Thread by @pmdfoster

🚨🚨🚨🚨🏫🏫🏫🏫🚨🚨🚨🚨 NEW: The government is “clawing back” millions of £££ from the very same FE colleges that it wants to advance its new skills agenda - all for failing to run enough courses during #Covid_19 lockdown. It’s mad. 🤦‍♂️ Stay with me. /1

on.ft.com/2PFd0i4

This one is a real head-scratcher - but earlier this month the @ESFAgov announced that Colleges that had not put on 90 per cent of course they'd promised would have to hand back cash to the @hmtreasury
from December, a so-called "clawback" /2

gov.uk/government/new…

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury This is not new in itself...it's a way of retrospectively matching grants to output - *BUT* during #COVID19 its been impossible for a lot of Colleges to run courses - you can't teach welding or English to non-speakers via zoom...and yet colleges get penalised /3

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury So the Association of Colleges @AoC_info estimates that between £22m and £68m will be "clawed-back" from colleges - hitting the very places that @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson
want to advance the Govt's much-vaunted new skills agenda. /4

aoc.co.uk/news/plan-claw…

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson Recall Johnson's speech promising “radical change” in the FE sector, including £1.5bn for new facilities to help deliver reforms, including the flagship “T-level” technical qualification for 16-18 year olds?

Well how does clawback help that? /5

gov.uk/government/spe…

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson Take the worst-hit colleges - Leicester - @LeicesterColl which CEO Verity Hancock says will lose £4m because the college (hit by worst lockdown in country) wont come close to delivering 90pc of its courses....guess what?? They've had to ditch a £6.6m bid for T-Level funds!! /6

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl Why? Because under the terms of the T-Level capital fund you need to provide 50 per cent matching funding - that's impossible now. So facilities needed for govt's flagship scheme are delayed...seems incredibly self-defeating /7

gov.uk/government/pub…

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl Or as one Whitehall insider puts it to me - a policy “entirely driven by the Treasury” that they see as an act of “complete idiocy” that undermined months of government messaging on education./8

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl Or as Verity Hancock says: “How on earth does this fit with the white paper which wants to put further education at the very centre of the government’s retraining and adult education agenda?” /9

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl What is doubly unfair is that Colleges have fixed costs - they were clearly told they could not furlough teaching staff (who are paid via govt grants), so what were they supposed to do? /10

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl Even worse, the college hardest hit were the colleges that provide so-called "roll on, roll off" adult learners who don't start in September, but dip in and out...the kind of adult learners the govt wants to engage /11

@ESFAgov @hmtreasury @AoC_info @GavinWilliamson @BorisJohnson @LeicesterColl Ian Pryce @ipryce principal and chief executive of the Bedford College Group, said the decision "will hit hardest...those offering flexible enrolment throughout the year which is the exact same thing that the government was calling for in its white paper.” /12

More broadly as Sarah Dicketts - boss of @AoC_info and @Activate_Learn colleges - says, it calls into question whether @hmtreasury will really fund the White Paper ambitions... /13

@AoC_info @Activate_Learn @hmtreasury Like a lot of FE heads Sarah was "really excited by the ‘build back better’ FE white paper" not now asks: "if the Treasury is so desperate for money they have felt to claw this back, where will they get the money for the rest of this white paper when it comes to fund it?” /14

@AoC_info @Activate_Learn @hmtreasury What does the Dept for Education say?

Well, for now they hold the party line...saying they believe the 90 per cent target was a “fair representation” of the average forecast delivery of courses for the rest of this academic year.

@AoC_info doesn't agree /15

@AoC_info @Activate_Learn @hmtreasury The govt does admit, in glorious Whitehallese that it will be "still difficult" for some colleges.

And adds, sans irony: “We are announcing this change now, to help providers plan their provision better for the remainder of the 2020-2021 academic year.” /16

@AoC_info @Activate_Learn @hmtreasury It not 100 per cent clear if No.10 was really across all this - it will be interesting, if enough stink is kicked up by these cuts, if Treasury can be forced into a reverse-ferret.

Fingers crossed, because it does seem baffling way govt to prosecute its FE agenda ENDS