The FE Guild is to be renamed the Education and Training Foundation, FE Week can reveal.

The body, created to provide training and set professional standards in FE, has been registered at Companies House under the new name, said independent steering group chair David Hughes.

Due to launch in August, it was incorporated on May 22 and registered to the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) London HQ.

Mr Hughes, also chief executive of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, said the new name was “fully encompassing of the whole sector”.

“I am very pleased that we have now been able to register the new company under the name the Education and Training Foundation,” he said.

“Throughout the initial development phase there has been broad agreement about the need, remit and priorities for a new organisation but very diverse views about what the name should be.

We now have a name that best reflects the aims, priorities and values of the new organisation”

“Time after time people told us they wanted a name that really reflected our vision for the organisation — something that was modern, professional and fully encompassing of the entire sector.

“We listened to that feedback, discussed a range of suggestions, and have a name that best reflects the aims, priorities and values of the new organisation.”

The new title comes 10 months after FE Week first revealed the government was poised to set up a new professional body provisionally named FE Guild.

But a consultation earlier this year revealed that more than 60 per cent of respondents did not like the name.

Peter Davies, who headed a project tasked with shaping the foundation, said a survey on the new name was set up after around 200 consultation responses suggested the term FE did not “reflect the whole sector” while the word guild was “a bit traditional”.

Other suggestions had included the words skills, institute or alliance, the former principal of London-based adult education provider City Lit told FE Week at the time.

Companies House documents state the foundation’s board should be made up of no more than a dozen directors, including Duncan Anderson-Brown, an accountant who worked with the foundation’s steering group through its development and under whose name the body is registered.

According to the papers the directors will include three representatives appointed by the AoC, three by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and one by the Association of Adult Education and Training Organisations (AAETO), which operates under the name HOLEX.

Mr Hughes said the first meeting of the new board, which this month appointed former New College Nottingham principal and chair of the Information Authority Sir Geoff Hall as the interim chief executive, would take place next month.

“Our next step is to engage leaders and practitioners in discussions about the priorities and the delivery plan,” added Mr Hughes.

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4 Comments

  1. I think it’s a pity the word ‘Further’ isn’t there somewhere in the title – this is understood better than any other word by the public to represent the sector between schools and university, and still does that even though the sector is so diverse.

  2. John Germain

    Meanwhile … course closures, cuts in GLH, loss of additionality, redundancies, pay freezes, attacks on teachers contracts etc. Why are so-called sector ‘leaders’ so obsessed with this vanity project? Is it displacement?

  3. lindsay mccurdy

    This new organization would seem to be an extension of the AoC, AELP which make up half the board.

    According to the papers the directors will include three representatives appointed by the AoC, three by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and one by the Association of Adult Education and Training Organisations (AAETO), which operates under the name HOLEX

    I hope this new organization is more then an extension of these already established membership organisations, otherwise a great opportunity will have been missed and a great deal of money.