FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Lib Dems join apprenticeship numbers race with pledge to double number of businesses with apprentices

The Liberal Democrats have joined the apprenticeship numbers race, matching Tory plans to create 3m starts in the next Parliament by doubling the number of businesses with apprentices. The party has announced it will push starts past the 3m by 2020 if it wins the election by giving out 200,000 extra apprenticeship grants for employers (AGE) and […]

Problems with SFA salary info

Two colleges have told how Skills Funding Agency accounts showing what they spent on salary for the post of principal in 2013/14 were incorrect. The accounts, which showed a dozen FE colleges handed over more than £200k in salaries to principals, were wrong for NCG (formerly Newcastle College Group) and Blackpool Sixth Form College (SFC), […]

Ex-teacher charged with 28 sex offences

A teacher who worked at Basingstoke College of Technology (BCoT) has been charged with dozens of sex offences, including rape and sexual activity with a child. A Hampshire Constabulary spokesperson said Lloyd Dennis, aged 32, of Sopwith Road, Eastleigh, had been remanded in custody after being charged with 28 offences. BCoT deputy principal David Moir […]

Birmingham Met to axe up to 250 jobs

As many as 250 jobs are set to be axed at Birmingham Metropolitan College — a move branded “catastrophic” by unions. College bosses have blamed government funding cuts after staff at the college, which is one of the largest in the West Midlands following a 2013 merger with Stourbridge College, were told 200 to 250 […]

Was your college among best or worst success rates performers?

The Skills Funding Agency’s national success rates were published this month — and for the first time ever were divided into classroom qualifications and apprenticeships. This week, FE Week reporter Rebecca Cooney takes a look at the results for classroom qualifications. Click here to view the spread

Coalition duo go separate FE ways with manifestos

Yellow and blue went head to head as the two coalition partners made their policy pitches to the nation. The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives launched their manifestos a day apart and in very different locations — and while the settings of the launch events might have been the most noticeable difference between their manifestos, it […]

Closure of third-full UTC prompts wider review call

College sector leaders have called for a review of the drive for more University Technical Colleges (UTC) after one of the very first to open announced it was closing — on the same day the Prime Minister visited a UTC to promise one “within reach of every city”. Black Country UTC announced on Tuesday (April […]

Mark Farrar, chief executive, Association of Accounting Technicians

The stereotypical picture of an accountant, says Mark Farrar, chief executive of the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), is “a desperate image of a white bloke in a pinstripe suit hunched over a great ledger or a spreadsheet”. But that is “a million miles away” from the truth about financial management, he says as we […]

Where is the joined-up working that was promised?

Eight months after the Children and Families Act came into place with the aim of better meeting the needs of learners with special educational needs and their families and all is not well with the policy, explains Kathryn Rudd. The Children and Families Act, which came into effect in September, promised a brave new world. […]