Issue 138 | May 2023

SUMMER 2023 EXAMS

Summer 2023 GCSE and A-Level exams are underway across the UK. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, exams started on 15 May and will go on until 28 June. In Scotland, national and higher exams started at the end of April and finished on 31 May. Support measures to help students with their exams during the pandemic will remain in place, but the level of support varies across different UK countries.

GCSE and A-Level grades awarded in 2020 and 2021 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland were based on teacher assessments instead of exams and this led to significant grade inflation. In England, Ofqual is seeking to return to the profile of grades awarded in the pre-pandemic period more quickly than in other UK countries. School head teachers and college principals in England have been warned that A-Level and GCSE grades awarded this summer will be much closer to pre-pandemic levels. Some observers say this means that students taking their exams this year will be doubly disadvantaged. Two years of their education was disrupted by the pandemic, and they are now likely to get lower grades than students who took their exams in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Against this, maths, physics, and combined-science GCSE students will still be given formulae and equations, and foreign language students will not be expected to deal with vocabulary that they may be unfamiliar with. In addition, exams will still be spaced apart more than they were prior to the pandemic to allow for more revision. However, unlike last year, students in England have not been given advance information on the topics that will be covered in their exam papers.

In Wales and Northern Ireland, students have been given advance information by their qualifications regulatory bodies about what will appear in their 2023 exam papers. As a result, grades are expected to remain higher than they were pre-pandemic and to be around midway between those awarded in 2019 and 2022. In Scotland, all exam support measures introduced during the pandemic remain in place for 2023.

Vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) in all UK countries were less affected by grade inflation because grades were mostly arrived at through continuous assessment throughout the year. In England, if VTQs have exams and other assessments taken at the end of the course (for example, as is the case with most BTECs), Ofqual has told awarding organisations (AOs) to apply a similar grading approach to that used with GCSE and A levels. This is to help ensure that VTQ students are not disadvantaged compared to A-Level and GCSE students.

Exam results by country and qualification level will be published on the following dates:

• Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) exam results will be published on 8 August.
• T-Level results in England will be published on 17 August.
• A-Levels, Level 3 VTQs with exams (e.g. BTEC Nationals) and other Level 3 results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be published on 17 August.
• GCSE and Level 2 VTQ results in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will be published on or before 24 August.

INDUSTRIAL ACTION IN SCHOOLS, COLLEGES, AND UNIVERSITIES

Schools: The National Education Union (NEU) has rejected the government’s most recent offer of a one-off £1,000 payment for 2022/23, plus a funded 4.5% pay uplift for 2023/24, and has taken strike action. The NEU is legally required to hold a second national ballot of members in schools in England before taking further strike action. The second ballot opened on 15 May and closes on 28 July.  The NEU says that the dispute is over four issues. These are pay and funding, recruitment and retention, workload, and the impact of Ofsted inspections on the mental health and wellbeing of teachers and school leaders.

In a joint press conference held on 28 April, the general secretaries of the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), the NEU, the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and the National Association of School Masters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) announced that in future they will be co-ordinating the industrial action they take. Meanwhile, a possible further pay recommendation of 6.5% made by the School Teachers’ Review Body (STRB) was leaked to the school unions. On 25 May the unions jointly wrote to Gillian Keegan, the Secretary of State for Education in England on 25 May calling for the STRB recommendation to be published and to urgently re-commence national negotiations in respect of pay.

Colleges: Pay and conditions in colleges are determined by individual college corporations. Because of this, industrial action in the sector is being taken on a college-by-college basis, rather than on a national basis. However, there is a National Joint Forum (NJF) which is comprised of the Association of Colleges (AoC), the University and College Union (UCU), Unison, the NEU, GMB and Unite, and which met on 11 May. The unions are seeking a pay increase of 15.4% in all colleges. The unions are also demanding the re-establishment of a new national negotiating body for pay and conditions for all colleges in England, the recommendations of which, if accepted, would be government funded and binding on all colleges. Reporting back after the NJF meeting, David Hughes, the AoC Chief Executive, said that there was broad agreement on the need to improve pay in colleges and that the union claim was not unreasonable given the massive gap between staff pay in colleges with pay in schools and industry. He also said that employers recognised the impact on staff of the cost-of-living crisis, but colleges did not have the revenue funding to offer anywhere near what the unions are asking for.  He therefore repeated an earlier statement that the AoC will not be making any pay recommendation unless the government provides colleges with sufficient funding to pay for an increase that at least matches the pay increase the government is offering to staff in schools. He went on to say that if the AoC did make a pay recommendation knowing that colleges couldn’t afford to pay it, the government would be ‘let off the hook’. The NJF said it was disappointing that the AoC had failed to make any recommendation on pay. It was also disappointing that the AoC had refused to publicly support their demand for the re-establishment of binding and funded national agreements on pay and conditions, similar to that in schools.

Universities: Strike action has been taken by UCU members at 145 HE institutions over the period since 20 April. The latest action also involves a refusal to mark exams and student assessments. This means that some students may not receive their grades this summer and UCU accepts that this could affect up to half a million graduations. One student said she had finished her course with £40,000 of debt, but will have no degree to show for it. Some universities have said that they will allow students who are mid-course to move on to the next stage of their studies by using predicted grades or marks from earlier assessments.

