Diploma doubts

The first students to take the much-vaunted construction diploma have their results. And the low pass rate has left all involved asking whether the diploma has a secure future. Elaine Knutt reports

The first Results from the Construction and Built Environment diploma certainly pleased one lecturer involved. When CM spoke to the course leader at a Further Education college in the south west, he was astounded to learn that his six Year 13 students made up more than 10% of the national total passing the Advanced diploma, equal to three and half A-levels. Across the country, just 58 students collected the qualification they’d worked towards for two years.

At Higher and Foundation level, both taken at the end of Year 11, the results were equally disappointing. Figures from the Joint Council for Qualifications show that there were 284 passes at Higher level, equivalent to five GCSEs at A*-C. At Foundation level, equivalent to five GCSEs at Grade D-G, there were 125 diploma certificates. That makes a total of 467 - whereas around 1500 started the qualification in September 2008.

Not all the “missing” students were left empty-handed: figures from exam boards Edexcel and AQA/City & Guilds show that an additional 608 across the three levels passed “Principal Learning”, seen as just over half a diploma. Nevertheless, the results came as a shock to the exam boards and the government’s Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency. In June, QCDA had issued guidance to teachers and lecturers on what to do about the expected “small number of cases” where students failed to complete the diploma.

After the results came out in August, Edexcel said: “It is clear that completion rates have been lower than expected, and we believe that is a result of the complex nature of the Diploma. We need to look at the structure of the Diploma and try to remove some of the administrative burden surrounding it.”

The underlying cause of the high failure rate, as Edexcel has suggested, was an extremely challenging structure that requires students to achieve six separate qualifications. So should the diploma be simplified, at the risk of the charge of “dumbing down”? Or should it be retained as it currently is, as a “gold standard” for the hardest-working and ablest students — and an unrealistic goal for many?

In the wider political and educational context, the disappointing results come at a bad time for the diploma. Under Labour, the plan was to add three more diploma “lines” in 2011 to the 14 that already exist, a target that the new government has swiftly backed away from.

At the same time, the coalition removed what had been seen as the bedrock on which acceptance of the diploma would be built: the commitment that every 14-16-year-old in the country would be “entitled” to embark on any diploma option by 2013, wherever they lived.

That “entitlement” would have required all schools in England to offer the diploma — including the league-topping grammars. Without it, there are fears the diploma will never gain the critical mass to stand alongside A-levels and GCSEs as a universally valued qualification, leaving it to occupy a niche that some students and parents will naturally distrust - and some schools and colleges might prefer to drop.

John Stopani, director of 14-19 partnerships at Croydon College, fears that removing “entitlement” will weaken the diploma. “It’s taken away the pressure for schools to get behind the qualification. But it’s still almost a fledgling qualification, and I really do worry about it in the longer term. The hallmark of the diploma was that it brought employers and qualifications together, and the loss of that would be a disaster to education. The position of the diploma needs to be carefully safeguarded,” he says.

Meanwhile, Nick Gooderson, head of qualifications and standards at ConstructionSkills, lays some of the responsibility forsafeguarding the diploma at the door of the industry. 

“The national entitlement will no longer happen, and schools and colleges will perhaps view things differently because of that. The diploma has to stand on its own two feet and be seen as a worthwhile qualification — and the key to that is support from industry and employers.”

But Bruce Boughton, people development manager at Lovell Partnerships, offers a different view.

“I can understand the government’s approach, it doesn’t want to dictate what qualifications schools offer. And from a practical basis, and the degree of employer engagement involved, I’m not sure as an industry we would have coped. I’m happy for it to grow organically.”

The C&BE diploma, launched in September 2008, was hailed as major boost to the long-term health of the industry. For students of all ability levels, it offered an accessible entry point to the industry. For employers, it promised a steady supply of motivated applicants for apprenticeships and training posts. Many construction firms signed up to formal alliances with diploma consortia, to assist with the curriculum — and to talent spot future recruits (see box, overleaf).

The diploma also represented a long-awaited breach of the educational bastions. The industry had campaigned hard for more access to schools and the curriculum, to extend awareness of construction careers beyond the would-be bricklayers, carpenters and plasterers. A piloted GCSE in Construction seemed to be the answer, but this was closed down when Labour opted to back an extension of vocational education in 2005. 

“The difference with the diploma is that it embeds construction into schools, whereas BTEC courses are only available at Further Education colleges for post-16 students,” adds Chris Simpson, education liaison adviser at contractor Wates. “A lot of students ‘fell’ into construction, so we wanted them to make a positive choice.”

