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28 April 2026

Author: FE Week Reporter

Making the right impact on principal appointments

With a number of principal appointments to have hit the FE Week headlines over the summer, Sue Pember looks at the issues all governors need to consider when looking for a new leader. College governors feel that they have the biggest impact when they are appointing a new principal. When I was appointed as a […]

Inspectors to take closer look at under fire study programmes

Study programmes will be “central to inspections” from this week as Ofsted seeks to challenge a slow response to the initiative. Lorna Fitzjohn, Ofsted’s director for FE and skills, told FE Week in an exclusive interview that providers should expect to see their ratings fall if they had not made enough changes to curriculum to […]

GCSE failure as Wilshaw sounds alarm bells

Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw has told of his shock at GCSE English and maths attainment levels and teaching quality — and just days later figures for 2012/13 revealed nearly half of 16 to 18-year-olds without at least grade C in GCSE English or maths failed to repeat or even study alternative qualifications at the […]

College rips up ‘not fit for purpose’ UTC action plan

An improvement plan aimed at turning around the fortunes of an inadequate-rated university technical college (UTC) has been ripped up and rewritten by its new general FE college sponsorship team. Ofsted inspectors revisited Central Bedfordshire UTC to see how it was getting on after the grade four result, but branded its improvement plan “not fit […]

Scotland vote uncertainty for UKCES

The future of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) could be just as much on the line as the United Kingdom, FE Week can reveal. With voters in Scotland due to go to the polls this week over whether they want independence, it has emerged that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills […]

Principal who stood down amid allegations returns as deputy

A former principal who stood down from the top job at London’s Newham College amid a series of damaging allegations has been given a deputy’s role at another college. Denise Brown (formerly Brown-Sackey) left Newham in January, two months after it was claimed the college had failed to take action over a recording posted on […]

Free schools sector poised for more FE college sponsors

Two FE colleges and one sixth form college are expected to bid to open their own free schools when the next round of Department for Education (DfE) bidding opens, FE Week can reveal. Croydon College and New College Swindon want to open free schools with sixth form provision, while New College Pontefract — a sixth […]

DfE passes NCS funding buck to BIS

The National Careers Service (NCS) figures in many of the hopes for improved information, advice and guidance (IAG). However, its source of funding recently underwent a key change, as Freddie Whittaker reports. Department for Education (DfE) responsibility for NCS funding was shifted to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) just months before the […]