COLLEGES WILL NOT BE EXEMPTED FROM PAYING VAT

Westminster Hall Debates give MPs an opportunity to raise local or national issues with, and receive a response from, a government minister. MPs apply for a debate, and these are then allocated by a ballot arranged by the Speaker’s Office. At a Westminster Hall debate on Public Bodies and VAT tabled by George Eustace MP (Conservative) and held on 17 May, Mr Eustice drew attention to Section 33 of the VAT Act 1994 that allows local authorities and public bodies to reclaim VAT. He also referred to the Section 33b amendment to the act made in 2011, which gave academies exemption from paying VAT. He argued that, since colleges had now been reclassified by the OfS as public bodies, they should also benefit from this exemption.

Responding to Mr Eustace, Victoria Atkins, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said that eligibility for VAT exemption is ‘not related’ to ONS classification. She went on to say that FE and sixth form colleges would not be exempted from paying VAT because they did not fit the rationale for either section 33 or section 33b of the act, which is to ‘prevent VAT costs from falling as a burden on local taxation’. She also said that if colleges were to be granted VAT exemption it would cost around £200 million a year, and that this would need to be recovered via a reduction in public spending elsewhere. However, Ms Atkins did say that if sixth form colleges were prepared to apply to become academies, they could be exempted from paying VAT.

PROPOSAL TO ALIGN FE COLLEGE FINANCIAL YEAR WITH THE REST OF THE PUBLIC SECTOR

As mentioned in the section above, last November, FE colleges in England were reclassified by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and were moved from the private sector to the public sector. The change means that college accounts have to be consolidated into the accounts of the Department for Education (DfE) which, in turn, are consolidated into government accounts. The college financial year currently runs from 1 August until 31 July the following year. This runs parallel with the college academic year, and with the accounting period for most funding contracts with the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) and other agencies. However, the financial year for other government bodies runs from the beginning of April until the end of March the following year. The mismatch in accounting periods has led Treasury officials to propose that the college financial year should be bought in to line with the financial year for other government bodies. This would mean that the college academic year would straddle two financial years. To achieve the transition, officials are proposing that the next college financial year should end on 31 July 2025 and be followed by an eight-month financial year running from 1 August 2025 to the 31 March 2026.

The College Finance Directors Group set out their objections to the proposals in a letter sent on 3 May to the Chief Executive of the ESFA, David Withey. In their letter, the group says that if implemented, the proposals will result in a huge increase in administration, IT and audit costs for colleges, along with the risk of weaker oversight and monitoring of college finances by governors, auditors and external regulators. They go on to say that if a financial year begins in April, a governing body will have to approve their college’s budget in March at the latest. The budget would, in part, rely on college managers’ estimates of the number of students who would enrol on courses starting the following September. This would be at least six months later than when the budget was approved and mean that forecasts of income would, at best, be a guess. Management accounts would also need to be changed so that managers, governors, auditors and regulators could monitor performance over a financial year that straddled two academic years and was different from the financial period covering most of the external funding contracts the college had entered into. This, they say, would make the review of in-year college financial performance very difficult.

A spokesperson for the DfE said that it was consulting with FE colleges in England to better understand the implications of the proposed change to the college financial year and is working with the Treasury to address risks and concerns identified and that the department was ‘not working towards any set timetable’.

REFORM OF POST-16 LEVEL 3 QUALIFICATIONS IN ENGLAND

The government is in the process of implementing the reform of Level 3 post-16 qualifications and introducing a more simplified post-16 qualification system from 2025. The reforms, says ministers, will mean that students finishing their GCSEs will no longer have to choose from the potential thousands of qualifications available in order to progress to the next level. Instead, their post-16 progression choice will be limited either to A-levels, or T-Levels (their technical equivalent), or an appropriate apprenticeship. To achieve this rationalisation, ministers are intending to remove public funding from those applied general qualifications (including BTECs) that duplicate, or substantially overlap, with T-Levels.

The post-16 reforms have proved to be unpopular with many stakeholders, including teachers, school and college leaders, students, some employers and some MPs. In January 2022, the House of Commons Education Select Committee announced that it intended to carry out its own inquiry into the matter and on 28 April published a report on the findings, entitled ‘The Future of Post-16 Qualifications’. The report also contains a number of recommendations for the DfE, one of which is placing a moratorium on defunding applied general qualifications until there is ‘more robust evidence proving that T-Levels are more effective in preparing students for progression, meeting industry needs and promoting social mobility’. Other recommendations on T-Levels made in the report say that the DfE should:

• Work with universities to ensure they appreciate the value of T-Levels and do not specify unreasonable degree entry requirements (such as asking for specific A-Levels in addition to a T-level qualification).
• Work with the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) to map out and publish progression opportunities for T-Level students.
• Develop bridging courses that enable T-Level learners to move onto Level 4 apprenticeships.
• Set out progression routes from T-Levels onto Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs).
• Publish data on the destinations for the first cohort of T-Level students.
• Consider ‘micro-accreditation’ for T-Level students who do not complete their full programme of study.
• Review the Transition Programme to determine why so few students progress to a full T-Level.
• Publish annual statistics on the conversion rate from the Transition Programme onto the full T-Level.
• Raise the profile of T-Levels among students, parents and employers through an awareness campaign.
• Work with the Careers and Enterprise Company (CEC), to promote T-Levels.
• Publish forecasts on T-Level industry placements and shortfalls in the availability of placements.