But actually delivering the Construction & Built Environment diploma seems to have been a source of frustration for many of the teachers and lecturers involved. At Croydon College, where none of the 16 students on the course actually completed the diploma, Stopani says staff struggled with the sheer number of teaching and assessment methods involved.

“College staff were very conversant with BTEC and NVQs, but assessment methods in the diploma were very different,” he says, admitting that many of Croydon’s students simply ran out of time. “But the construction team [at the college] will look carefully at where they can adapt and change,” he adds.

A further problem mentioned by teaching staff was that the diploma was used to pilot another innovation — Functional Skills tests in English, Maths and ICT. The tests were originally designed as a prerequisite for apprenticeship frameworks and GCSEs
as well as diplomas. But the link with GCSEs was broken and that with apprenticeships delayed — leaving those teaching the diploma at a disadvantage. 

The independent projects that students had to complete weren’t necessarily given the timetable space it required. And one lecturer complained about the lack of contact time with the students — two days a week — and the gap between his internal assessments and exam boards’ results.

Pauline Blayney is deputy head of Thamesview School in Gravesend, Kent, visited by CM last year (CM, April 2009). She also feels that the scoring and assessment systems across the six components were unclear, including the method used to “aggregate” separate marks into an overall pass.

“There was some dissatisfaction with the way they calculate the diploma, and uncertainty about how many UCAS points [for university admissions] are awarded,”

she says. “The thing is, if I haven’t quite worked it out, how can I explain it to the young people?” she asks.

But Blayney can be proud of her young people, all of whom achieved a diploma. Seven Advanced students are now advancing to higher education, but this success story nearly didn’t happen. “We had a great fight getting them into uni — staff had to go in person and explain it,” she recalls. “The unis were prepared to listen, the doors were open, but we did have to convince them.”

Many of the complaints listed here could, and no doubt will, be sorted out at school and college level. But the underlying problem of just one in three students reaching the required standard will require a more fundamental review.

In a statement, ConstructionSkills said: “The C&BE Diploma Development Partnership of Sector Skills Councils and their employer communities consider the Diploma to have huge potential and are discussing with the Department for Education, OfQual, awarding bodies such as Edexcel and the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust a continuing delivery strategy including how this qualification can be made less complex in the future.”

Speaking to CM, ConstructionSkills’ Gooderson suggests a “diploma lite” could be the way forward. “We could simplify it to just the Principal Learning, by omitting the Additional Specialist Learning and Functional Skills. [At Higher and Foundation level] it would be still be the equivalent of five GCSEs,” he says. “The parents of many 14-year-olds don’t necessarily want their youngster on a large qualification, they prefer small bite-sized chunks. So there’s scope to look again at the offering we’ve got.”

 As for the Advanced Diploma, he points out the Principal Learning was worth two A-levels, and that future students might prefer to take this alongside traditional A-levels.

If this is the future of the diploma, it would be endorsed by John Stopani at Croydon College, who believes Principal Learning could have been a qualification in its own right. “There wasn’t a fall-back qualification  for someone who got three out of the six components, it was a very big qualification.”

But not everyone agrees. “If the diploma was simplified, it would almost become another BTEC, but there already is a qualification out there that suits. We’re trying to get [14-16-year-old] learners into the mindset to do an Advanced diploma and go on to Higher Education,” says Alan Robson, a lecturer at North Warwickshire and Hinckley College. And Thamesview’s Blayney also believes that rigorous academic standards would set diploma-holders apart from the crowd.

Clearly, the diploma has the potential to strengthen the industry in the future, bringing young students forward into apprenticeships, on-the-job training and degree courses. But the realisation that the bar may have been set too high, combined with the impact of the government’s backtracking on “entitlement”, mean that it’s far too soon to take the diploma for granted.

In fact, the Department for Education last month launched a review of 14-19 vocational education, due to report next spring. “Let’s hope the review is well-informed,” says Croydon College’s Stopani. “Vocational learning is so important to a large number of school students, perhaps 50-60%. You could see how the students on our course started to relate their learning more to the outside world, you could see the light go on.” 

Diploma passnotes

So what is the diploma?

It’s available at three levels: Foundation and Higher for 14-16-year-olds, and Advanced level for post-16. Younger students could get an all-round introduction to construction, before continuing to the Advanced course, a more vocational BTEC, or pursuing a different subject altogether. 16-year-olds who knew they wanted to pursue a career in construction could reject the narrow A-level syllabus in favour of a vocational diploma that nevertheless had similar academic rigour.

How do you get it?

