Tuesday 5 August 2014

Selling off A4e?

News today that A4e has sold its business in India to a local company, Skills Academy.  A4e was providing skills training and "placements" mainly in rural areas.  I don't know when A4e's own website was last updated, but they say that have been working in India for over 3 years and talk in the future tense about the contract they will be delivering, having signed it in January 2012.
What's the significance of this?  There was a time, not so long ago, when A4e boasted of operating in eleven countries.  Now, the only overseas business is in Australia.  Are they shrinking sensibly, having spread the business too thinly?  Or is this a sign of continuing financial problems?

10 comments:

  1. More like A4e will be concentrating on milking the cash cow that is Workfare i.e. payments for finding 'voluntary' placements.

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  2. Could have something to do with aid for India being cut by Britain.

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  3. I have a vision of Emma Harrison sat home, like Norma Desmond (Sunset Boulevard), watching recordings of her past TV appearances. And when someone says "you used to be a big shot at A4e". She replies, "I still am, it's the contracts that got smaller".

    Because A4e are a private company, and prone to secrecy, it's difficult to know what the real reasons are for their decline.

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  4. 'Because A4e are a private company, and prone to secrecy, it's difficult to know what the real reasons are for their decline'.

    This is the problem. They are a private business working in the public sector and as such are not accountable for their actions, which is why the whole sub-contracting policy does not work - they take no responsibility.

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  5. Sick of the Work Programme6 August 2014 at 05:08

    When I first found out that A4e supposedly had a business arm in India, I found it rather bizarre and was left seriously wondering how it could possibly work. After all, A4e's business in this country is entirely dependent on our government's willingness to fund it, so I'm struggling to think how this could work in India where the systems are so different. India doesn't even have a Social Security system where people who are unemployed can sign on, so what incentive was there for A4e to have a base in India? It baffles me.

    Regarding their overall financial position, I am amazed that they are still going considering the huge amount by which they were in the red when they published their most recent accounts.

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    1. Not having a social security system doesn't stop a government contracting to provide training and work placements.

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  6. I suspect that the India venture is a symptom of Harrison's overblown ego. She actually seemed to believe that she was some sort of all powerful messiah who could solve all the world's problems.
    Perhaps the new management realise that such foreign adventures were just a "Harrison folly" and are seeking to rationalise their activity without taking too big a financial hit.

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  7. I wonder how much of it is to do with a lack of understanding of cultural differences (just because it works in the UK doesn't mean it will work in another country) As I mentioned before, their Spanish business was never going to do well for this precise reason, and I wonder whether the same is true for India.

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  8. Has anyone heard about A4e and Manchester college?

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    1. It was formally announced today that A4e is withdrawing from the OLASS contract in the London region - which they took over from Kensington & Chelsea college in November 2012 - and the only available replacement is Manchester College who previously had the OLASS contract for all prisons except a few in the South West, East Anglia and London. No reason is given other than "A4e has agreed with NOMS and the SFA to withdraw from the OLASS 4 contract". For many tutors affected by the transfer from a college to a private company this will be infuriating - they lost their teachers' pension entitlement, many had age of retirement changed, salary increases never happened, they lost 'status' by becoming trainers rather than teachers and A4e would never form a formal co-operation with Teachers' Unions. There is no easy money to be made from the prison education contracts and it is rumoured that the SFA may step out of it altogether so that education goes back to being a prison provision. Back to the old ways then....?

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