News

Teachers unskilled to provide careers advice

The fifth annual Colleges Week has kicked off with the publication of a report that shows schoolteachers and parents…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Where have all the students gone?

More than a million students could not be traced by researchers wanting to find out what happened to them…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Strength at the top is key to improvement concludes Ofsted

Strong, effective leadership is one of the key features of success, suggests Ofsted’s How Colleges Improve report. Winning colleges…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Colleges undecided on ‘Trip Advisor’ website

Providers are remaining on the fence about Ofted’s Trip Advisor-style Learner View website. The website, which cost £65,000 to…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Short shrift for new-look Ofsted reports

Joy Mercer, AoC                    Jan Webber, ASCL Reports of inspections under…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Urgent reform to apprenticeships needed, says BIS Committee

An 11-month government inquiry into apprenticeships has recommended a host of changes, including “closer scrutiny, careful monitoring or even…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter


News

Skills Funding Agency ‘assured’ over Elmfield Training payments to Morrisons

A system of payments from the provider behind the UK’s biggest apprenticeship programme to the firm whose staff it…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Cash boost on out-of-favour qualifications

Funding for a host of politically unpopular workplace qualifications is set to rise, with payments for one course rocketing…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Provider challenges new-look inspection

One of the first Ofsted inspections under the new common inspection framework is to be disputed. Merseyside-based Central Training,…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Heseltine questions funding agency’s future

A wide-ranging report from the Tory grandee Lord Heseltine (right) questions the role of the Skills Funding Agency, instead…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

New courses bypass the regulator

The government has allowed new adult English and maths qualifications to be funded without the usual approval of an…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter
News

Apprenticeship highs and lows

Apprentice numbers in engineering and construction have plummeted while management apprenticeships have rocketed 45 per cent. Engineering, based on…

FE Week Reporter
FE Week Reporter

Must read

Qualifications

Revealed: V Levels incoming as axe looms for BTECs

New qualifications set to launch as ‘third route’ between A-levels and T Levels

Shane Chowen
Shane Chowen
Politics, Skills reform

DWP will take over apprenticeships, minister confirms

Shifting adult skills and apprenticeships policy will give “bigger emphasis on skills”, Jacqui Smith claims

Anviksha Patel
Anviksha Patel
Colleges, Long read

Colleges on the frontline of a divided nation

As social media algorithms fuel intolerance and binary thinking, college staff increasingly find themselves dealing with the fallout. Jessica…

Jessica Hill
Jessica Hill
Colleges, Long read

Alun Francis, chair of the Social Mobility Commission

Deprived areas need vision – not victimhood – to level up, and Social Mobility Commission chair Alun Francis is…

Jessica Hill
Jessica Hill
Long read, Prison education

The prison that’s offering hope for a new life upon release

‘We’re saving people’s lives as well as turning them around’

Jessica Hill
Jessica Hill
Apprenticeships, Politics

Phillipson to exempt young people from level 7 apprenticeships funding axe

Education secretary makes ‘important concession’ amid backlash from other government departments

Billy Camden
Billy Camden