West Midlands CETT Advisory Board Meeting
held on 28 January at NEW College
Present:
1.
Maureen Atkinson (Chair of Learning Strategy Group, RAWM) Chair
Julie Chamberlain (Project Manager WMCETT) Secretary
Fergus McKay (Director WMCETT)
Mike Smith (HWSTPA)
Apologies
Kelvin Nash sent apologies. Ros Partridge also did not attend.
2. Minutes of Advisory Board meeting, 17 September, 2013
They were agreed as a correct record.
3.
Matters arising
With reference to Item 3 from the last meeting, there was a discussion about LEPs. MS said LEPs felt
colleges were not buying in to them, and colleges said LEPs had not talked to them in the first place. He said
they had a basic structure imposed by government but the localism agenda had to reflect local needs. The
LEPS had to draw up skills plans and show they were being inclusive. They had to identify the gaps in the
skills needs in their patch and work out how to meet those needs. There were difficulties in finding
engineering tutors as people were staying in industry rather than moving into teaching. MA said OCN in the
West Midlands was having research done into skills gaps. She missed the knowledge of the West Midlands
Observatory.
4.
Director’s update
FM told the Board about the Education and Training Foundation’s work with ACETT. The GCSE maths
enhancement programme was under way, and tenders had gone out to develop the English enhancement
programme which would be rolled out from September. We hadn’t been told anything about the structure
for the programme but hopefully it would be subsidised in the same way at the maths programme and cost
£100.
In tandem with the maths enhancement programme was a regional working party of people interested in
the delivery of mathematics in the wider FE community, with a specific brief to do with addressing how the
maths agenda can be delivered to people aged 16-18 without A-C in mathematics.
FM said he hoped our role would be as facilitators and it would take off and different types of groups would
be created within it, and the same thing would happen with the English course.
WMCETT had also been given a small sum of money to run three workshops around practice in English,
maths and SEN teaching. They were aimed at practitioners and sharing resources, techniques and
strategies. The job involved looking at the barriers to the process and feeding that back to the ETF through
a series of reports.
FM said Pye Tait had been commissioned by the ETF to review the Professional Standards in teacher
training. WMCETT was getting some money to run a workshop bringing people together to consult on this.
1
FM said he hoped if we did a good job with all these projects more would come our way.
The teaching HE in FE course WMCETT developed was running in March and WMCETT would get back its
£3,000 development money for this. MS asked if the course had been handed over to the university and FM
confirmed it had become a Warwick-accredited course.
5.
Project manager’s update
JC outlined that this was not her usual budget report, as she usually presented sheets showing total overall
expenditure and income over the past seven years, and where we currently are in this financial year, with
predictions of where it was going.
She said WMCETT had not yet received any of the funding it is due to run the GCSE maths enhancement
programme, with money allocated for someone to chair the project, do the day-to-day admin and the
largest part to pay for a Professional Development lead to run it. The project also involved WMCETT
collecting £100s from everyone taking the course, paying venues to host the course and invoicing ACETT for
the difference, so a lot of money would be coming through WMCETT accounts. So far there was £8,000
from fees but it would soon go out again. We were also due to receive small payments for running the
network meetings, the Professional Standards event and for Steve Pardoe, the WMCETT maths lead, taking
on a national role in supporting CETTs around the country.
WMCETT’s financial position was currently healthy but stating the current figures in the account would just
be misleading. We hoped there would be enough surplus to keep WMCETT going until Christmas 2014 or
beyond, and that the money for the English enhancement programme would come through during that
time.
6.
Any other business
MS suggested it was time to review the Board and get some additional people involved to bolster it. He said
it was disappointing there had not been FE representation. He wondered if he could ask someone from the
Birmingham LEP Skills Board.
Action Point: FM agreed to review the Board.
7.
Next meeting
The date for the next meeting was set for Tuesday, 1 July, at 5pm at NEW College.