Author: FE Week Reporter

The government’s raising of the participation age (RPA) policy has been questioned after figures showed the number of unemployed 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training (Neet) had actually increased since it came into force. According to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), between October and December, 38,000 16 and 17-year-olds […]

Plans to revive the Young Apprenticeship Programme, offering 14 to 16-year-olds a work-based alternative to the classroom, are to reappear before MPs. Conservative MP Dominic Raab’s (pictured) Young Apprenticeship Bill seeks to bring back the programme first introduced by Labour in 2004, but phased out around 2010 following concerns it cost £3,000 per learner more […]

An academy backed by grade one-rated Walsall College has been warned by the government about “unacceptably low” standards. The Secretary of State and I are therefore satisfied that the standards of performance at Mirus Academy, Walsall, are unacceptably low,” Schools Minister Lord Nash has written to Walsall College Academies Trust chair Jatinder Sharma (pictured), who […]

The government is in talks to grant 18-year-olds an exemption that would allow them to take part in traineeships and still claim Jobseekers Allowance (JSA), FE Week understands. Officials from the Department for Works and Pensions (DWP) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) are, according to a source, in discussions with a […]

All publicly-funded FE and skills courses should have a minimum of 10 per cent online content by 2015/16, a government technology task force has recommended. The Further Education Technology Action Group (Feltag) report, unveiled in draft at the Education Innovation Conference in Manchester, also said there should be incentives to move the online course content […]