Author: FE Week Reporter

The Education and Training Foundation (ETF) today launched a series of how-to guides for its online professional standards resources for FE practitioners. The professional standards for FE teachers, trainers and lecturers were released in May last year, ending a seven-year wait for upgraded guidance. The 20 standards, divided into three headings of values and attributes, knowledge and […]

Sector leaders backed “radical change” and stressed that they do not want to “defend the status quo” in a joint letter to Business Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured below right). The letter, seen by FE Week, was sent by Kirstie Donnelly (pictured below left), UK managing director of City & Guilds, on behalf of a host […]

New Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee chair Iain Wright (pictured) has called for “real controls and mitigating actions” on success rates cheating amid claims it was widespread within the FE sector. In an exclusive interview with FE Week, the MP for Hartlepool, who ousted former committee chair and fellow Labour politician Adrian Bailey in an MPs’ […]

Former FE funding boss Sir David Melville (pictured above) has become the latest high-profile voice to express serious concerns about the government’s handling of the sector. The current chair of Pearson Education Ltd and governor of Manchester Metropolitan University, who was chief executive of the FE Funding Council from 1997 to 2001, told FE Week of […]

The government has defended Trailblazer apprenticeships after official figures indicated there had been just 300 starts on the new employer–designed programmes in nine months. It is the first time uptake data on Trailblazers, listed in the latest Statistical First Release (SFR), has been released and it further showed the programme appeared to have stalled with […]

Sector leaders have this morning handed in a petition to Number 10 Downing Street that was signed by more than 42,500 opposed to “unfair” and “harmful” FE cuts. Sally Hunt, University and College Union (UCU) general secretary, and Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges (AoC), were among a group of senior figures […]

A college that fell two Ofsted grades from outstanding has issued a formal complaint against Ofsted claiming it unfairly judged a drop in success rates because of new rules on English and maths. Oldham College was given a grade three rating, as previously reported by FE Week, but it has now challenged the verdict. College […]