Inadequate

Once again I'm indebted to an anonymous comment for pointing me to this story.
The Work Programme isn't inspected by Ofsted, or anyone else.  Its predecessors, New Deal and FND, were, but either the government had unlimited faith in the power of profit, or the providers made it a condition of taking part, and there is no inspection of the WP.  However, the Learning and Skills provision, dealing with apprenticeships and "employability", does fall under Ofsted's remit.  It's called Work-based Learning, and the funding comes from the Skills Funding Agency.  And the latest inspection of A4e pronounces the company "Inadequate".  You can download it here.
A couple of points about Ofsted first.  Teachers maintain that the new boss, Wilshaw, ordered that all grades should be lowered, so what had previously been "satisfactory" should now be "inadequate" - I don't know how true that is.  And the reports are couched in very careful language, so it's sometimes hard to see why an institution should be blasted.  But with all that in mind, there is no doubt that A4e has performed badly.
Three previous inspections said they were only "satisfactory".  This latest took place early in February, and noted that things had not improved.  The summary says: "This provider is inadequate because -

• Leaders and managers have failed to ensure that a systematic approach routinely improves outcomes and the quality of provision in A4e learning and skills programmes. Three previous inspections noted that arrangements to ensure or improve the quality of provision were in development; revised quality systems are not having a significant impact.  
• Outcomes on the apprenticeship programme that A4e has delivered for many years have had consistently inadequate outcomes. Since the previous inspection almost half of the nearly 2500 apprentices who left the scheme did so without their main qualification.  
• Too much teaching, learning and assessment is uninspiring or mechanistic. Performance in subject areas has rarely risen above satisfactory or requiring improvement in 10 years of inspection.
• A4e’s self-assessment and quality improvement processes are overly complex. Judgements, especially for learners’ outcomes, are too generous. The process for observing of teaching, learning and assessment is not effective enough to drive up standards."

It's necessary to read the whole report, but one or two things stand out.  Under Outcomes for Learners we're told that A4e had outcomes 25% below those of its subcontractors, who deliver 20% of the provision.  Later, the report says that "Apparently high-performing subcontractors, working with programmes for unemployed people, will not be working with A4e in the near future."  All the grades, for subject areas and for general quality and effectiveness are either 3 (requires improvement) or 4 (inadequate).  And note above that they say that "Performance in subject areas has rarely risen above satisfactory or requiring improvement in 10 years of inspection."  Overall, it's inadequate.
Suppose this was a school which Ofsted was inspecting.  Do you think it would be allowed to stay open?

Half a page in Private Eye

Yes, the latest edition of Private Eye devotes half a page to the continuing saga of A4e.  While there's nothing new, there are some interesting elaborations on what we already know.

There has been speculation that the system of giving bonuses to staff who get somebody into a job fuelled the temptation to cut corners and even commit fraud.  A4e actually admitted to MPs that the practice "may have been a driver for individual malpractice".  But Rob Murdoch said that he thought the problem had been solved by moving to group bonuses.  I doubt it.  It doesn't cure the culture of relentless pressure to reach targets and make money.  As we have said, A4e isn't the only company to use bonuses for job outcomes, but it seems to be the only one in which the practice has resulted in scandal.

The article cites what happened in Edinburgh over local claimants' battle to be represented by a support group known as ECAP.  This is something we reported on in the past.  Two people were "sanctioned" simply because they insisted on having an ECAP member with them at interviews with A4e.  Both won their cases at tribunal.

Finally the writer turns to the two new contracts for prison education, provisionally awarded to A4e.  He reports that the two most recent Ofsted inspections of A4e's prison contracts were pretty damning and wonders how they could be given new ones.

I'm sad to see that the owner of a blog which has been tireless in its criticism of the treatment of the unemployed has decided to wage war on Watching A4e.  His conclusions are bizarre, and I won't waste time trying to answer them.  I don't suppose it will help to say that we are both on the same side, although our approaches are different.

There seems to have been a hiccup in the comments notification recently, so apologies to anyone who left a reasonable comment which was published late or not at all.  

Vox and meetings

If you don't read the Daily Express (and why would you?) you'll have missed Emma Harrison's Jobs Tips. Not to worry, you can read them on A4e's website. Your confidence in A4e's competence may be shaken, however, by the howler in the introduction - "ensuring your poised and ready for an interview". Anyone applying for a job would be well advised to do better than that on their CV.

