College leaders are prioritising the safety of their staff and students while supporting students to succeed, David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, has said.

With less than a week until colleges are meant to begin to open for more learners following the coronavirus closures of education institutions, he stressed every college was facing different circumstances as they made their risk assessments about wider reopening.

His comments come as a Tes survey indicates that many people working in colleges do not believe their FE institution will be opening more widely next week. In the online survey, to which more than 600 people responded, 45 per cent said their college would not open for face-to-face learning for more students from next week.

Background: Online learning will continue - so we must do better

More: How different is teaching online from the classroom?

Background: Colleges should open on 15 June to a quarter of 16-19s

Safety concerns

Of them, 70 per cent cited concerns about safety from staff as a reason, while concerns from students and parents also featured strongly. 

At the end of May, the Department for Education confirmed that colleges should be opening to a larger number of students from 15 June. The guidance said institutions should welcome a proportion of 16- to 19-year-olds in their first year of a two-year study programme. Only a quarter of these students, according to the guidance, should be physically in the building at the same time, it stressed, and remote education should remain the predominant mode of learning for now.

David Hughes said: “Colleges know what is best for the safety of their students and staff and what the priorities are for. They are rightly prioritising the safety of everyone they serve whilst supporting students to succeed. AoC will continue to support colleges thinking about the logistics of reopening and the challenges expected in the next few months.

“We understand the worries and anxieties of college staff and leaders as well as students during these challenging times and we’re working closely with the staff unions nationally to get this right. AoC’s reopening groups continue to talk through practicalities of keeping people safe while considering reopening college buildings.”

Apprenticeship and skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “Colleges and further education providers are doing a fantastic job providing remote learning so as many students as possible can continue their studies. However, we all know the best place for students is back in the classroom. That’s why we are giving colleges and providers the flexibility to offer a wider number of students and apprentices some face-to-face support to supplement their remote learning and to prioritise who can attend based on who will benefit from it the most.

“The transition to our new normal will not be straightforward. We are starting cautiously and asking providers to show leadership by putting in place plans that work for them, so no student is held back from progressing because of the coronavirus.”

Reopening to more learners

So, how are colleges reopening? There are many factors to consider: social distancing, of course, being a prominent one, as well as student numbers, assessment, and staff willingness to come back to work. Tes spoke to three college leaders in England to find out how they are approaching the challenge. 

Liz Bromley, chief executive, New College Group (NCG) 

For NCG chief executive Liz Bromley, the health and safety of the staff and students across all seven of the group’s colleges is the guiding principle. While the government’s guidance says that teachers are not required to wear PPE, it will be available for staff who want it, she says. 

“We are looking to make sure staff have the protection that they need. It’s not just about the students not being on top of each other, it’s about the staff feeling safe in the workplace. We are making sure the classrooms are set up to support social distancing.” 

“We are trying to make sure there’s as much PPE available as possible for those who want it. There is no requirement to wear it, but some staff do want it,” she adds.

It’s not just physical health that Bromley wants to protect, but mental health too. 

“We are applying the same HR principles of support across all colleges and being as generous as we can possibly be in terms of people with childcare, people with caring responsibilities, people with underlying conditions - we are clear that they mustn’t worry about work,” she says.

NCG’s HR team are having one-on-one conversations with staff members required to return to campus. For staff members who feel unsafe or who say they may struggle with childcare, alternatives are being sought. 

“So far, we have found the engagement of staff has been brilliant, they are actually quite keen to come back. But I’ve been very clear: we are not forcing people back, we are asking people to return if they are required for a specific activity,” Bromley says.

“If it’s not possible to do that, we are finding ways to work around it and we will support you. It’s a significant stress time for the country without us alienating our workforce or winding our unions up.”

All seven colleges across the group will be reopening from 15 June - but Bromley says that they expect just 40 per cent of learners wanting to physically come into college. It is not just young people that are nervous about returning, but parents, too, she says. 

“We’re confident that with a reduced number of students and willing staff wanting to be in, and with the remote support we’ve got in place, that we should be able to make sure that all of our students have got access to the kind of learning that suits them,” she says. 

For those who do need to be in college - for example, those who have competency assessments to complete - Bromley says that learning could be pushed as far into July as possible. 

“We are living by what’s happening - from 15 June, we will see how many students come in. If only 10 of them come in, we won’t say, ‘Well, you can be here until July’. We will adjust accordingly - that’s part of the way that we’ve had to operate for the last 10 weeks,” she says. 

