next steps towards the delivery of T-Levels’. The updated guidance covers a number of things, including the eligibility of providers to deliver T-Levels due to come on stream in 2023. Previously, only providers judged as ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted were eligible to apply to deliver these new T-Levels. However, in the latest guidance, the ESFA says that providers judged as ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted, or even without an Ofsted grade at all, are now eligible apply to deliver them. (They are already eligible apply to run T-Levels introduced in earlier years). Apparently, the ESFA has decided to relax the Ofsted judgement requirement in order to increase the number of T-Level providers. However, the latest guidance on registration, published by the ESFA on 21 July, says that those providers wishing to take advantage of the rule changes must have registered their intention to apply with the ESFA by 29 July.

AWARDING ORGANISATIONS (AOS) APPEAL AGAINST THE DEFUNDING OF LEVEL 3 BTECS AND OTHER VTQS

Following a government consultation on plans to reform Level 3 vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs), on 11 May, the DfE published a list of 160 Level 3 VTQs and other that will no longer be eligible for public funding from 1 August 2024. The list includes 38 BTEC National Diplomas. The main basis of the decision to defund these qualifications is that they duplicate, or substantially overlap with T-Level qualifications. The DfE also published details of an appeals process that AOs can use to contest the DfE decision to defund their qualifications, the deadline for which was 8 July. Pearson, City & Guilds, NCFE, OCR and NOCN are amongst those AOs known to have lodged appeals. Of these, the largest number of appeals has been made by Pearson, which is contesting the defunding of 14 of its courses including popular BTEC National Diplomas in Engineering, Construction and Health and Social Care.

DFE AMENDS ITS ASSESSMENT ON THE IMPACT OF DEFUNDING CERTAIN LEVEL 3 VTQ’S

On 19 July, the DfE published an amended version of its ‘Review of post-16 qualifications at level 3 in England: impact assessment’ after data used in the first version, which was published on 14 July 2021, was found to contain errors. The changes in the updated impact assessment include the following:

• Around 54% of Level 3 VTQs for young people aged 16-18 are now at risk of being defunded, rather than the 60% in the initial impact assessment.
• Around 33% of Level 3 qualifications for adults are now at risk of being defunded, rather than the 31% in the initial impact assessment.
• The initial impact assessment concluded that 16-19-year-olds with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), black, Asian and other minority students and those from other disadvantaged backgrounds could be impacted by the proposals. Using the revised data, the new impact assessment for these groups remains broadly the same, other than for black students who, according to the new assessment, are deemed to be no longer disproportionately impacted by the proposals, while white working-class students are now deemed to be more likely to be impacted by the changes.

PROPOSALS FOR A NEW FE FUNDING AND ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM

On 21July, the DfE published a consultation on proposals for a new FE Funding and Accountability System. The consultation deals mainly with adult learning and skills, and the deadline to respond is 21 September. The consultation asks for views on proposed changes, which include:

• The replacement of the Strategic Development Fund, the College Collaboration Fund, Workforce Industry Exchange funding, the Higher Technical Education Growth Fund and the FE Professional Development Grant, with a single ‘Development Fund’.
• The replacement of the Adult Education Budget (AEB) with a ‘Skills Fund’ comprised of current AEB funding, Adult Community Learning (ACL) funding and Free Courses for Jobs (FCFJ) funding.
• The replacement of funding agreements with new shorter accountability agreements.
• The replacement of funding allocations based on provider historic performance with allocations based on a new ‘needs-based’ funding formula, and the replacement of annual funding allocations with multi-year allocations.
• Non-qualification funded provision to help deliver at least one of three objectives, these being:
• Help students gain employment or progress in employment
• Help students to progress to further learning that leads to employment
• Assist learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities to live independently.
• Courses to be placed in one of five funding bands, these being base, low, middle, high and specialist. The funding band a course is placed in will be based on local skills needs, the level of skill and the cost of delivery.
• A new data collection system to replace ILR returns and to create new FE performance dashboard.
• The introduction of a new FE ‘skills measure’ to compare students’ expected rate of progression against their actual rate of progression, adjusted for personal characteristics such as receipt of free school meals, prior attainment, and the local economic context.
• The Adult Education Budget is now devolved to Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs), including the Greater London Authority. However, there can be inconsistencies between MCAs in how similar provision is funded and quality assured (see section below). To avoid this, although MCAs will remain free to decide what provision should be offered in their area, they should use a national funding model to decide the amount of funding allocated to individual courses.