A growing part of A4e's business are the Vox centres, which give skills training to children and young people who have been excluded from schools. Emma is opening the 10th such centre today, at Sheffield Wednesday football club. She seems to think that it's "a fascinating new model"; the private company stands the cost of setting up the institution and the local authority buys places in it. It is not new at all. Private companies running special schools, for instance, operate on exactly the same model. It doesn't look as if any of these centres have been inspected by Ofsted yet. Emma says she's not concerned about public sector cuts, and she may well be justified.

One company which has decided that the Work Programme is too big a risk is Sarina Russo, an Australian outfit. Despite being put on the framework they've announced that they are not going to bid for any of the contracts as prime contractor. They say that they support the payment model, but they only want to be sub-contractors. That's going to leave only a handful of companies, like A4e and Serco, which are willing to take the financial risk.

Ex-A4e employee Hayley Taylor who, in a few short months, rose to "international careers expert" has had a meeting with Chris Grayling. She says, "it was good to hear that the issues the unemployed face are being addressed, although it remains to be seen what the outcome will be." One wonders whether Grayling is meeting any of the unemployed.

The Guardian interview - a response

Perhaps even the Guardian editor realised that the recent interview with Emma Harrison was somewhat one-sided. Today the paper has published a response by Carol Ann Lintern, who says that she "recently retired after 23 years working on employment service programmes designed to assist long-term jobless clients back to work." It's an intelligent and well-informed piece. "Most long-term unemployed people I came across," she says, "were male, over 45, living alone, unskilled or semi-skilled, computer illiterate and with poor literacy. These men had often worked in manufacturing or some form of manual labour. As well as there being a lack of jobs, they were also up against school-leavers who were paid less and were probably in a better physical condition. Not only this, but effective job searches now require the ability to complete an application online. And the current job search programme provides tuition which is online only – useless to people who have little knowledge of computers." She contradicts Harrison's assertion that the box-ticking culture of the old contracts has gone. It has been replaced, she says, by a focus on getting the paperwork right for the Ofsted inspection.

I could quibble with some of what Lintern says, but on the whole it's an excellent antidote to Emma Harrison.

Ofsted report for A4e North East, East Yorkshire and Humber, Programme Centres

On 26 June 2009 there was an Ofsted inspection of A4e's premises in Hull, York, Bridlington, Goole, Grimsby and Scunthorpe (it was during A4e Hull's nightmare week). The full report can be found here. As with all of A4e's inspections under the current contracts the overall grade is 3 - satisfactory. (There are 4 grades; 1, outstanding, 2, good, 3, satisfactory and 4, inadequate.) The summary says:

Key strengths

 Good development of confidence and motivation

 Good links to external organisations to provide specialist support

 Particularly effective management information system to monitor performance

 Good management of subcontractor

Key areas for improvement

 Very low progression rates into jobs

 Insufficiently individualised target-setting and action planning

 Insufficiently thorough quality arrangements

They point out the very low progression rate into jobs of 18% in 2008 / 09, while recognising that "the number of participants joining the programme has increased significantly from 203 participants in the first three months of 2008/09 to 585 in the last three months of 2008/09".

One paragraph which surprised me stated that "Procedures for safeguarding participants do not meet current government requirements. A4e currently does not have a suitable safeguarding policy and procedure. Staff have not had appropriate background checks and have not received training covering safeguarding vulnerable adults."

The report makes interesting reading for anyone who has been on an A4e programme or has worked in the sector.

Welfare to Work

A4e's core business has always been in contracts to deliver "welfare to work" programmes, and these have enabled the company to sell itself around the world as "Britain's leading provider. Contracts existed before Labour's election victory in 1997, but the gravy train started with NEW DEAL. A4e's success in winning these contracts baffled competitors and led to suspicions that they were being helped by people in high places (suspicions fuelled by their venture into Israel, and by the paid involvement of David Blunkett when he had ceased to be a minister).

