FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Art space in £50m DfE refurb

A £50m tender to refurb the new Department for Education (DfE) HQ in London includes a gym and the creation of space for the government art collection, according to FE Week sister newspaper Academies Week. The DfE announced in March that it was to leave the rented Sanctuary Buildings, in Victoria, and move its 1,600 […]

Making sure learners are set on the employability path

Employability is the added value that colleges can give learners — but just how well are they fulfilling this task? The Mindset Group of colleges is hoping it has developed a tool — free for UK-based colleges to use — that can assess how well colleges are performing on this, explains Lawrence Vincent. As the […]

Neil Carberry, director of employment and skills, CBI

Neil Carberry’s relationship with education didn’t get off to the best of starts with his Edinburgh primary school burning down the day before his fifth birthday. “I could see it from my bedroom window,” he says. “And when you’re just about to turn five, that happening just before your birthday is a bit freaky. “I […]

Fetl launches £100k collective grants

Further education organisations can apply for new £100k research grants from the Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl). It announced on Thursday (November 13) that it was accepting applications for collective research grants. Jill Westerman CBE, Fetl chair, said: “We would welcome applications from organisations with innovative and visionary ideas, particularly around leading learning and […]

Painting a different Functional Skills picture

With the outlook for Functional Skills very different to just a few months ago, Charlotte Bosworth makes the case for the qualification as a viable alternative to the GCSE. If you cast your mind back to July and the written ministerial statement about post-16 English and maths, the writing was on the wall for Functional […]

Making a case for the QCF

More debate is needed about the future of the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) in the face of plans by Ofqual to abolish it, says Graham Hasting-Evans. we agree that change is necessary, but reliance on the General Conditions of Recognition (GCoR) as a replacement for an employer-recognised framework is inadequate to meet the needs […]

Paving the way for ‘much stronger’ 16 to 19 apprenticeships and traineeships

Kirsty Donnelly was one of a number of witnesses to give evidence to the House of Commons Education Select Committee on 16 to 19 apprenticeships and traineeships this month. She outlines her evidence and explains what she wanted the committee to make of her views. I recently gave evidence to the House of Commons Education […]

Learners get in the zone

Learners have been discussing key policy directions for the NUS. Joe Vinson discusses what’s been on the agenda and what happens next. The NUS held its annual Zone Conference in Harrogate earlier this month. The event is an important part of our policy formation process and an opportunity for students from across the country to […]

A college path to Saudi Arabia

Competition, finance and government support are just three of the factors to have played a part in the process of Lincoln College Group opening two sites in Saudi Arabia this summer, explains Simon Plummer. Like many other FE colleges The Lincoln College Group has been operating internationally for some time following a traditional model of […]