August will then be used to bring other staff back in a “phased, controlled way”, she says. Bromley’s personal feeling is that the majority of learning will happen online until the end of the calendar year. 

“The proportions will shift and change from September. For me, ensuring our students and staff are properly equipped for blended learning and blended teaching, that is key,” she says. 

Ian Pryce, chief executive and principal, Bedford College Group

Ian Pryce says he never planned to open from 1 June - the original date for a wider reopening of colleges proposed by the government. 

“Staff were understandably concerned about 1 June and we’d already decided to open on 8 June. Now that the date is 15 June, it has made it a bit easier. It’s almost like an experiment, it’s as safe as we can make it but we want to see what it looks like, how it feels as much as anything else,” he says. 

Bedford College Group will be open to students for two weeks from 15 June - and it is completely voluntary for the students to attend. If they choose not to, their learning will continue online until the end of term. 

“The A-level students have been OK with the work they’ve been set. We are not expecting more than about half of them to come in anyway, they will just carry on doing the work themselves. We haven’t picked up any major vibes about safety, people seem to be happy with the preparations we’ve made. So if they aren’t coming back, it’s because they are quite happy doing the work at home for the last few weeks,” he says.

“The message is very clear in Bedford that if you don’t want to go back and you want to carry on working from home that’s OK, so we don’t want to undermine that message by insisting otherwise.”

Assessment for 16- to 18-year-olds will be taking place - but on a “fairly limited” scale, Pryce says. 

“When it comes to assessment, we have been discussing whether we allow people to continue those in July, rather than tell them to come back in September,” he says. 

“I’d rather get people to finish off if we can. Staff are asking if they are OK to go and assess apprentices now that employers are back open. We’re all keen to get students finished.”

In practical terms, the site teams are busy across the college group, creating signs to encourage people to use a one-way system around the buildings, calculating how many learners can be fitted into each classroom and assessing how safe it is to use certain equipment. A lot of the colleges’ PPE was donated to hospitals at the beginning of the pandemic, so orders are in place to replace that. 

Much of staff time has been spent thinking ahead to September, says Pryce. A survey has been sent out to students to see how they expect things to run from September, and one is being planned for parents to ask the same thing. 

“There will definitely be some degree of blending. We are going to focus very heavily on the practical stuff and the main qualification stuff being done college and look at some of the group tutorial and enrichment type stuff being done from home. We will end up with some sort of rotating, I suspect, to make sure we don’t bring in thousands of people in at the same time,” he says. 

“Hopefully that will change over the year but we are working towards that basis in September. Students seem to be OK with that notion of blended learning and being in 75 per cent of the time they’ve been in traditionally.”

Bill Jones, principal, Leeds City College 

Jones says the workload for all staff when it comes to reopening has “just been enormous”.

“There is just so much to consider: the prioritisation of the students, the risk assessment of the buildings, the staff, the students themselves, the rooms, the activities, the social distancing. It’s been so complicated, it’s been staggering,” he says. 

“We are getting there, however it’s the national tests we are concerned about - the location variation in the different R rate, the infection rates rising in some areas. The union’s five tests and the difference in opinion between the unions and the government. That is all difficult to grapple with and it’s trying to steer a middle ground through that.”

Jones has decided to prioritise the students who need to complete a competency assessment - not 16- to 18-year-olds with exams next year. 

“The students we’ve prioritised are not the ones that the government has said - the Year 12s who have exams next year. That shows a fundamental lack of understanding of FE to me, it’s those who are doing a licence to practise who can’t be assessed remotely that we are prioritising,” he says. 

“Students in catering, hairdressing, hospitality, motor vehicle, nursing, caring: they are the ones we are prioritising. They are desperate to finish, those students want to work next year, or they want to go to the next level.”

Originally, the last day of term was scheduled for 7 July - but staff are being asked to teach beyond that to ensure these assessments take place, says Jones. If they do teach beyond term time, staff will be able to carry holiday over. 

“We are looking at asking staff to only come in voluntarily anyway until at least September, we aren’t going to force anyone to come in. But then students desperately need to finish assessment and get achievement for the next level - how much do you require staff to come in when it’s not term time? 

“We’ve offered them the opportunity to carry the holiday forward if they were to do that. So far, staff are really keen for students to complete and they’ve been working harder than ever and they do need their holidays but they are prepared to be flexible about holidays and term times.”