VIEWS & OPINION
T-Levels and work experience exposed
Comment by ANDREW GLADSTONE-HEIGHTON, Policy Leader, NCFE
Relax - it’s only a Catfish
Comment by MARK BENTLEY, London Grid for Learning
Given the lack of clarity or clear detail from the government around the forthcoming T-Levels, it’s perhaps surprising that the Education and Skills Funding Agency recently released a large volume of guidance on the ‘Principles for high quality work placements’, setting out the work placement Capacity Delivery Fund (CDF) ‘to effectively build capacity and establish links with employers and to drive forward work placement delivery, in readiness for T level roll out from 2020, with an expectation of full coverage by 2023’.
The ESFA expects institutions to use CDF funding from April 2018, to effectively build capacity and establish links with employers and to drive forward work placement delivery, in readiness for T level roll out from 2020, with an expectation of full coverage by 2023
ESFA recommend that ‘institutions take a whole organisation approach to planning the introduction of substantial work placements and ensure that this is fully integrated into the core business’.
The work placements should be based on the following 8 high-level principles: Timing and duration
• Work placements are on average 50 working days in length within an acceptable range of 45 to 60 days covering a minimum of 315 hours. • The work placement should be within the academic timetable as far as possible. • Providers must ensure that student GCSE Maths/English exam preparation (where this applies) is not compromised.
Occupation specific
• The placement must be focussed on the trade or profession the student is studying for.
• It will be expected that students will already have a number of occupationally relevant skills to apply and practice in the workplace.
Student readiness
• Students must be work ready, with appropriate work ethic and etiquette (is this a reasonable expectation for a 16 year old?)
Externality
• Here’s the kicker: The work placement must take place with an external employer (such as, it is on a site external to the student’s learning environment and not on another site operated by the provider).
Special educational needs or disabilities (SEND) provision • Students with SEND must be able to access high quality external work placements so they can benefit from that real-life experience as much as their non-SEND peers.
There are broader issues that the work placement policy comes into conflict with, chiefly a learner’s ability to access placements, for example coming from a rural campus looking to access a workplace in an urban setting, or vice versa. As it stands, the policy does not seem to acknowledge workplaces with 24-hour shift patterns - there may be significant safeguarding issues here. Larger providers with on-site employment for learners (on-premises restaurants for example) will be unable to use these expensive and often high-quality resources for delivery of the work placements under the policy. This has been an issue in delivery of the Study programmes, but it is disappointing that this is being overlooked by the ESFA.
Finally, there is the question of displacement from other initiatives; it may well be that increased volumes of learners taking T-Level work placements may displace the numbers of apprenticeships in employment settings. I can only hope that as the Capacity Delivery Fund is rolled out, the ESFA are in listening mode, to be able to rectify these issues before they impact on the success of the T-Level programme, and ultimately a learner’s opportunities.
22
www.education-today.co.uk
Do you know what catfishing is? I must admit that I didn’t until I saw someone reading an article on the Tube the other day about a celebrity being “…catfished aged 14”. My ignorance of the term extended to not knowing that there is an MTV show of the same name and that it is such common parlance that there were efforts to bring in an anti-catfish law in parliament. But once I had worked out what it meant – namely, to use someone else’s photo to trick your way into a sexual relationship – it got me thinking about the dangers of careless language for safeguarding young people. In the article that triggered all this, catfishing was actually a reference to attempted child sexual abuse via grooming and child sexual exploitation. Give it a cuddly name though, and all of a sudden it is normalised and easy to shrug off as harmless fun. To be fair to the newspaper, it was a direct quote, and let me be clear that I intend no criticism at all of the victim, as the word has become a cultural reference far beyond just one example. Although I am probably inviting accusations of “political correctness gone mad”, isn’t this a good example of why language matters? In recent months I have blogged about the term ‘roasting’, which is essentially bullying by another name. Similarly the term ‘banter’ has been used to excuse all manner of behaviour, from the genuinely harmless to the outright cruel and unacceptable.
In a similar vein the Rotherham sexual abuse scandal was, in part, allowed to perpetuate because the girls involved were described as “engaging in risk-taking behaviours” rather than as vulnerable, at-risk children. And only this week there was news of a (admittedly disgraced and imprisoned) US congressman ‘sexting’ a child, which, although it sounds bad in itself, is not so clear-cut as child sexual abuse and soliciting child sexual abuse imagery.
Conservative MP for Wealdon, Nusrat Ghani also hit headlines recently for her attempt to see the term ‘honour killing’ banned from official documents because it implied the crime was ‘culturally sensitive’. This proposal was met with mixed reactions from women’s rights groups, many of whom reflected that the word honour is important in acknowledging the motives of these crimes and in validating victims’ experiences. Whatever your opinion, the fact that this discussion ignited so much debate proves the importance language plays in our behaviour. If you still aren’t convinced, ask yourself when a politician would talk about a tax burden, and when would they say contribution instead? They would choose very carefully, and with good reason – words shape the way we think about a subject…a lot. The linguistic term for this is framing, and there are plenty of fascinating books and research on the subject should you want to get academic.
Either way, I don’t think it is an overstatement to say that what we say and the words we use shape what we think, and can therefore play an important role in keeping children safe. So next time you hear about adults sexting children or children being promiscuous or taking sexual risks, maybe it’s time to speak out.
For resources to support schools and parents in the area of child sexual exploitation, please visit the LGfL DigiSafe resource bank at
cse.lgfl.net
November 2017
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48