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29 April 2026

Author: FE Week Reporter

EXCLUSIVE: SFA hits providers with shock funding clawback warning

More than 700 colleges and independent learning providers have been warned by the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) that they face a shock clawback on 2013/14 funding after it “identified some provision that has been incorrectly claimed,” FE Week can reveal. Una Bennett (pictured above), deputy director for funding systems for the SFA, wrote to providers […]

Logistics skills council ‘offered solutions to non-existent problems’

Michael Woodgate considers what went wrong for Skills for Logistics (SfL) with the sector skills council having this month announced it was set to close. So farewell then, SfL. It prospered when government funding was plentiful, but its inability to convince people to pay for its services proved fatal. At the beginning, SfL’s reason for […]

Creative designs inside and out at Notts college

Creative art students from West Nottinghamshire College can now learn their craft in a new £2.3m facility. The new two-storey Visual Arts and Design Centre was designed by architects Ibi Group and built by J Tomlinson Limited. It includes a range of state-of-the-art studios, modern teaching space, and bright exhibition areas. A college spokesperson said […]

Apprenticeships are the ‘major casualty’ amid funding uncertainty

The government has said more research was needed before it could take its apprenticeship funding reform plans any further. Lynne Sedgmore considers where this leaves the sector — and the programme. The announcement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on apprenticeship funding reform clearly illustrates a setback for government. The statement that its […]

Construction students help the ‘neigh’ bours

There was no horseplay when construction students from East Riding College worked with a local business on a recycling project. The joinery apprentices turned old wheelie bins into winter feeders for horses after being contacted for help by nearby Meaux Livery. Tutor Craig Leach said: “It’s a small scale project, but the work required accurate […]

College staff get on their bikes in memory of colleague

More than £1,000 was raised by a group of cyclists from Weston College in memory of a loved colleague who died during a trip to Italy last year, writes Billy Camden. The diabetes-related death of grandmother-of-two Heather Wood during a Weston College trip to Italy last year hit her construction colleagues hard. The 53-year-old resource-based […]

A4e gives assurance that fraudsters ‘don’t work for us anymore’

A4e chief executive Andrew Dutton has revealed that none of the staff who ripped off a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) welfare-to-work scheme were still working for him. Ines Cano-Uribe, aged 38, of Madrid, Matthew Hannigan-Train, 30, of Bristol, and Hayley Wilson, 27, of Milton Keynes, were found guilty of conspiring to make false […]

Apprenticeship reform proposals were ‘half-cocked,’ Skills Minister Nick Boles tells MPs

Skills Minister Nick Boles has told the House of Commons Education Select Committee that the government had “gone off half-cock” [sic] on apprenticeship reform. He appeared in front of the committee as part of its investigation into apprenticeships and traineeships for 16 to 19-year-olds this morning  — less than 24 hours after he ruled that more research was […]