This is where it gets complicated. The diploma is described as a “wrapper” that sits around six discrete elements: Principal Learning; an Independent Project, Additional Specialist Learning; Functional Skills; Personal Learning and Thinking Skills; and Work Experience. To achieve the diploma, students have to tick off all six components. Additional Specialist Learning options include BTECs, GCSEs or AS-Levels. 

And what about the students who didn’t manage it? 

As well as the diploma holders, roughly the same number again completed “Principal Learning”, which is viewed as a qualification in its own right. Holders would be able to use PL as part of their application to FE colleges or even university. And students could also return to school or college to re-sit the missing components without committing to a full academic year’s study.

So they didn’t drop out? 

If you do the maths, it looks like around 400 students who were originally counted as C&BE diploma students in September 2008 have either fallen badly behind target, or gone missing from the course altogether. It’s thought likely that some were switched onto the less academic BTEC Certificate and Diploma courses, but no one is really sure. 

What happened in the other diploma subjects? 

Four other diploma lines launched in 2008: Engineering; Information Technology; Manufacturing and Product Design; and Society Health and Development. In each, there was a broadly similar picture: for every student who achieved a diploma, another only achieved Principal Learning. The discussions on the future of the C&BE diploma will be mirrored in the other diploma areas.

So construction kept pace with the other subjects?

Across the three levels, construction had lower overall numbers than the other four diplomas, with Creative and Media and Engineering being the most popular. At Advanced level, C&BE students got more A, B and C grades than those studying Creative and Media and IT, but achieved poorer grades than those studying Engineering and Society, Health and Development.

Who decided on such a complicated structure?

In each subject area, the relevant  Diploma Development Partnership, made up of employers and training organisations (including CITB-ConstructionSkills), worked with the government and OfQual to devise a curriculum framework. OfQual then laid out the specifications for exam boards Edexcel and AQA/City & Guilds to follow. However, only two out of the three main exam boards in England and Wales chose to offer the diploma — the OCR board felt the entire diploma was unnecessary.

So what went wrong?

There were suggestions in some areas that local construction employers had been slow to get on board to help deliver the curriculum, but it seems unlikely this was a widespread problem. Different consortia had different experiences, with Functional Skills, the Independent Project and Additional Specialist Learning all mentioned as the tripwire.

‘It’s definitely an advantage’

A defining feature of the diploma has been the involvement of construction employers, which have hosted students on hundreds of site and office visits in pursuit of the diploma’s marketing strapline – “Bringing learning to life”. ConstructionSkills says that more than 1,170 are already involved, including Wates, Balfour Beatty, Lovell, G&J Seddon, Kier Group and Bovis Lend Lease.

Many diploma consortia have taken advantage of the coincidental timing of the BSF and Learning and Skills Council building programmes to establish partnerships with the contractors building local facilities.

Contractor ISG, for instance, has just opened an education centre on the site of its project for North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, allowing the college’s diploma students weekly access to the expertise of ISG’s site staff.

Alan Robson, a lecturer at  the college, says he had little problem recruiting employer partners. “The employers are all waiting for these guys [to finish the diploma]. We talked to a dozen, and all of them were extremely keen. We chose ISG partly because they’re building our new college, but others, like Wates and Bam, are also heavily into the diploma. I’ve seen the glint in their eyes — they’re saying ‘we’ll be watching you next year’.”

Robson, along with every other diploma teacher CM spoke to, is convinced of the value of employer involvement. “The learners are stunned by the fact that if we’re talking about planning, we can go to the education centre and a planner and designer will be there. It’s not ‘one teacher fits all’, so they have more impetus to learn.”

Bruce Boughton, people development manager of Lovell Partnerships, is a member of the Diploma Employers Champions Network, which brings together 138 representatives of employers in different diploma subjects. James Wates PCIOB, is also the lead national employer diploma champion for construction.

It’s not just about public spiritedness: the diploma could ensure a supply of motivated young applicants to fill apprenticeship and management trainee vacancies. Lovell’s website already states that having the C&BE diploma is an advantage for applicants.

“In a year or two, we’ll be fighting for good-quality site managers and QSs,” says Boughton. “I can see the diploma feeding directly into our management training programme. it would definitely be an advantage to take on youngsters who have already spent two or four years talking construction.”

Lovell recently hosted eight 16-year-old higher diploma students on a five-day project, where they “built” one of the firm’s recently completed housing developments. “It adds a lot of value to the curriculum,” he says. 

And the students aren’t the only beneficiaries. “One of the advantages of employers engaging is that the staff develop a lot themselves - young people can be challenging and ask some tough questions.”

As the diploma undergoes a shake-up after just two years in operation, it seems clear that the new qualification will need its network of employer supporters now more than ever.