On 11 May the DfE published a ‘final’ list of Level 3 qualifications that duplicate or overlap with Wave 1 and Wave 2 T-Levels and will be defunded from 2025. On 25 May, the Skills Minister for England, Robert Halfon, announced in Parliament that the DfE had identified a further 93 Level 3 qualifications that duplicate or overlap with Wave 3 T Levels and will therefore also lose their public funding from 2025. Also on 25 May, the DfE published a list of the 93 Level 3 qualifications. Some AOs say that they intend to lodge an appeal against the decision to defund those of their qualifications that are included on the list.

DFE LAUNCHES NEW LOCAL SKILLS IMPROVEMENT FUND

On 24 May, the DfE published guidance on its Jaggaer portal for colleges and other providers interested in bidding for a share of a new £165 million Local Skills Improvement Fund (LSIF). The LSIF is intended to enable FE providers in a geographic area to respond more effectively to the priorities in their Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs). The LSIF builds on the £157 million Strategic Development Fund, which was piloted in 2021/22 and rolled out across England in 2022/23. £80 million from the LSIF will be made available in 2023/24 (comprised of £40 million in revenue funding and £40 million capital funding). The remaining £85 million (all of which is capital funding) will be made available in 2024/25. Funding from the LSIF can be used for:

• New facilities and equipment.
• Developing courses in new areas, such as green construction, carbon capture and cyber security.
• Promoting excellence in college leadership, governance and teaching.
• Developing a sustainable approach to addressing local skill needs, particularly at Levels 3, 4 and 5.

The application process has 2 stages. The first stage involves submitting an initial expression of interest (IEO) for up to £100,000 to help providers in LSIP partnerships to develop their proposals. On 24 May, the two-part application form for stage 1 was made available through the Jaggaer portal. The DfE says that there must only be one IEO per LSIP partnership, which must be submitted by 20 June by an ‘eligible lead applicant’. Stage 1 will be followed by a more detailed second stage application for the delivery of the proposals developed in stage 1. The DfE says that further information on this will be published at the end of June. A virtual support event for prospective applicants will be held on 6 June. Details on how to join the event will be made available on the Jaggaer portal.

TWO-YEAR CAMPAIGN TO BUILD AWARENESS OF LIFELONG LEARNING ENTITLEMENT

The DfE provides early notice of potential contracts for 2023/24 through its ‘Commercial Pipeline Data’ website. On 28 April the DfE published early notice of a  £2 million contract for a 24-month communications campaign to ‘build awareness’ of the Lifelong Loan Entitlement (LLE). The LLE will be rolled out in 2025 and will provide individuals in England with up to £37,000 in loan funding to pay for the equivalent of four years of post-18 education over their lifetime. The funding will be available for courses at Levels 4, 5 and 6, for modular, part-time and full-time study at colleges, universities, and other providers registered with the Office for Students (OfS). The purpose and nature of the campaign will reflect the recommendations made in a research report, commissioned by the DfE and published last October by Phoenix Insights. The research explores the challenges older people face in retraining and found that one of the main reasons adults would be reluctant to engage with the LLE was that they simply do not want to take on more debt.

LIFELONG LEARNING HIGHER EDUCATION FEE LIMITS BILL PASSES FROM THE COMMONS TO THE LORDS

On 13 May, the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill, which provides the financial framework for the LLE, passed through both its report stage and third reading in the House of Commons. The Bill seeks to limit the level of fees that providers are allowed to charge for courses funded through the LLE. Fees will be based on a new system of credits, reflecting a more modular approach to courses funded through the LLE and assuming the bill becomes law, the Education Secretary will be given powers to set fee maximum fee levels for each module. Opposition MPs in the Commons attempted to amend the bill to introduce greater accountability and allow for more parliamentary scrutiny of the LLE and the way in which the Education Secretary uses the new powers, but this was defeated. The bill will now pass to the House of Lords for its first reading there. Amendments are likely to be introduced in the Lords which will win support because Conservative Lords are in the minority, but it is also likely that the amendments will be overturned when the bill returns to the Commons.

CLAIM THAT OFSTED INSPECTORS ARE OFTEN ASKED TO FIND EVIDENCE TO FIT PRIOR GRADE EXPECTATIONS

In an article published on 8 May, Andrew Norrish, a former head teacher and Ofsted inspector told Sky News that single-word Ofsted judgements were ‘nonsense’ and that the reform of Ofsted ‘is long overdue’. Mr Morrish said he had inspected around 60 schools between 2012 and 2015, before becoming disillusioned with the job and quitting. He also claimed that inspection outcomes were distorted by ‘confirmation bias’. Under the current Education Inspection Framework (EIF), prior to an inspection, the lead inspector will consider and analyse all relevant information on the school or college held by Ofsted. This information will include such things as earlier inspection reports, monitoring letters, qualification success rate (QSR) data, and comments made by students, parents and employers via Ofsted’s provider information portal. This, in turn, will help Ofsted and the lead inspector to form a pre-inspection narrative or commentary. Mr Morrish said that he could recall a number of times when he was personally told to ‘rethink’ any evidence he found that did not fit the pre-inspection narrative and was instructed to ‘keep looking’ until he did find evidence to justify it. It is possible that something like this may conceivably have crossed the minds FE staff and managers during inspections.

