The private firm behind the new “National Institute of Education”

The Shard, where the National Institute of Education says it will hold some of its training

Is a private business about to make a killing from encouraging schools to use funding, via the government’s apprenticeship levy, to pay for professional development for teachers?

It certainly seems not beyond the realms of possibility after we did some investigation into the newly-, and perhaps misleadingly-, named “National Institute of Education”.

As Schools Week reported back in October, the “NIE” has been set up to “help schools to use the money they pay into [the government’s new] apprenticeship levy”.

Since April, multi-academy trusts with a wage bill of £3 million or more, schools with salary bills over that figure and local authorities, on behalf of their schools with lower pay overheads, have been paying the levy, which schools or trusts can then claim back by paying for apprenticeship training for their staff.

The National Institute – let’s stop using the quotes, for now, as questions over the name are discussed below – will offer courses including a teaching apprenticeship and a “master teacher” degree apprenticeship. Its brochure describes its courses as “work-based, blended learning programmes [which] deliver contextual outcomes and minimise disruption to the school’s timetable”. Some training will be offered at facilities including the Shard (above), in London.

The money flowing through all of this seems likely to be very large, if these courses prove a hit with schools.

The brochure, available on the NIE’s website, offers some worked examples which make this clear. They show how a school or academy trust, wanting to pay for professional training via the apprenticeship system, would first have all of the amount they had paid into the apprenticeship levy taken off the cost of the training, by the government.

Then, if the training were more expensive than the amount the school or trust had paid into the levy, the government would fund 90 per cent of the difference, leaving the school or trust to pay just 10 per cent of this remaining charge.

The worked examples show a secondary school wanting to train 10 new teachers on a one-year apprenticeship, at a “total cost” of £90,000. But the school would only end up paying £6,552, with the government meeting the rest.

The largest organisation offered as an example is a large multi-academy trust, with an annual wage bill of £92 million. If it wanted to train 200 senior leaders on a three-year programme and “build a talent stream of 100 new teachers each year”, the trust would ordinarily be looking at a “combined cost” of £2.7 million per year.

But, thanks to the government’s subsidy, the actual charge for the trust would be just £225,000.

All this may doubt sound very interesting – and perhaps attractive - for those running schools. But where do the large fees – ie the school/trust contribution plus the government subsidy - end up?

The assumption, I thought, must be that they go to the NIE itself. If lots of schools sign up – and we were hearing of interest this week – it seems likely that funds could stack up quite dramatically.

So I asked communications consultants working for Oceanova, the company linked to the NIE, for more information, but didn’t get any firm answers (see longer quote below). Indeed, in a statement, the company suggested that it was not even certain at this stage that the NIE would be a for-profit provider.

It said: “The National Institute of Education is a new independent school of education that is an approved provided of apprenticeship training on ROATP [the government’s apprenticeship register].

“Several statuses of incorporation are currently under consideration for this new venture including private ownership, community interest and charitable status. The NIE will be officially launched in April 2018.”

However, it seems surprising that the organisation is not being flagged up straight away as a private business.

Looking again at the brochure, the NIE is listed against an address in Stratford, East London, which also houses Oceanova, the teacher recruitment and training business of which David Cobb is chief executive. Cobb is quoted speaking about the NIE in the Schools Week piece, with Oceanova listed in that article as setting up the NIE in conjunction with the University of Buckingham.

The brochure also says it is copyright of “NIE Professional Learning Ltd”.

A search on Companies House finds that NIE Professional Learning Ltd is a company, also based at the Stratford address, which was set up back in 2009, though under a different name: Utility Training Ltd, with the name having changed on October 24^th, 2017.

Indeed, when I look on the government’s apprenticeship register itself, “National Institute of Education” does not come up, though “Utility Training Ltd” does.

Also on October 24^th, 2017, a declaration was made in relation to who owns the shares in Utility Training Ltd. The Companies House record shows that Oceanova Ltd owns 75 per cent or more of the shares.

Perhaps more obviously, when I go to Oceanova’s website, the National Institute of Education is listed under “our businesses”.

So it looks like a private business.

Why does this matter? Well, there seems little wrong with a little bit of entrepreneurship, and many will say good luck to Oceanova and Cobb if they can provide training not otherwise available which, because of the extensive government subsidy, can be offered cheaply to schools.

But if the arrangement is that this “National Institute” is actually a private business, surely this should be being made clearer to the public, and to the schools using the services.

Indeed, the very name “National Institute” surely suggests a public sector organisation: many such bodies come up when I put those two words into a search. Again, is it not time to be clearer with the public on this? And would a government organisation, providing such training, not ensure more of this cash remained in the public sector, at a time of such tight national finances?

I asked Oceanova specifically how much of the money paid by the government would be going to the National Institute of Education; how much of the cash paid by schools would be heading to the NIE; and whether it was not a bit misleading for a private business to be calling itself a National Institute. But I received no specific answers.

I also asked Oceanova why the NIE had been set up as NIE Professional Learning Ltd, renamed from Utility Training Ltd, which is a private business, and was told: "This was simply to register the name and Oceanova has not yet landed on the final structure [of the NIE]."

Oceanova’s statement said: “One aspect of the NIE mission is to ensure that schools are making effective use of the £100m+ a year that is currently being drawn into the levy pot from school budgets.

“Schools, trusts and local authorities must spend their levy contributions within a 2-year period or will lose them to HRMC coffers.

“There is currently a startling dearth of quality products into which schools can invest these deductions. There is also a worrying lack of urgency in many schools to fully understand the responsibility and opportunity the levy carries.”