EXTRA FUNDING FOR AEB FUNDED COURSES FOR LONDON RESIDENTS

In 2020/21, the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan announced a 10% uplift to AEB funding for London residents only. Mr Khan has now announced that there will be a further uplift of 3.5% in 2022/23 for adult courses at Level 2 and below. Mr Khan has also announced several other measures designed to help widen access to adult education courses for London residents. These include the following:

• The three-year residency requirement to access funded courses for adults will be removed.
• The requirement for learners to prove that they are in receipt of state benefits will be removed.
• Those wishing to take courses leading to the Construction Skills Certification Labourer’s Scheme (CSCS) and the Security Industry Authority (SIA) license for people providing security in clubs, bars and other locations, will have their training costs covered in full. Unemployed learners and those in low-paid employment will have access to fully funded British Sign Language courses.
• A new £2 million programme called ‘No Wrong Door’ will established ‘integration hubs’ across London, which will provide employment and skills support for those most in need, prioritising groups such as asylum seekers and other newcomers, women, disabled people and people aged over 50.

Residents in other MCAs are no doubt eagerly waiting to see if there will be any funding uplift for adult courses in their areas, perhaps as part of the government’s levelling up agenda.

DFE PUBLISHES LATEST DATA ON SCHOOLS AND THEIR PUPILS IN ENGLAND

On 1 July, the DfE published its latest data on the characteristics of schools and their pupils in England. The data covers the year to July 2022 and shows that:

• The number of pupils in schools in England has reached 9 million, an increase of 88,000 pupils.
• The number of schools to accommodate them has increased by 41, to 24,454.

• 39% of primary schools are academies or free schools.
• 80% of secondary schools are academies or free schools.
• 22.5% of pupils are eligible for free school meals, up from 20.8% in 2021.
• The percentage of pupils from minority ethnic backgrounds has increased to 34.5%, but with significant regional differences. In the North East, the figure is 12%, while it is 38% in the West Midlands and more than 80% in Inner London.

• 5% of pupils were recorded as having a first language other than English.

DFE PUBLISHES LATEST DATA ON 16-18-YEAR-OLDS NOT IN EDUCATION, EMPLOYMENT OR TRAINING (NEET)

On 30 June the DfE published data that showed the overall NEET figure for 16-18-year-olds in the 2021 calendar year had contracted to 6.4%. This was mainly due to a decrease of 2.9% in the numbers of 18-year-olds classified as NEET, the figure for which was 9.3%, a record low. However, the numbers of 16- and 17-year-olds classified as NEET increased by 1%, from 4.0% in 2020 to 5%.

NEW EDUCATION AND TRAINING FOUNDATION (ETF) COURSES ANNOUNCED

The ETF has announced that applications are now open for the 2022/23 DfE funded Mentor Training programme. The programme consists of two courses, as follows:

• Mentoring Skills for New Mentors. As the name suggests, this is for people without previous mentoring experience.
• Advanced Mentoring Skills for experienced mentors: This course is intended for staff who already have experience of mentoring and will help participants to develop advanced mentoring skills.

Both courses commence on 17 October. Applications for places must be made by 30 September. Further information is available on the ETF website (see links above).

THE AELP IN NEGOTIATIONS TO BECOME A CO-OWNER OF ETF (AGAIN)

The ETF was established in 2013 by Sir John Hayes, a former Conservative Skills Minister. The ETF was (and still is) largely funded by the DfE and has the brief to provide training and professional development for those working in the FE and skills sector. The original co-owners and trustees of the ETF were the AoC, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and the adult community education organisation Holex. In 2018, the AELP disengaged from the ETF, claiming that it was ignoring the interests of ITPs. Earlier this month, the ETF entered into discussions with the AELP with a view to returning as a co-owner, in order, says the AELP, to gain ‘more representation, a higher profile and a stronger voice’ within the FE sector. Meanwhile, the ETF has seen a cut of £3.26 million (15%) in its DfE funding this year.

