Private Eye has another go at A4e in its latest edition. It's good to see the Eye catching up with this blog in looking at its Ofsted results and pointing out that it has never got a rating better than "satisfactory". They also look at the unsatisfactory results of "Train to Gain", another of A4e's contracts, and at the Pathways results - also described as unsatisfactory. Why then, asks the Eye, "does the government put so much faith in busted benefit-busters like A4e?" Good question. But we've pointed out before that the procurement process forbids taking into account previous performance. That would, anyway, exclude nearly all the contractors. And for the Work Programme only the biggest companies could bid; that was part of the design of the contracts.
I came across a post on the Consumer Action Group website in which a client currently with A4e complains long and loud about the "adviser" who drew up her CV (I just assume the poster is female, with no evidence!). She describes it as "illiterate and untruthful". The poster is clearly educated and articulate, so why would the "adviser" insist on writing the CV of a client who was better able to do it than him? A comment under the piece says that at Working Links the adviser let the client write her own CV but told her not to use the word "I". This seems to be the fashion now, at least according to these providers, and I don't know why. Your CV is your description of yourself; write it in the first person. That's how I wrote mine and it got me several jobs. However, this problem of advisers with much worse language skills than their clients has always been there, and it's becoming more acute as more people are being forced out of professional jobs. Expect more howls of anger.