DFE & OFSTED TO EVALUATE USE OF LIMITING JUDGEMENTS AND SINGLE OVERALL GRADES

A school or college can be downgraded from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’ on the basis of a limiting judgement. For example, if a school or college is judged ‘inadequate’ on its safeguarding then, although academic standards and other EIF judgements might ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’, the school or college is given a single of grade of ‘inadequate’ for overall effectiveness. The recent downgrade of a primary school from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’ based on a limiting judgement sadly resulted in the suicide of the head teacher and in the wake of this, teaching unions have called for the reform of the inspection process. However, Ofsted Chief Inspector, Amanda Spielman said had ‘no reason to doubt’ the inspection findings of the inspection which are thought to have led to the head teacher’s suicide. She also defended the use of single word grades for each of the four judgements in the EIF and for the overall effectiveness of a school or college at the end of an inspection. However, she said that Ofsted will review the current the EIF and will discuss with the DfE whether the use of limiting judgements and single word grades are the right approach.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGHER TECHNICAL QUALIFICATIONS

Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs) are defined by the DfE as new Level 4 or 5 vocational qualifications, or existing Level 4 and 5 vocational qualifications, such as Higher National Certificates (HNCs), Higher National Diplomas (HNDs) and Foundation Degrees (FDs). New digital HTQs are already available and the DfE says that the aim is that by 2025, new HTQ courses will be available in all vocational subject areas with IfATE approved occupational standards. The timescale for this is as follows:

• September 2023: Construction, and Health and Science.
• September 2024: Business and Administration, Education and Childcare, Engineering and Manufacturing, Legal, Finance and Accounting.
• September 2025: Agriculture, Environmental and Animal Care, Catering and Hospitality, Creative and Design, Care Services, Protective services, Sales, Marketing and Procurement.

Hair and Beauty, and Transport and Logistics do not currently have Level 4 and 5 occupational standards in scope for HTQ approvals, but this will be made available once the standards are approved.

HIGHER TECHNICAL EDUCATION SKILLS DEVELOPMENT FUND

On & March, the DfE published updated details of  63 colleges, universities and other providers that had bid for and had been allocated a share of the £32 million Higher Technical Education Skills Injection Fund (HTESDF) along with guidance on how the funding should be used. However, in a further update published on 3 May, the DfE changed this to say that £21 million had been allocated to 85 providers in levelling up areas. The update went on to say that the remaining £11 million would be retained in the DfE central budget and defended this by saying that the £21 million that has been allocated from the HTESDF is actually part of a wider package provided to ‘support providers to grow high-quality Level 4 and 5 provision and the HTQs associated with them’. This package, says the DfE, is made up as follows:

• £10 million to support FE providers to expand Level 4 and 5 courses to meet local employer demand.
• £14 million for 100 providers through theHigher Technical Education Provider Growth Fund allocated in the 2021/22 financial year, to support learners who began studying HTQs in September 2022.
• £8 million through theHigher Education Strategic Priorities Grant for Level 4 and 5 courses in the 2022/23 financial year and a further £16 million for the 2023/24 financial year.

The DfE also said that £400 million in capital funding had been allocated to the Office for Students (OfS) for the two-year period from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to meet the government’s strategic priorities, which included the idevelopment of HTQs at Level 4 and 5.

PROPOSALS TO RESTRICT THE NUMBERS VISAS ISSUED TO INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND THEIR DEPENDENTS

Immigration: On 25 May, the ONS published updated migration statistics for 2022. The data shows that in the 2022 calendar year, long term (defined as one year or more) legal net migration to the UK reached a record of 606,000 (a 24% increase on 2021). The net migration data was revised upwards from the previous ONS figure for the year of 504,000, apparently because the ONS uses a method called the International Passenger Survey (IPS) to estimate migration. However, the IPS figures did not include migrants arriving by air at non major airports (e.g. Leeds and Luton). The updated ONS estimate now also incorporates data on migrants entering work provided by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Asylum seekers arriving by legal routes who were granted leave to remain UK was also added, but not the 46,000 migrants/asylum seekers who crossed the English Channel by boat in 2022 who are regarded by the government as having entered the country illegally.

The updated ONS legal migration data shows that 1.2 million visas were issued in the 2022 calendar year. This includes 114,000 refugees from Ukraine and a further 52,000 arriving from Hong Kong on British National Overseas passports. On 25 May, the Home Office published its ‘Summary of the Latest Statistics’ on immigration covering the year from the end of March 2022 to the end of March 2023. The data shows that in the year to the end of March 2022, 980,000 visas were issued for work, study or family reasons, or through one of the government’s settlement schemes. However, in the year to March 2023, the number of visas issued increased to 1.47 million. This suggests that net immigration for the 2023 calendar year could be even higher than in 2022. (As an aside to this, the data suggests that this year the UK population will overtake the 67.7 million population of France, which has twice the landmass of the UK).

