In the News
The levelling up White Paper is finally here and contains several items of interest for FE and skills providers.
For one, the paper commits the government to devolving the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) from Whitehall: “Local leaders will be empowered to direct funding towards their own, locally identified priorities, whether that be… introducing skills provision to match local labour market need and support those furthest from the labour market”.
Pre-launch guidance for the UKSPF states that in England, the fund "will primarily operate over the strategic geographies of the Mayoral Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority, and lower tier or unitary authorities elsewhere".
The UKSPF is the eventual replacement for the European Social Fund (ESF) which Britain is losing as it has left the European Union. FE Week has produced a fantastic feature on the two funds, as well as the community renewal fund which bridges the ESF and UKSPF, which you can find here.
Our ESF – which has been spent by providers, charities, and not-for-profits on unemployed adults and young people not in education, employment or training on employment-related projects and vocational skills training – is due to run out in 2023.
Yet the UKSPF will not focus on skills and employment until 2024/25 and 32 organisations, including the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), the Learning and Work Institute and the Association of Colleges, have written to levelling up minister Michael Gove expressing their “deep concern” about the delay.
European-funded provision in some areas will come to an end in the next two months, and the letter warns that by 2024-25: “Programmes and organisations working in this area may well no longer exist.”
AELP’s director of public affairs Rebecca Durber told The Mark: “Independent training providers have delivered the majority of the ESF dedicated to skills, so plans around the UKSPF are of great interest to providers.
“AELP believes the UKSPF should be weighted towards funding skills, with programmes funded to support the needs of adult learners with lower levels of qualification as well as those who are otherwise disadvantaged.
“However, the sector is understandably disappointed that the skills element of UKSPF will not be introduced until the 2024/2025 financial year. It is highly likely that this will result in a gap between ESF grant funding and the new UKSPF arrangements. This would have a huge impact on providers, and more importantly, on support for adult learners. We urge ministers to revisit this decision.”
But once the funding becomes available, how will providers be able to access it? In this edition of The Mark, the managing director of bid writers Carley Consult, Jim Carley, writes about how accessing UKSPF may differ from ESF.
The white paper also reveals the West Midlands and Greater Manchester combined authorities, which already control their local adult education budgets, will trial deeper devolution deals before those are rolled out to every combined authority in the future.
This comes after West Midlands mayor Andy Street recently repeated calls to be handed control over for 16-to-18 education and apprenticeships for his area.
Interview
After the levelling up White Paper announced trailblazing deeper devolution deals for the West Midlands and Greater Manchester combined authorities, we spoke to Dr Fiona Aldridge, head of skills insight for the West Midlands CA, about what this and the potential UKSPF devolution could mean.
One of the authority’s key asks for their deeper devolution deal, Aldridge told The Mark, will be a single pot bringing together local adult education, National Skills and UKSPF funding.
In an interview with this newsletter, she also backed calls for providers to have a say in developing Local Skills Improvement Plans, after 12 principals wrote to education secretary Nadhim Zahawi calling for a “strengthening” of their roles in developing the plans.
“I do think it is really important that everybody involved in the skills system should be a part of that process,” Aldridge said.
While she had hoped the white paper would mean a set of answers on devolution and the UKSPF, instead: “It gives you a set of possibilities, really.”
The combined authority is “really excited” by the deeper devolution deal as: “For me, the excitement is in the potential to connect those areas of social policy that too often get fractured and silo-ed at a national level, for the benefit of the region, the businesses that operate in it and the people who live in there.”
The single funding pot is one of three key areas the authority has been thinking about for its new deal, as “by having a single funding pot, we can respond more quickly and flexibly to needs as they emerge.
“We can make sure resources across all of what can often be disparate funding streams come together to drive more targeted, focused, high quality provision.”
Asked what funding pots they want to pour into this single pot, other than the local AEB which the authority has controlled since 2019, Aldridge said they were discussing with government the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and the National Skills Fund – the government’s flagship programme for funding free, level 3 qualifications and skills bootcamps.
But she insisted that this was not about making a “land grab” of different funding pots, but about creating a coherent employment and skills offer aligned to labour market need, and avoiding but ensuring “wasteful duplication” This could be about devolution of funds, but also about co design and development of programmes.
The second ask for the deeper devolution deal is focused on greater responsibility for the technical and vocational training offer in the region, though discussions were still to be had about what this might look like.
“Given the changes in the economy, we need to ensure we can support young people and adults to develop technical and vocational skills throughout their lives.”
On how accessing the UKSPF may differ from ESF, Aldridge said “we are still awaiting details on the process” about it, but they “expect funds to be lower than we have had through the European Social Fund”.
