FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Students think singer Jack has the X Factor

X-Factor singer Jack Walton performed and took part in a question and answer session at Lancashire-based Nelson and Colne College. The singer was interviewed by A-level students Oscar Nommay and Kate Whitaker, both aged 18. They asked what X Factor judge, Simon Cowell (pictured below) was like in real life and what the singer had […]

Sweet success with selling festive cakes and biscuits

Warrington Collegiate opened its doors to the local community for a fundraising festive market. Stalls were run by level three hospitality and catering students, who sold home-made festive treats including Italian Christmas bread, cinder toffee, fudge, biscuits and stollen cake, along with a number of external traders. Hospital and catering lecturer Scott Surtess led a […]

Fourth ‘national college’ gets digital skills focus

England’s fourth national college will focus on digital skills and coding, it has been revealed. The National College for Digital Skills, which will begin working with part-time learners next year and open a new campus in London in 2016, will focus on higher apprenticeships and foundation degrees for learners over 18, with some provision for […]

Campus 36

Thinktank calls for 14 to 19 review as it issues warning of ‘sleepwalking’ into RPA

A new report from a left-of-centre thinktank has warned the Coalition is “sleepwalking” into the raised participation age and called for it to “rethink what the offer for 14 to 19-year-olds should be all about”. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report Avoiding the Same Mistakes: Lessons for Reform of 14 to 19 Education […]

Professor Wolf tells of ‘unease’ at 16-19 GCSE exemption

Study programmes architect Professor Alison Wolf has warned that a Department for Education (DfE) English and maths qualification exemption could mean 16 to 19-year-olds miss out on “the single most useful thing they could achieve”. The King’s College London academic said she was “uneasy” about the potential results of a government decision that learners without […]

Cable acts on apprentice rule after legal threat

A “five-year rule” forcing early years apprentices to re-sit for qualifications they already had could be scrapped after a provider threatened to take the government to court. Business Secretary Vince Cable has agreed “in principle” to scrap the rule in the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England (Sase), which requires all level two and three […]

Principal of cash-strapped college backs ‘look at finances’ plea for Ofsted

The principal of a college recovering from financial difficulties has backed FE Commissioner Dr David Collins in his view that Ofsted could “be more useful” in looking at bank balances. Mark Robertson (pictured), from City of Wolverhampton College, which was visited by Dr Collins in May over Skills Funding Agency (SFA) concerns about finances, said […]

Gazelle departures prompt membership review

Three colleges have revealed plans to leave the Gazelle College Group this month, taking the total number quitting before next year to four. The departures will reduce the organisation to 19 members with its £35,000 annual membership fee understood to have proven difficult to justify for colleges unable to point to independent research highlighting any […]