International students: A prominent element in the recent large increase in immigration has been the equally large increase in the number international students coming to the UK. As part of her plan to reduce the numbers coming to the UK, the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman is proposing to cut the numbers of visas issued to international students and to their dependents. Around 486,000 study visas were granted in the 2022 calendar year, up from 269,000 in 2019 (an increase of 81%).  Around 90% of study visas issued were for HE courses and around 5% were for FE courses. Also in 2022, around 136,000 visas were issued to dependents of international students, up from 16,000 in 2019. Students from Nigeria and India were the most likely to bring their dependents with them, with some accompanied by as many as six family members. Ms Braverman has now introduced new rules that mean from January 2024, only students who are on PhD or research-related masters’ degree programmes will be allowed to bring dependents with them to the UK. It is suggested that this could reduce immigration by as many as 150,000.

In addition, the new rules mean that international students will no longer be allowed to switch from study visas to work visas before they have completed their studies. This is apparently intended to stop gaining a place on a university course being used as a back-door route to employment in the UK. Instead, international students can now apply for a Graduate Visa, after they compete their studies. This will allow them to remain in the UK for a further two years, irrespective of the job they take up. In the 2022 calendar year, almost 73,000 international students were awarded graduate visas. Following on from this, if a graduate visa holder is in a job on the government’s  Skills Shortage List, and is sponsored by an employer, they can then apply for a Skilled Worker Visa, which enables then to stay in the UK for a further 5 years, after which, they can apply to settle permanently in the UK (also known as ‘indefinite leave to remain’). Alternatively, a skilled worker visa holder can apply to extend their visa as many times as they want, as long as they still meet the eligibility requirements. In the year to March 2023 there were 640,400 visa extensions allowing holders to remain in the UK (including both main applicants and dependents) for a further 5 years. Around 75% of these extensions were for work with the majority of the remainder being for ‘family reasons’.

The debate on reducing visas issued to international students: Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Gillian Keegan, the Secretary of State for Education in England, have argued strongly against reducing the numbers of international students. They say that this will cause economic harm the to the UK economy, undermine Britain’s ‘soft power’ abroad, and damage the finances of those universities that have become heavily dependent on income from overseas students. Ms Keegan has gone further and said that she is ‘hugely proud that more than 600,000 foreign students now come to the UK each year’.

However, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appears to be in support of Ms Braverman’s stance on reducing international student numbers. In an interview with the Telegraph newspaper published on 23 May, Mr Sunak said he was committed to bringing down immigration generally and warned that that uncontrolled legal immigration causes ‘unmanageable pressures on housing schools and hospitals’. He went on to accuse ‘unscrupulous international student recruitment agents’ of promoting courses to international students as an immigration route for them and their families, rather than for education. But he also said that a new system which could allow international students offered places at the more prestigious UK universities to bring their dependents with them was under consideration.

No doubt reflecting concerns about the impact on university finances, on 16 May, Universities UK International (UUKI), the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI), Kaplan International Pathways and London Economics published a report entitled, ‘The costs and benefits of international higher education students to the UK’ . The report says that the economic benefit to the UK economy from international students in their first year of study rose from £31.3 billion in 2018/19 to £41.9 billion in 2021/22, an increase of 34%. The report goes on to say that even after accounting for an estimated £4.4 billion in extra public service costs (but not for the increased pressure on housing and public utilities), the economic benefits of recruiting international students significantly outweigh the costs. And on May 24, the independent International Higher Education Commission (IHEC) published a report entitled, ‘UK Higher Education Strategy 2.0: Interim Findings and Recommendations’ which commends the ‘significant social, cultural and economic contributions made by international students to the UK’. The report also highlights how international students ‘influence the learning experiences of domestic students’ and enhances the role of universities in ‘fostering global connections and international research’.

ADDRESSING WORKFORCE SHORTAGES- IMMIGRATION OR TRAINING THE POPULATION?

Workforce data: The UK seems to have a particular problem in respect of workplace shortages. All major countries saw their workforce shrink during the pandemic, but while most have since recovered, the UK still has about 400,000 fewer people in the workforce than before the pandemic. Official workforce statistics reveal the following:

• ONS data for February to April published on 16 May shows that there are almost 1.1 million job vacancies, with critical labour shortages in certain areas such as construction, hospitality, and care.
• ONS data for January to March published on 16 May shows that the unemployment rate stood at 3.9%.
• Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) data published on 16 May reveals that, as of 13 April 5.9 million people were in receipt of Universal Credit (UC). This is just below the record 6 million in receipt of UC as of March 202 mainly as a consequence of the pandemic. And in big cities, such as Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool, around 1 in 5 people of working age were receiving out of work benefits. In some towns, such as Blackpool, this rises to 1 in 4.
• ONS data published on 16 May shows that there were 8.37 million people of working age who said that they were not actively seeking work (although around 2.1 million are students aged under 25).
• ONS data published on 23 April shows that there are around a further 5 million people who are not working due to long term health problems. The data reveals that a record 185.6 million working days were lost through sickness in 2022. This was 35.8 million more than in 2021 and 47.4 million more than in 2019. This translates into around 5,000 claims per day for sickness benefits, many of which are on the grounds of mental health.

In an interesting article in the Spectator, Fraser Nelson explores this and concludes that somehow, the UK has managed to combine mass joblessness with mass worker shortages and the need for mass migration.