In 2006 the government decided to sack a lot of the Jobcentre staff who had been responsible for organising the back-to-work schemes and contract out this organisation region by region. A4e won many regions, mainly by promising a 55% success rate. Everyone in the sector knew that this was ridiculously optimistic. Given the numbers of people forced onto the schemes who are, for various reasons, unemployable a good rate would be around 30%. And the results for the year to March 2009 show that the highest rate that A4e achieved was 33% (with the FTET group). With older clients the job outcome rate was 22%. There have been no moves to sue for breach of contract.

There are several New Deal programmes, but they boil down to two types. One is Gateway, a two-week course for under-26s, aimed at providing an intensive programme of support and encouragement. All other programmes last for 13 weeks, and preclude the kind of genuine skills training that was integral to the old New Deal. Only very short training courses can be undertaken, and the costs of these have to come out of the provider's budget, so there is little incentive to fund them. Clients are supposed to be placed with employers for work experience, but there is a severe shortage of employers willing to take them on, so increasingly the placements are with the voluntary sector. A4e developed the practice of paying voluntary organisations small sums to take these clients. As unemployment increased rapidly in 2009, the pressures became severe, with higher numbers of clients being referred for "training" which they increasingly saw as pointless. A piece on Radio 5 Live in 2009 exposed the discontent of many clients at the poor service they believed A4e to be offering, and Ofsted's poor opinion of the company. In June 2009 BBC's Look North programme in Hull reported on criticisms by two A4e clients of the waste of time and money of the programme.

The New Deal contracts encourage providers to maximise profits by minimising costs, and the costs are principally staffing and facilities. The effects of cost-cutting were exposed in March 2008 when the Manchester Evening News reported Jobseekers treated "like cattle" Similar scenes were reported in Sheffield and in Newport, South Wales, usually on local forums or private blogs. Such complaints must be treated with a degree of caution; most of the people on the schemes don't want to be there. But a picture emerged of clients kicking their heels in poor facilities with inadequate (and under-skilled) staff. There is a maximum payment to the provider for each client, and it is paid in two ways. "On programme payments" are made for each week, or part-week, that the client is with the provider. Job outcome payments are made when the client gets employment which is certified to be of 16 or more hours per week and expected to last for 13 weeks or more. If the client leaves the programme for a job before the 13 weeks are up, and stays in the job for 13 weeks, the provider can claim the "rolled-up weeks", the on-programme payments for the remaining weeks.

Pathways to Work is a new variant aimed specifically at those who are on incapacity benefit.

Increasingly A4e is entering into small scale contracts, such as that with Manchester University in June 2009.

BY SPRING 2009 A4e HOLD A TOTAL OF 46 CONTRACTS FOR WELFARE-TO-WORK PROGRAMMES ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. THESE INCLUDE 7 ESF CONTRACTS, FUNDED BY THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL FUND TO A TOTAL VALUE OF £23,086,770.

Flexible New Deal (FND) A4e have secured contracts in 5 areas for this revamp of New Deal. It will be more difficult to make profits under the new system. Payments depend much more heavily on job outcomes.

FRAUD In June 2009 it was disclosed that the DWP had investigated fraud charges against A4e and money had been clawed back. Paperwork was being fiddled to claim payments for non-existent job outcomes.

OFSTED Until 2007 inspections of training providers were carried out by the Adult Learning Inspectorate. The function was then transferred to Ofsted. The inspectors award grades on up to 7 aspects of the office's work, and an overall grade can be arrived at. So an organisation is rated 1) Outstanding, 2) Good, 3) Satisfactory or 4) Inadequate. Six A4e New Deal offices have been inspected since 2007. Bear in mind that offices have notice of the inspection and so have time to get their paperwork in order and plan what to do on the day, or days, of the inspection. All of the 6 were awarded a grade 3 - satisfactory; the best is Cumbria with grade 2 in a couple of areas; the worst is Northumbria with a grade 4 for equality and diversity. Note that none of A4e's New Deal offices have achieved an overall Good grade.

The inspection reports detail strengths and weaknesses. Many of the weaknesses are common to sveral of A4e's offices:

• Low job outcomes (4)
• Insufficient identification of participants' needs or barriers to employment (2)
• Weak target-setting (4)
• Inadequate or slow approach to quality improvement (6)
• Insufficient use of data and monitoring (3)
• Inadequate use of teaching or resources (3)