The 2019 Conservative Party manifesto did promise UKSPF would “at minimum match the size” of the ESF for each nation in the UK.
We can make sure resources across all of what can often be disparate funding streams come together to drive more targeted, focused, high quality provision
Aldridge expressed her own concerns about the gap between ESF ending and UKSPF-resourced skills programmes commencing, saying the combined authority is “keen to explore with central government what that means; and how we might mitigate the impact on both good provision and on the region’s capability deliver as funds become available.
Following discussions within the sector about FE and skills providers’ own roles in composing Local Skills Improvement Plans, Aldridge said, along with employers, skills providers should also be part of the process.
“It is important that providers are working closely with employers, developing provision in response to their needs as well as working with them to stimulate demand for training.”
The combined authority also wants to see the higher and further education sectors working closely together on this, she said.
“Ultimately, if central government is commissioning anything that operates in the region, we want to work with them to make sure that, as it hits the ground, it best meets the needs of our businesses and residents, that it aligns with what is already available so that people have a coherent offer that they can engage with and navigate and that can properly support them.
“That's really critical for us.”
Opinion
Jim Carley, Managing Director of Carley Consult discusses how devolution could affect bidding for skills funding going forward.
Devolution may not be the silver bullet we've been led to believe
The levelling up white paper has headlined a focus on qualification-focused skills achievements. Extending devolution is a core strategy to achieve this, with 10 further devolution deal areas proposed in England. With devolved bidding for adult education budgets (AEB) already becoming the norm, and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) programmes expected to be commissioned in a similar way, levelling-up could have a lasting impact on skills procurement.
In simple terms, there will be more bidding rounds for the same or similar provisions in devolved areas, rather than singular national competitions. We’ve already seen this with AEB. There will also be more fragmentation and differentiation across these devolved models, rather than a standard approach. Whilst that is arguably the essence of devolution, it also runs the risk of different models being applied for the sake of it, rather than pursuing a truly best practice model for skills procurement. Why not, for example, have a singular national AEB framework which different devolved buyers can simply call off provision from?
Devolution also brings mixed prospects for providers. The approach is arguably good news for high quality, locality specific providers who don’t necessarily have national growth plans, but who can demonstrate mile deep connections, competency, and capacity in their locality. There is strong appeal for local commissioners to keep the local pound in the local economy.
Conversely, larger national providers could struggle. They will have more bid rounds to manage, chasing a variable patchwork of provision, with smaller localised contract values. Such providers may qualify out more opportunities on the grounds of then being ‘not worth their while’. Having said that, larger, national providers still tend to have more bidding resource, capacity, and expertise, so may still win more business for this reason alone.
Whilst that is arguably the essence of devolution, it also runs the risk of different models being applied for the sake of it
Many providers have grown comfortable with ESF over the years, carving out a decent market. UKSPF is not, however, a like-for-like replacement, meaning that the sun will inevitably set on ESF initiatives like Skills Support for the Workforce. Successors such as Multiply, the new maths focused UKSPF initiative, will have a different focus. As such, not everyone who currently has ‘ESF’ in their job title can simply be rebadged as ‘UKSPF’. New programmes are often welcomed as new opportunities, but there will be inevitable winners and losers in the market as new levelling-up initiatives are rolled out.
This is further compounded by the cynical argument that devolved commissioning doesn’t necessarily better meet local needs. How much is influenced by, for example, what commissioning practitioners think is solely a good idea from their personal perspective, as opposed to a robust, evidence tested, deep dive approach to local challenges? We may see conscious attempts not to replicate what works, because best practice wasn’t necessarily thought up by ‘people from around here’, as well as more than a few skills vanity projects casually disguised with a levelling-up sheen.
There is also the matter, if not the duty, of collaborative due diligence between devolved area. What if Provider X is materially underperforming in Manchester, but then picks up a tasty new contract in Birmingham? Who safeguards learners against that risk? A key provider could fail, yet none would have had ultimate responsibility for spotting and stopping this. Again, a national framework or, dare I suggest it, a rebooted but much more meaningful revamp of the register of training organisations could be the necessary answer.
And how much commercial stress may skills devolution also place on the traditional big beasts of procurement like the ESFA?
If more skills funding, for example, is diverted to combined authorities, and the purse strings from UKSPF similarly sits in the regions, the ESFA will find itself managing an ever-dwindling contracted funding pot. Will good commercial and contract managers, perhaps twiddling their thumbs, choose to exodus in favour of more aspiring career challenges elsewhere?
So, levelling-up leaves a lot at stake. It will be interesting to watch how this will all impact upon the market for skills funding in practice.