The only news on the A4e sell-off came on Monday with a piece on the FE Week website speculating that Newcastle College Group could take over the company. But this only refers to the welfare-to-work part of the business.
That A4e is failing is shown by the release of the "adjusting referrals" list. This is where the DWP takes away referrals (new clients) from the WP provider which performs worse in an area and gives them to the better performer. Referrals mean potential profits, so this is meant to punish poor job outcome performance. A4e have contracts in 5 of the 18 areas; and in all 5 it's A4e which has lost. So the company is clearly struggling. On its website A4e comments on the latest statistics, but without mentioning at all the fact that it lost out. It talks about the huge increase in the proportion of ESA referrals but, for outcomes, talks in raw numbers rather than percentages, always a sign that people are hiding something.
Showing posts with label Newcastle College Group. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Newcastle College Group. Show all posts
Thursday, 19 March 2015
Wednesday, 2 July 2014
Work Programme puzzle
It started with a statement from the redoubtable Margaret Hodge MP, chair of the Public Accounts Committee. She is angry at the failure of the Work Programme to help the people it was supposed to help, especially those on ESA. There has been no improvement, she said, since the PAC examined it in 2012, and providers are spending only 46% of what they were meant to spend supporting each client. Then comes the puzzling bit: "It beggars belief that the Department expects to pay at least £31 million in bonuses to all of its contractors despite their poor performance - even the Newcastle College Group whose contract has been terminated will receive a bonus."
I confess to never having heard of these bonus payments. There was little enlightenment from an article by Rajeev Syal in the Guardian. He adds some more figures, but gives the bonus as £25m (and then £31m), while calling it "incentive payments", and saying that the National Audit Office "has discovered that flaws in the work programme contracts meant that the [DWP] is obliged to make incentive payments to even the worst performing providers." The figure isn't dependent on results.
Still confused, I looked at a piece from Sky News. It's clearer. And there's an interesting paragraph: "Figures for the most recent group to have gone through the scheme showed just 32% of participants found jobs - still below the DWP's minimum performance level of 33% and well below its original forecast of 39% and the 42% predicted by the contractors themselves."
Newcastle's local Journal tells us that NCG's contract in North East Yorkshire and the Humber had a success rate of 7.4% - but they're going to get a bonus anyway.
Okay, I must have missed the bit about bonuses when these contracts came out. Perhaps they were negotiated at the same time as the "attachment fees" which meant that the providers would have a steady income and wouldn't be dependent on PbR. But they are certainly a comfort to A4e and the rest.
I confess to never having heard of these bonus payments. There was little enlightenment from an article by Rajeev Syal in the Guardian. He adds some more figures, but gives the bonus as £25m (and then £31m), while calling it "incentive payments", and saying that the National Audit Office "has discovered that flaws in the work programme contracts meant that the [DWP] is obliged to make incentive payments to even the worst performing providers." The figure isn't dependent on results.
Still confused, I looked at a piece from Sky News. It's clearer. And there's an interesting paragraph: "Figures for the most recent group to have gone through the scheme showed just 32% of participants found jobs - still below the DWP's minimum performance level of 33% and well below its original forecast of 39% and the 42% predicted by the contractors themselves."
Newcastle's local Journal tells us that NCG's contract in North East Yorkshire and the Humber had a success rate of 7.4% - but they're going to get a bonus anyway.
Okay, I must have missed the bit about bonuses when these contracts came out. Perhaps they were negotiated at the same time as the "attachment fees" which meant that the providers would have a steady income and wouldn't be dependent on PbR. But they are certainly a comfort to A4e and the rest.
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