Division in the Cabinet: Plans to reduce the level of immigration to the UK seems to have caused a division in the Cabinet. Some members strongly oppose Ms Braverman’s proposals and say that high levels of net migration to the UK are not only welcome, but also necessary to achieve economic growth and an increase in the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP). They also argue that without foreign workers, some areas where there are critical staff shortages (for example, heath and care) could face collapse. The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt seems to support this, saying that there was a ‘need to be pragmatic’ about immigration and its importance in helping to meet these shortages.

Other ministers say that bringing down immigration was an election pledge and argue that high immigration causes increased pressure on housing and public services. They also say that although having more foreign workers might mean a larger total GDP, this does not necessarily mean a higher GDP per head, or the higher standard of living associated with this.

The Labour Party’s view: Perhaps reflecting divisions in the Conservative Party, the Labour Party Chair, Annelies Dodds, said that under a Labour government, it was likely that more immigration would be needed in the ‘short term’ to help ease workforce shortages. But Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor said Labour would not ‘turn to immigration as the easy answer’ and that the priority should be for ‘ jobless Britons to be trained to fill vacancies’. And Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper said that Labour would curb immigration by putting time limits on how long companies were able to import foreign workers in shortage occupations and would strengthen the role of the government’s Migration Advisory Committee.

Work visas: Issuing work visas is meant to be controlled through a points-based system. During the 2022 calendar year, 267,670 work visas were issued, which is almost double the number issued in 2019. There was an increase in the issue of both long-term sponsored work visas and temporary work visas. Temporary visas are mainly issued to seasonal workers who are usually employed through agencies for a maximum of six months. Those with long term visas (i.e. for more than a year) were required to be employer sponsored, have adequate English language skills and offered a job in which they earned a minimum of £26,000 per year. This was later reduced to a minimum £20,460, in order to accommodate the recruitment of lower-paid  health and care workers. Ms Braverman wants this minimum to be increased to £33,000, which is around the average wage in Britain. A work visa holder employed in a job on the government’s skilled worker list (updated on 15 May) can also apply to bring their dependents to the UK. However, concerns have been expressed that criminal gangs are using the skilled worker visa system as a legal route to smuggle people into the UK illegally. An in-depth investigation by Sky News published on 24 May revealed that gangs are making money by pairing a person who has been granted a skilled worker visa with bogus spouses and children. The investigation also covered the increased use of fake qualifications to obtain a skilled worker visa. Amongst the examples given by reporters there was a particularly disturbing example of a person who had no nursing qualifications and struggled to speak English who obtained a skilled worker visa on the basis of fake nursing qualifications.

Examples of the way the government is attempting to address skills shortages in key areas include the following:

• Ministersare considering plans to shorten doctors’ training by a year. The plans would see doctors’ degrees reduced from five to four years, while nursing students could be fast-tracked to be qualified in just two-and-a-half years. Critics say that this would put patient safety at risk.
• The DfE has started to offer foreign teachers an extra £10,000 to come to work in Britain in a bid to fill classroom vacancies. ‘International relocation payments’ will be made to teachers in shortage subjects, such as maths, physics and languages to cover their visa and moving expenses. DfE officials said that they expect the payments will attract between 300 and 400 teachers from abroad to start work this September. The DfE is also introducing new rules that will recognise teaching qualifications obtained in countries such as Ghana, India, Jamaica,Nigeria, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, and give them equivalence with teaching qualifications gained in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA.

The shortage of skilled workers could justify higher levels of immigration to the UK. However, it surely must also highlight the need to upskill our own workforce. FE is, and always has been, a major contributor to raising local skills levels, and serious questions need to be asked about why the government continuously starves the FE sector of the level of core revenue funding it so desperately needs to perform that task.

REPORT SAYS THAT, WITH THE RIGHT SUPPORT, NEWLY RELEASED PRISONERS COULD HELP FILL THE UK’S JOB VACANCIES

On 5 May, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) published a report entitled, ‘Unlocking Aspiration’ . The report says that nearly 50,000 inmates come to the end of their sentences every year, yet only 16% are in work after six weeks of leaving, with just 23% finding work within six months after their release. The report goes on to say the vast majority of leavers end up unemployed and at serious risk of reoffending. However, if a prison leaver has a job, says the report, the reoffending rate is cut by an average of by between a third and a half, and this would generate £18 billion savings for the taxpayer and help ease the acute labour shortages holding back the economy. The report concludes that ‘there has never been a better time for the government to step up the drive to rehabilitate offenders’ and goes on to list a number of steps that it argues can be taken to increase the number of ex-prisoners moving straight into a job on release. These include the following:

• Help prison leavers obtain the skills and vocational qualifications they need to find employment, and which are recognised and valued by employers.
• Amend the Student Support Regulations for England and Wales so that prisoners with the required academic capability and more than six years left on their sentence can take degrees in prison.
• Use ‘Release on Temporary Licence’ rules to provide work placements, apprenticeships, and other work-related activity, thus enabling prisoners to receive important employment experience.
• Build meaningful partnerships with local firms that are willing to employ and support prisoners.
• Take action to address the staffing and recruitment crisis facing prisons and the probation service.
• Review processes currently in place to help with the post-release accommodation for prisoners, including identifying those who are at risk of homelessness and/or have complex needs.
• Provide help for leavers to register with a GP, access Universal Credit, and open a bank account.

