FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Cheltenham Fashion Week student win

Models stormed the catwalk dressed in creations by Gloucestershire’s best young fashion designers in sell-out shows for Cheltenham Fashion Week. Hosted at Gloucestershire College, the shows were judged by designer George Davies, who launched the Per Una range at Marks & Spencer and George at Asda. He was joined by fashion journalist Sarah Hayley and […]

Top Peter Jones student enters the retail den

A promising retail career looks in store for a Midland apprentice already crowned student ambassador of the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy. Nick Bannister (far right), from the Dragons’ Den star’s academy at Solihull College, is continuing along the route to success with a place on a national apprenticeship scheme. The 20-year-old, from Sutton Coldfield, reached […]

Active IQ

The Awarding Body of choice for the Active Leisure sector

Boxing clever with sports title

Double Olympic gold medallist Dame Kelly Holmes joined London 2012 boxing star Nicola Adams to pass on their sport skills to students in the north east. Football freestyler John Whetton was also on hand to teach Gateshead College students tricks at the launch of the sports scheme run by Kelly Holmes Education in which students […]

UKBA says colleges have been ‘selling immigration’

Further education colleges have been accused by the UK Border Agency of “selling immigration rather than education”. The agency said it had beefed up its Highly Trusted Status (HTS) requirements for colleges because of lower levels of compliance when compared with higher education. “For too long we have seen educational institutions selling immigration rather than […]

A view on Ofsted’s new ‘Trip Adviser’ website

Mick Fletcher, visiting research fellow at the Institute of Education and member of the Policy Consortium, casts a critical eye over Ofsted’s new Learner View website. Ofsted has officially launched its Learner View website — an on-line mechanism for collecting feedback from students about the institutions they attend. The Daily Telegraph was predictably delighted. Under […]

David Igoe, CEO, Sixth Form Colleges’ Forum

While searching for biographical information about David Igoe to prepare for the interview I reap little reward. Google coughs up only a few facts – the name of his secondary school, his degree in education management at the University of Bristol and his job as principal at Cadbury Sixth Form College. At Igoe’s office in […]

A view on Ofsted’s new ‘Trip Adviser’ website

Toni Pearce, vice president FE at the National Union of Students adds her voice of support to Ofsted’s new website. It is welcome that Ofsted has recognised the need to review its methods for consulting learners. Further education is rapidly changing and the National Union of Students has been lobbying for a long time for […]

Apprenticeship subcontracting more than triples

Funding figures expose boom in colleges’ apprenticeship deals. The amount that colleges spend on apprenticeship subcontractors has more than trebled in a year to £66.7m, FE Week can reveal. Figures from the Skills Funding Agency also show a boom in the number of deals. In the 2010/11 academic year they averaged 2.4 for each college, […]