ESFA PUBLISHES FIRST VERSION OF APPRENTICESHIP FUNDING RULES FOR 2022/23

Following an earlier consultation, on 20 July the ESFA published the first version of its Apprentice Funding Rules for 2022/23 that will come into effect from 1 September. Changes for 2022/23 include the following:

• Earlier in the year, the ESFA announced that apprentices who start a Level 2 apprenticeship programme without Level 1 English and maths would no longer be required to take Level 2 English and maths tests to complete their apprenticeship. The removal of this requirement has now been extended to apprentices who started their programmes on, or after 1 August 2022 and are still on-programme.
• Funding will be at risk if a provider is unable to show, upon request, an up-to-date training plan for their apprentices and their current progress towards this training plan.
• Where an assessment of a prospective apprentice’s prior learning has been made and it is found that no relevant prior learning exists, providers must fully document this before starting the apprenticeship.
• Funding will no longer automatically be at risk if an apprentice drop-outs without having made enough progress towards their training plan (which is defined as being more than four weeks behind on the planned training). Instead, claw back of funding will be decided on the basis of individual circumstances.
• Providers will no longer need to withdraw an apprentice if there is a break in employment for more than 30 days. Instead, providers can place the apprentice on an agreed break in learning, but they must withdraw the apprentice if they do not restart their apprenticeship programme within 12 weeks.
• Apprentices who changed their employer partway through their programme and did not recommence their programme with their new employer within 30 days were previously classed as non-achieving leavers. This had the effect of unfairly bringing down the training provider’s apprenticeship retention and achievement rate. To address this, the 30-day period has now been extended to 8 weeks.

NEW EXTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE (EQA) PROCESS FOR HIGHER AND DEGREE-LEVEL APPRENTICESHIPS

Following an earlier review in March this year, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) announced the establishment of a new Designated Quality Body for England (DQBE). With the agreement of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), the DQBE has now assumed responsibility on behalf of the Office for Students (OfS), for the external quality assurance (EQA) of the 38 higher and degree level apprenticeship standards currently being delivered by universities in England. To help prepare universities for the new EQA process, the DQBE has produced a handbook explaining how it will carry out its EQA role and how site-based checks and approvals will be carried out. The DQBE says it will undertake risk-based monitoring of university-based providers and ensure that the delivery of the apprenticeship end point assessment (EPA) is valid, compliant and recognised by employers as delivering ‘the right outcomes’. The DQBE also specifies the evidence and information that will be required from the End Point Assessment Organisation (EPAO) that will carry out the apprenticeship EPA. The DQBE says it will give the EPAO the chance to ‘comment on and agree’ the information it requires in advance and will help them to with their action planning process. The DQBE will begin site visits to university-based providers in August. Hopefully, the even larger than usual number of bewildering acronyms in this section did not send you cross-eyed.

UCAS ANALYSIS OF APPLICATIONS FOR PLACES AT UK UNIVERSITIES THIS YEAR

A report published by UCAS on 14 July says that, as of 30 June (the final date for applications):

• The overall application rate for university places from UK 18-year-olds, stands at 44.1%, which is a record high. 683,650 applicants for places have made more than 3 million applications.
• The application rate for 18-year-old students from the poorest areas across the UK has increased by 28.8%, up from 27% last year. UCAS says that this means that around 38,300 students from the most disadvantaged areas have applied for a place at university this year. UCAS also says that the application gap between the poorest and richest 18-year-olds has narrowed, with the application rate for the richest 18-year-olds remaining the same as in 2021 at 59.5%.
• There has been an increasing level of interest in degree apprenticeships, with a record 2.15 million searches on the UCAS CareerFinder service
• More than 135,000 international students have applied for places this year, an increase of 3% on 2021. Chinese applicants made up the largest number, with applications rising by 10% to 31,400. The second largest number of applications (23,160) were from students in EU countries. This is a 93.1% decrease on last year, thought to be largely because since August 2021, students from EU countries have no longer been able to access tuition and maintenance loans (or free tuition in the case of Scotland) on the same basis as home students. Instead, they must pay the same higher fees as other international students. The third largest number of applications were from students in India, which increased by 20%, and in fourth place were applications from students in Nigeria which increased by 58%.