POLICY EXCHANGE PUBLISHES REPORT ON REFORM OF THE APPRENTICESHIP LEVY

On 21 May, the think tank Policy Exchange published a report entitled ‘Reforming the Apprenticeship Levy’. The report says that since 2018, £4.3 billion of levy funding raised has gone unspent and goes on to call on the government to allow levy funding to be spent on a wider range of training that more closely reflects employer skills needs. The report also makes a number of recommendations designed to make apprenticeships more accessible. These include the following:

• Pay small businesses £3,000 to take on and train apprentices under the age of 25.
• Scrap requirement for apprentices to achieve a GCSE grade 4 pass in maths and English.
• Abolish the apprenticeship minimum wage and pay the national minimum wage for each age group.
• The apprenticeship minister role to be a joint ministerial role between the DfE and Treasury.
• Allow up to 25% of the levy spent on ‘employer-relevant skills training’, including, for example, Skills Bootcamps, approved Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), qualifications relevant to the Skilled Worker Shortage List, and pre-employment courses for the long-term unemployed.
• Pay employers £1,000 per year for each T-Level placement they provide.
• Amend child benefit regulations so that parents of an apprentice aged 16-19 continue to receive child benefit, as they would if the child was at school or college.

Returning briefly to the issue of immigration, David Goodhart, the Head of Demography, Immigration and Integration at the Policy Exchange, says that apprenticeship funding should also be linked to the UK’s visa policy, to incentivise British firms to ‘train up local talent rather than hiring lower paid foreign workers’.

DEGREE APPRENTICESHIPS AND SOCIAL MOBILITY

Two young people are at university. One is creative and is taking a degree in the history of art at a Russell Group university in one of the UK’s more expensive towns. He has taken out student loans to pay for his tuition and maintenance whilst on his course. The other, who is more practical, is taking a software engineering degree, but at a less prestigious university and whilst living at home. She has obtained a degree apprenticeship with a local firm. The first young person will graduate with no guarantee of a job and debts that might be as high as £50,000. And, since outstanding loan balances are linked to changes in the base interest rate, the debt could increase to £69,800 over the next five years. The other young person will graduate with no debt, be paid a salary whilst studying and will have a job when she finishes her course.

On 18 April, Toby Perkins, Labour’s Shadow Skills Minister submitted a written question in parliament about spending on Level 6 and 7 apprenticeships. On 26 April. Robert Halfon, the Skills Minister for England replied, saying that since the apprenticeship levy was introduced in 2016, spending on Level 6 and 7 apprenticeships had risen from £44 million in 2017/18, to £506 million in 2021/22. Spending on degree-level apprenticeships now exceeds half-a-billion-pounds a year and accounts for more than a fifth of England’s annual total apprenticeship budget, resulting in serious questions being asked about whether this level of spending can be maintained. Also, the funding is entirely spent on adult students, most of whom are likely to already hold Level 3 qualifications and some of whom will already be in a well-paid job. This raises questions about fairness, since starts on Level 2 apprenticeships dropped by 53% from 374,400 in 2017/18 to 175,400 in 2021/22 and starts on Level 3 apprenticeships fell by 11% from 372,400 to 330,400 over the same period, and apprenticeships at these levels are more likely to be taken by younger students.

The DfE claims that degree-level apprenticeships help boost social mobility. However, whilst they might have the potential to do this, many observers say that the rapid rise in their share of the apprenticeship market is squeezing out opportunities for younger workers from lower income households and threatens the sustainability of the whole apprenticeship budget. Some observers go further and say that there has been a ‘middle class grab’ of degree apprenticeships. In support of this, the Sutton Trust, a social mobility charity, recently published a report which found that in 2020/21 only 5% of degree apprentices were students who had been in receipt of free school meals. The report also says that students from poorer backgrounds are far more likely to take out loans for their courses and their maintenance. The report concludes that, despite the DfE’s rhetoric, observable evidence suggests that degree apprenticeships are not a more accessible pathway to a degree for students from poorer backgrounds.

HIGH-COST APPRENTICESHIP PROVIDERS ARE YET TO RECEIVE THE FUNDING INCREASE PROMISED

Last November the ESFA announced its intention to alleviate the impact of high inflation for providers delivering high-cost apprenticeships. To identify which providers were in scope for the increased funding, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) undertook an ‘exceptional funding band review’. Following this, in January IfATE announced that the higher rate would apply to 20 high-volume, high-cost apprenticeships standards in skills shortage occupations. However, in order to access the extra funding, providers delivering these high-cost standards were required to provide the ESFA with evidence to justify the funding uplift by early March. Given the burden of additional administration and bureaucracy involved in accessing the increased funding, only providers delivering 10 of the standards opted to go through the process. Providers delivering those 10 standards that had gone through the process were expecting the extra funding to be made available from 1 May, but this has not yet been signed off by the Treasury, probably leaving them feeling bewildered and wondering why they had bothered.

