Author: FE Week Reporter

The Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) has handed fellowship grants, worth up to £40,000-each, to four senior figures from the world of FE. Reporter Paul Offord spoke to Ann Creed for the fourth and final piece in a series of FE Week articles to focus on the chosen fellows. Experienced project manager Ann Creed […]

Careers advice hotline services for young people and adults are to be brought under one roof after Serco was awarded a £6m Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contract to deliver both. Serco, which previously ran the National Careers Service (NCS) advice line for adults, will also take up the service for young people, previously delivered by […]

East London Advanced Technology Training (ELATT) has scored top marks across the board to secure a grade one rating from Ofsted inspectors. The ‘outstanding’ report on the provider, which has 260 learners, was published today (February 20). ELATT, which received a grade two rating following its last inspection in April 2009, achieved top marks in […]

Ofsted has announced plans to halve the number of times it publishes official FE statistics to two a year in response to a month-long consultation. The consultation, which opened on August 11 on the education watchdog’s website, received 22 responses — 73 per cent of which agreed with the proposal to reduce the number of […]

Labour proposals to abolish level two apprenticeships were rejected by Unionlearn at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) 2020 Vision conference. Tom Wilson, director of the education wing of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) told audience members in London’s Congress Centre that plans would be a “grave injustice”. “We do not think that […]

Apprenticeships should be “re-made” to give learners expertise, resourcefulness, craftsmanship, business-like attitudes and wider skills for growth, according to a report by the City & Guilds Alliance. The Alliance has released its report Remaking Apprenticeships (pictured inset above), written by Professor Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer of the Centre for Real-World Learning at the University of […]

Further education colleges are failing to meet employer needs when it comes to digital skills, an influential group of Peers has warned. In its latest report, Make or Break: The UK’s digital future (pictured below right), the House of Lords digital skills committee claimed that although the FE sector was “best placed” to respond to England’s […]

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) has demanded that the next budget tackle the “crisis” facing adult skills in England. A new advancement service for the jobless, extension of the apprentice charter, a citizens’ curriculum for employment support allowance claimants and partnerships to help loans boost participation in education are all suggestions made by Niace […]

An “apprenticeship guarantee” will create 80,000 more starts a year by 2020 if Labour forms a government in May, Ed Miliband will pledge today. In a speech at a Jaguar Land Rover plant in the West Midlands, the Labour leader will outline plans for a guarantee he claims would allow “every school leaver who gets […]