TUITION FEE CAPS AND HIGHER OVERSEAS STUDENT RECRUITMENT MAY RESULT IN FEWER PLACES FOR HOME STUDENTS

University vice chancellors in England say that the current tuition fee cap of £9,250 a year for home students (which will be frozen at this level until 2024/25) is losing them money. They go on to say that the recruitment of foreign students, for whom there is no cap and who pay up to £30,000 a year in tuition fees, is now a far more attractive financial proposition than recruiting home students. In a recent report, the Russell Group of universities claim that, on the basis of current home tuition fee levels, group members are now losing an average of £1,750 a year on each home student they teach and that by 2024/5 this loss will have increased to more than £4,000 a year.

Successive UK governments have encouraged universities to recruit overseas students as a source of income in order to supplement their public funding, but data available in the Complete University Guide reveals the extent to which universities have now become increasingly reliant on income from international student tuition fees. For example, almost half (49.4%) of undergraduate students at Imperial College are from abroad, as are around a third of undergraduate students at Edinburgh, Manchester, Warwick, Aberdeen, King’s College London, Coventry, and St Andrews universities. If postgraduate students are included, in many universities the proportion of their total student population from overseas increases even further. For example, 70% of undergraduate and post-graduate students at the London School of Economics (LSE) are from abroad. And at the University of Central London (UCL), 75% of students on 16 postgraduate courses are from China, while on three of these courses all of the students are from China. Most universities say they are planning to increase the numbers of foreign students they recruit still further. For example, Manchester Metropolitan University plans to increase the number of international students it recruits by 10%, thereby raising the income generated from international student fees by at least £31million. Meanwhile, some universities (eg Loughborough) say they intend to ‘freeze’ the number of home students they recruit in order to concentrate on recruiting more international students. Other universities say they are actually planning to reduce the numbers of home students. A few universities have gone further and said that, because of the tuition fee cap and the increased level of regulation they are now being subjected to in respect of home students, they may in future only recruit students from overseas.

All of this suggests that with the numbers of 18-year-olds in the home population rising, the increasing proportion of the 18-year-old population applying for university places, the large numbers who were offered places at university in previous years but who deferred taking them up because of Covid now taking them up, A-Level grade inflation resulting in more students meeting university entrance requirements for places, and universities looking to recruit more and more international students, for  this year and in the foreseeable future, the supply of UK university places for home students will be considerably outstripped by the demand.

UNIVERSITIES COMMIT TO TACKLING DEGREE GRADE INFLATION

Data published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) in January reveals that in 2021, 36% of undergraduate students at UK universities were awarded a first-class honour degree, a record high, and that 46% of students were awarded an upper-second class honours degree. This means that in that year, more than 4 in 5 students left university with a 2:1 degree or above. This has caused the OfS to warn universities that if this level of degree grade inflation continues it will take action against them. Faced with this, plus a considerable degree of political pressure, Universities UK (UUK) and GuildHE, which collectively represent nearly every university in the country, have issued a joint statement giving a commitment to restraining (but not necessarily reversing) the current rate of degree grade inflation. The joint statement recognises that the degree grade inflation seen over the last decade cannot be entirely explained by improvements in teaching and learning and/or by students working harder. It also acknowledges that the current upward trend could undermine student, employer and public confidence in the degree awarding system. However, the statement attributes some of the recent increase in first and 2:1 degrees awarded to the measures universities took to ensure students were not unfairly disadvantaged during the pandemic.

