Minutes:
Ms Marcela Ashcroft Del Pino, Intervention Manager (Education and Skills Funding Agency) gave a presentation on the work of the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) had been created in April 2016, bringing together the former responsibilities of the Education Funding Agency and Skills Funding Agency, to create a single agency accountable for funding education and skills for children, young people and adults. The ESFA was an executive agency of the Department for Education, but it was noted that it was not a planning body. It was a funding body whose role was to fund providers in local areas to deliver Government Policy.
The ESFA’s core functions were to be accountable for the funding of education and training for children, young people and adults; to provide assurances that public funds were spent properly; and to achieve value for money for the tax payer. They were also required to deliver the policies and priorities set by the Secretary of State around education and training. The ESFA regulated academies, Further Education and Sixth Form Colleges, employers and training providers and would intervene if there was a risk of failure or evidence of the mismanagement of public funds. It also delivered major projects and operated key services in the education and skills sector such as school capital programmes, the National Careers Service, the Digital Apprenticeship Service and the National Apprenticeship Service.
The ESFA provided annual revenue funding for academies, free schools, institutions for the education of 16 to 19 year olds, and high needs students up to the age of 25 at colleges. Funding was also provided for apprenticeships delivered to small and medium sized enterprises, the non-levy paying employers, and to support existing apprentices. They also allocated the adult education budget and continued to work with ministers and other stakeholders on the proposals to devolve adult education funding from the 2019-20 academic year.
The ESFA allocated funding for disadvantaged post-16 students outside higher education; dedicated schools grant to Local Authorities and capital funding to academies, colleges and Local Authorities. They also apportioned facilities for the funding of advanced learner loans, for which the Government now fully funded leaners over the age of 19 who were studying for qualifications above Level 3, with colleges getting a loan facility allocated year on year.
In April 2012, a review of apprenticeships was undertaken and found that high quality employment activities were not being provided, and employers did not see the benefits of apprentices, and therefore not taking them on. In April 2017, the Government’s phased reform of apprenticeships was implemented to switch from frameworks to standards. The ESFA was working to ensure that employers were aware of the standards and benefitting from them. By 2020 all employers, levy and non-levy paying, would be able to use the digital apprenticeship service to access high quality providers and pay for training and assessment. There would be a big exercise to drive greater readiness for the apprenticeship reform among colleges, other training organisations, apprentice assessment organisations and employers. Work would also be undertaken to make sure that teachers, parents, employers and intermediaries understood and advocated the apprenticeships to increase the number of vacancies offered and volume of people applying.
The ESFA was also responsible for funding, performance managing and regulating the National Careers Service. They supported the development and delivery of high quality traineeships for 16 to 24 year olds that were not ready to do an apprenticeship, and needed employability skills. Future work to be undertaken would be to implement the Government’s reform of technical education, which was part of the Post-16 Skills Plan published by the Department for Education in July 2016. This introduced a framework of fifteen technical routes to skilled employment, of which apprenticeships would be one. New provider based training programmes, T-levels, based on employer design standards and high quality work placements would be consulted on in early 2018, to be introduced from September 2020. In July 2017, the Secretary of State confirmed an investment of £50m from April 2018 to fund high quality work placements. Once rolled out, the delivery of work placements would become a requirement of the T-level programme completion.
Further information on the Post-16 skills plan could be obtained from
The Chairman thanked Mr Warnes, Ms Neal and Ms Ashcroft Del Pino for their interesting presentations, and offered his thanks to Mr Warnes for hosting the Partnership meeting at London South East Colleges – Bromley Campus.