Author: FE Week Reporter

The FE Commissioner has called for a distance learning provider to work with an FE college and raised doubts about the quality of its subcontractor of 35 years. Commissioner Dr David Collins visited the Marine Society College of the Sea after the 260-learner college had been slapped with an Ofsted inadequate grading the previous month. Inspectors […]

Official procedures to become an incorporated college have been described as “not fit for purpose” by the first person to have used them in more than two decades. Neil Bates, who last year oversaw the process of his Essex-based Prospects Learning Foundation (PLF) becoming Prospects College of Advanced Technology (Procat), also said the two-decade gap […]

Ofsted has undergone a “sea change” in the way it looks at college finances, according to a principal who got two good ratings among his headline fields and yet emerged with an inadequate result overall. Weymouth College, visited by FE Commissioner Dr David Collins over its finances just under a year ago, got grade two […]

The Association of Colleges (AoC) has supported Skills Funding Agency plans to make its funding system more “predictable” after it emerged that just 14 per cent of providers issued with a shock clawback warning were actually be asked to repay. Una Bennett, deputy director for funding systems for the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), wrote to […]

Failure to promote apprenticeships and traineeships should result in the sack for careers advisers, House of Commons Education Select Committee chair Graham Stuart has said. During a debate secured by the Association of Colleges and All-Party Parliamentary Group for FE and lifelong learning chair Stephen Lloyd MP, Mr Stuart said schools needed a bigger incentive […]

A 17-year-old learner put School Reform Minister Nick Gibb and Shadow Education Secretary Tristram Hunt on the spot as he called for VAT “justice” at a Sixth Form Colleges’ Association (SFCA) parliamentary reception. Callum Fairhurst, who is studying business, history and politics A-levels at Long Road Sixth Form College, in Cambridge, delivered a powerful speech […]

Apprenticeship employers were among the latest round of offenders named and shamed for failing to pay the national minimum wage. Business Minister Jo Swinson (pictured) named 70 employers who had failed to pay the minimum wage. They owed workers a total of more than £157,000 and have been hit with more than £70,000 in financial […]

A proposed 2.6 per cent rise in the National Minimum Wage for apprentices has been branded “measly” by National Union of Students (NUS) vice president for FE Joe Vinson (pictured below) The Low Pay Commission (LPC) has put a £2.80 an-hour minimum to the government while rejecting Business Secretary Vince Cable’s proposal to shift apprentices […]

Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne has pledged a Labour Government would not raid the 16 to 19 budget to pay for early years’ or schools provision. Labour had promised to include 16 to 19 provision within an education budget ringfence, which currently ends at 16, but had not previously committed to protecting it from being […]