The joint statement therefore commits to returning the numbers of top degrees awarded to that of pre-pandemic levels by 2023. The statement goes on to say that universities will take the pre-pandemic year of 2019 (but not the lower levels seen in previous years) as the benchmark for the commitment, and each university will produce ‘outcome statements’ containing details of the actions they will take to achieve a ‘levelling-off’ in the number of top degree grades awarded. Each university will be required to publish a review of progress made against their ‘outcome statements’ which will be reported to their governing bodies and made available on the UUK website with links to individual universities. UUK and GuildHE say they will provide an evaluation and update on the collective progress made by universities against the commitment in early 2023.

UNIVERSITIES ASKED PUBLISH STUDENT DROP-OUT AND EMPLOYMENT RATES ON GRADUATION

On 1 July, the DfE issued universities with new guidance asking them to cease including misleading claims in course advertisements. The guidance, which covers all forms of advertising, including digital, TV and radio, says that course adverts should now include comparable data on drop-out rates and what proportion of students go on to graduate level jobs in order to assist prospective students to make a more informed choice of course and university. All HE providers registered with the OfS are asked to comply. Only full-time, first-degree courses are in scope of the guidance, which does not apply to foundation degrees, post-graduate degrees or degree level apprenticeship standards. Initially, the guidance is non-statutory. However, if compliance with the guidance is considered insufficient, ministers may decide to make it mandatory. The guidance has been issued in the wake of research which found that more than 4 in 10 students would not, with hindsight, have made the same choice of course and university.

NEW SURVEY REVEALS ALMOST HALF OF UNDERGRADUATES HAVE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES

Earlier this month the mental health charity, Humen, published the results of a survey of 7,200 students at 80 UK universities. The results revealed that nearly half (47%) of the students surveyed said that they had mental health issues that had impacted negatively impacted their university experience. The findings also revealed that while 57% of students had used services including counselling, helplines, self-help resources and wellbeing groups, only 4% of staff had sufficient training to help students to cope with their mental health issues. Male students were particularly adversely impacted. On its news website, the BBC has provided a number of case studies of individuals who took part in the survey. Another perspective of student mental health is given in an article by Mary Harrington entitled ‘Fragile students just need a hug’ published in the online magazine UnHerd.

AND NEARLY FINALLY…

An ESOL lecturer was teaching English to a group of students who were newly arrived in the country and who were grappling with the complexities of the English Language. The lecturer had just explained the general rule in English that ‘i’ comes before ‘e’, except after ‘c’. One of the students said that this meant he had made a lot of mistakes in the homework essay he had written and was about to hand in. The lecturer asked the student if she could see the essay, so the student showed her, and in the first line of the essay she read ‘Last Christmas, a neighbour of mine called Keith, who is a ‘feisty, over-caffeinated weightlifter’, received a delivery of eight, beige counterfeit sleighs which he tried to sell in the local pub’.

Swiftly recovering, the lecturer said that there were in fact lots of exceptions to general rules in the English language, and proceeded to recite a poem giving other examples of anomalies, which went like this:

‘We’ll begin with box, where the plural is boxes, but the plural of ox is oxen, not oxes.

One fowl is a goose, and two are called geese, yet the plural of moose is never called meese.

You may find a lone mouse, or a house full of mice, but the plural of house is houses not hice.

The plural of woman is always women, so why the plural of pan never pen?

If I speak of a foot and you show me two feet, if I give you a book, would two be a beek?

If one is a tooth, but a whole set is teeth, why is it we don’t call two booths a beeth?

If the singular’s this, and the plural is these, how come the plural of kiss is not keese?

We speak of brother, and also of brethren, but though we say mother we never say methren

The masculine pronouns are he, his and him, so why isn’t the feminine she, shis and shim?

And so, the students were left even more confused

AND FINALLY…

You will no doubt be relieved to learn that, as usual, there will be no Click newsletter in August. But ‘normal’ service will be resumed in September, whether you like it or not. Meanwhile, from all at Click we hope you have a restful and reinvigorating summer holiday.

Alan Birks – July 2022

As usual, the views and opinions expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those held by Click.
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