Adult Education Budget
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Appendix 1 London Assembly Education Panel - Wednesday 10 March 2021 Transcript of Item 7 – Adult Education Budget Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): We now move to our question and answer discussion on the Adult Education Budget (AEB). We have with us Jules Pipe CBE, Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills, and Michelle Cuomo- Boorer, Assistant Director - Skills and Employment for the Greater London Authority (GLA). We have back with us Andrew Gower [Principal and Chief Executive Officer, Morley College]. We also have with us Asfa Sohail, who is the Principal of Lewisham College. Mary Vine-Morris is Area Director (London) and National Lead Employment, Association of Colleges (AoC). If you can kick off, Jules, could you briefly outline the impact that the pandemic has had on adult education in London from your perspective, in terms of you being able to do the work that you planned? Jules Pipe CBE (Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and Skills): It will come as no surprise to any of the scrutiny panel that COVID has presented huge challenges for London’s further education (FE) sector. I want to begin by paying huge tribute to Mary’s colleagues for the hard work and dedication of their colleagues across the sector in keeping London learning, whether that was by moving huge swathes of learning online, or by creating safe and secure environments within colleges so that face-to-face learning could continue for the most vulnerable students who did have to come into settings to receive learning. At the start of the pandemic, for the Mayor the immediate priority was to support the financial resilience of AEB providers. He did this by paying providers on the profile that had been agreed with colleges at the beginning of the academic years. It was agreed that the rest of the profile for the rest of the year would be paid at the rate agreed and so, effectively, we would be reducing the performance tolerance level at which funding could be reclaimed. Basically, we were softening the penalty, or at least the point at which the penalty applied for any underperformance. Equally, it was important to support providers that did not have the digital infrastructure. We wanted to help them scale up or repurpose what they had so they could move training online to reach learners who were at risk of digital exclusion. To do this, we launched a COVID-19 Response Fund. That supported providers and basically made financial provision to expand their online provision, adapt courses and build capacity, all with the focus of reaching the most vulnerable learners. Alongside this, the Mayor prioritised supporting providers to deliver education and training to those most at risk of losing their jobs. There was a focus on retraining and upskilling. It was not just those who had lost their jobs, but those who were at risk with courses that could allow them to progress in work. We all know that the higher level you work at and the more qualifications you have, the less likely you are to lose your job. What that involved, for instance, was making all level 3 qualifications - short courses lasting less than a year - free for any adult Londoner unemployed or earning below the London Living Wage. Having a level 3 qualification is far more likely to lead to better paid work and more secure work. It is important to contrast that offer with the Government offer because it can get confusing if you say, “Well, you are just passing Government money on”. This is different money. The Government has just introduced its own adult level 3 offer, only for certain courses. It is restricted but, importantly, it is restricted to those over 24 and to those who have not had a prior level 3 qualification. As I said, ours is to anyone who qualifies on the basis of low pay, at any age. Even if you have a level 3 qualification, it does not count against you. If you need to take a course that could help you progress in, say, the construction industry, and you can take short course in plastering or an advanced electrical course or something at level 3, you can do that. The Mayor has also allowed providers to use their allocations more flexibly to run some targeted pre- employment and job-focused training to support those who have been hardest hit. We made an extra £1.9 million available on top of the money from the Government, so that came to about £13 million in total for the delivery of high-value courses, sector-based work academies similar to the Mayor’s Construction Academy with the focus being on other sectors, and general support for the London Recovery Programme. We know how crucial skills are going to be to this country’s recovery from this crisis, particularly in supporting those most at risk from long-term unemployment. They need help to retrain and upskill to enable them to take advantage of employment opportunities that arise. We also know that the most disproportionate effect that the crisis is having on Londoners is on those from minority ethnic backgrounds, particularly black Londoners, whose unemployment rate is twice that of white and Asian groups in London, at 12%. We recognise the importance of supporting Londoners with no qualifications or very low-level qualifications to access the education and training that they need. We are also applying a 10% uplift to courses to enable colleges to attract and retain their staff, making it a little bit easier for colleges to attract good teaching and provide the learning. It is shocking to think - well, Mary will correct me - that I think it is at least since 2013 and it might be even longer than that since there was an uplift for colleges on the money provided to them for providing courses. That 10% uplift is applicable to all AEB-funded qualifications up to and including level 2. We have recently launched a new £32 million grant funding competition and that is to help support the delivery of the Recovery Programme and the missions. The two missions of particular interest and particularly relevant to the colleges are the Good Work for All mission and the Digital Access for All mission. Colleges can apply competitively for that pot to deliver across those areas. As we have discussed before at the Panel, we have used the AEB money as match funding to draw down an additional £70 million of European Social Fund (ESF) money. We have used that, again, to commission programmes from providers across London. Then there are the other programmes that we can touch on but have talked about before: the Construction Academy, the Digital Talent Programme and of course the London Progression Collaboration on increasing apprenticeships. Finally, Chair, there is the AEB Roadmap. The Mayor has been working with providers throughout the pandemic to make many of the changes I have talked about to the AEB since the start of devolution, but we are also working closely with them on an AEB Roadmap that will contribute to the Recovery Programme. It will be an action plan setting out a clear direction of travel for adult education in the capital with all providers and representatives from business firmly at the heart of shaping it. Jennette Arnold OBE AM (Chair): Thank you for that. We will pick up the AEB Roadmap later on in the meeting. Andrew, can you just pick up the issues around the digital divide, because Members from a number of Committees have had concerns about the growing digital divide in London. That must have impacted on adult learners. Andrew Gower (Principal and Chief Executive Officer, Morley College): It certainly has. Anecdotally and evidentially, it is the case that for those students who are on what we might call essential skills courses in English, in maths and in English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), and those students living in a family setting with perhaps one device amongst the family where that one device has been prioritised for use by the child who is being home-schooled - now that is changing with schools going back, which is a great thing. During those times it has been difficult for students to access their learning online. It is not only the access to the device, but also access to the data. There might be intermittent broadband or, if the family is relying on a mobile smartphone, which some families are, they are then reliant on their data per month. One of the things Jules has touched on is the emergency support that has been provided, which Morley [College] absolutely benefited from. I would like to pay tribute to Jules and colleagues for being with us at a time of crisis for our students, to enable us to easily access funding, which did contribute to about 80 laptops being loaned out to our students, those with the greatest economic and social disadvantage. That economic divide is certainly present with us and it was amplified during the period of COVID. Again, touching on the Roadmap, it will be great to continue to work together because that digital exclusion has been a feature within our communities. It was present before COVID. It has been worse during the pandemic and it will need to be something that we continue to work on because, understandably, the majority of investment for technology has gone into school-aged children being able to be home-schooled. For Morley, with our 11,000 enrolments on our courses, of which about 2,000 are essential skills courses, there is a substantial number of students who are doing amazingly well to access learning, but they are accessing learning from mobile phones over extended periods of time.