EPAO REGISTER TO MERGE WITH THE ROATP AND BE RENAMED THE APAR (LOL)

In section 5 of an update published on 24 May, the ESFA announced that on 1 August, the register of End Point Assessment Organisations (EPAOs) will be merged with the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP) and renamed the ‘Apprenticeship Providers and Assessment Register’ (APAR). The application process for a EPAO or an apprenticeship provider wishing to be listed on the new APAR will be the same as that for the current RoATP. The ESFA update also says that from the 1 August, apprenticeship providers will choose the EPAO for an employer, unless the employer wishes to choose the EPAO themselves. The ESFA says that both Ofqual and the OfS are ‘fully supportive’ of these changes.

GOVERNMENT REVIEW OF RELATIONSHIPS, SEX AND HEALTH EDUCATION CURRICULUM

In 2020, Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) was made a compulsory subject for all pupils in secondary education. RHSE has proved to be controversial with some sections of the community, sometimes for religious reasons, and has recently become more so in the wake of the increased focus currently being given to trans and gender fluid issues. On 31 March, the government announced it would be carrying out a review of RSHE statutory guidance, and on 10 May the House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee held an evidence session to examine how RSHE was currently being taught and how the review should be carried out. MPs heard views from campaign groups, academics specialising in sexual health and health equality, and from organisations who were advocates for certain aspects of RHSE. The RHSE evidence session can be watched on Parliament TV here. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak has promised schools and colleges that they will receive guidance on policies for transgender pupils and students before the end of the summer term.

THE LABOUR PARTY AND UNIVERSITY TUITION FEES IN ENGLAND

During his campaign to secure the leadership of the Labour Party in 2020, one of Sir Kier Starmer’s pledges was to abolish tuition fees in England, should Labour form the next government. Since then, he has abandoned this pledge (along with others), claiming that the country now finds itself in a ‘different financial situation’. Sir Keir is apparently now being urged by some of his colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet who are disappointed with his U-turn on abolishing fees in England to replace them with a graduate tax. They argue that this would be fairer on the grounds that such a tax would mean that higher earners would pay more. Sir Kier is also being urged to reintroduce maintenance grants for the poorest students, but he says it is necessary to wait until the general election is closer before allocating funds to election pledges.

Meanwhile, the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) has commissioned the first detailed political polling of current full-time undergraduates. The poll involved a sample of 1,000 full-time UK undergraduate students and was carried out between 4 April and 19 April by market research company Savanta. HEPI published a report of the findings of the poll on 2 May, which revealed that 46% of students said they would vote Labour if there were a general election ‘soon’, 11% said they would vote Green and 7% said they would vote Conservative. With specific reference to tuition fees, findings in the report that may be of relevance to the Labour Party show that of those domiciled in England who said they would vote Labour:

• 28% want Labour to commit to abolishing tuition fees,
• 23% want Labour to reduce fees to £6,000.
• 20% want Labour to continue to cap tuition fees at £9,250.
• 15% want Labour to cut fees to £3,000.
• 4% want Labour to introduce a graduate tax.
• 3% want Labour to let the current fees rise with inflation.

INCREASE IN CARE TO LEARN RATES

The Care to Learn (C2L) scheme provides cash for young parents in England aged up to 20 to enable them to continue with their studies by helping to fund their childcare costs. On 26 April, the ESFA published an update announcing that the amount paid under the C2L scheme in the 2023/24 academic year would be increased from £160 per child per week to £180 (or £175 per week to £195 per week for claimants living in London). To be eligible for C2L funding the claimant should be on a publicly funded study programme, such as GCSEs, A-Levels, BTECs, FE programmes offered by HE providers, and foundation HE courses offered in FE providers. HE courses at HE providers, apprenticeships, and higher technical qualifications are not in scope. Data published by the ESFA shows that the take-up of C2L funding has fallen by around a fifth, from 5,674 claimants allocated £24.5 million in 2013/14 to 1,052 claimants allocated a total of £4.6 million in 2020/21. This is likely to be explained by the significant fall in teenage pregnancy rates.

AND FINALLY…

Conversation overheard in the college staff room:

‘The level of our students’ general knowledge is disappointing. None of my music students had any idea who Neil Armstrong was, or that he was a famous trumpet player in a jazz band’.

‘I hate to admit it, but I didn’t know that Neil Armstrong played the trumpet in a jazz band either. I thought he was the bloke who won the Tour de France seven times’.

‘I totally agree about the low level of students’ general knowledge. I was talking to my students about Mozart the other day and not one of them could name any of his famous paintings’.

‘Yes, and also, I hate it when students pretend they know what they’re talking about. The other day one of my literature students was talking about Van Gogh as she’d read all of his books’.

I asked my business management students to use the interweb to do some research about the economist Milton Keynes. They said they had never heard of him. I don’t think they know what the interweb is either’.

‘Well, my media students said they had never heard of Yuri Gagarin. I had to explain to them that he was the bloke on the telly who used his mental powers to bend spoons’.

‘It can be very confusing if you ask me. When I was interviewed for my job, the college personnel manager said he had done some DBS checks and asked me to declare if I had a police record. I said yes, Roxanne’.

‘Talking about records, one of my students said he had a rare record by Elvis Presley called Wooden Leg. I said surely you mean Wooden Heart. She said no, it’s a pirate copy’.

Alan Birks – May 2023

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