Billy Camden

  • Principal's £150k expenses revealed... finally

    Ministers have ordered the FE Commissioner to investigate a principal’s “deeply concerning” corporate credit card use after her college was forced by FE Week to reveal £150,000 was spent in just four years. Over 500 receipts obtained by this newspaper following a year-long freedom of information battle with Highbury College have lifted the lid on…

    21.59 Sep. 19th, 2019 | News

  • ESFA ignored whistleblower nearly two years before FE Week exposé

    A whistleblower reported the £20 million Brooklands College subcontracting scandal to the Education and Skills Funding Agency in 2017 but no action was taken until FE Week exposed it nearly two years later. Former chancellor Philip Hammond, who is the MP for the constituency the college is based in, said the revelation was “very concerning”…

    5.00 Sep. 20th, 2019 | News

  • Rayner refuses to rule out scrapping Ofsted under proposed National Education Service

    Labour is “looking at all options” for an overhaul of the school and college accountability system, including replacing Ofsted, Angela Rayner has said. In an exclusive eve-of-conference interview with FE Week’s sister paper Schools Week, the shadow education secretary repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping the inspectorate and replacing it with a new system to…

    7.00 Sep. 20th, 2019 | News

  • DfE exceeds 2.3% public sector apprenticeships target – again

    The Department for Education has surpassed the government’s public sector target for recruiting apprentices for the second year in a row, the education secretary has claimed. Ever since the apprenticeship levy was launched in April 2017, public-sector bodies with 250 or more employees have been set a target of employing at least 2.3 per cent…

    18.01 Sep. 18th, 2019 | News

  • Criminal investigation launched following college cyber attack

    Cyber criminals have hacked into the personal data, and potentially bank details, of students and staff at Swindon College, in the latest computer crime to affect a further education institution. A statement from the college says the data breach happened in the latter half of last week, and it has affected both past and present…

    10.50 Sep. 17th, 2019 | News

  • The numbers man who’s looking to fill UTC classrooms

    Simon Connell, the new chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust, is on a mission to change perceptions of university technical colleges, he tells Billy Camden   Things are changing at the organisation that runs university technical colleges. The Baker Dearing Trust’s new chief executive Simon Connell is determined that it will move from “quantity…

    5.00 Sep. 14th, 2019 | News

  • Brooklands future in the balance in £20m apprenticeship subcontracting scandal

    A college’s future is in doubt after officials demanded it pays up to £20 million back to the government following investigations into a major subcontracting scandal, FE Week can reveal. Brooklands College has been told to pay the funding clawback owing to its dealings with mysterious training firm SCL Security Ltd, owned by Andrew Merritt.…

    5.00 Sep. 13th, 2019 | News

  • SPONSORED: How many lives can we change together? Supporting adults to access lifelong learning

    We understand that choosing the right qualifications to meet the needs of your adult cohort is key to supporting their progress in life, further study and work. At Pearson we have made this simple by providing easy access to the information you need to support your adult learners. We know that adult learning is more…

    13.44 Sep. 13th, 2019 | Opinion, Sponsored post

  • Milton reflects on her time as skills minister

    Anne Milton’s tenure as apprenticeships and skills minister came to an abrupt end on 23 July when she resigned just minutes after giving evidence to the Parliamentary education select committee. She’s often described the role as “the best job in government”, but it was her “grave concerns” about leaving the EU without a Brexit deal…

    7.00 Sep. 13th, 2019 | News

  • Recruitment drive as ESFA cracks down on compliance

    The Education and Skills Funding Agency is bolstering its compliance and prevention teams amid high-profile cases of provider failure and alleged fraud in the FE sector. A recruitment drive for almost 30 individuals to work in the agency’s provider market oversight division, led by Matthew Atkinson, got underway at the beginning of this month. The…

    9.00 Sep. 13th, 2019 | News

  • Meet the FE Commissioner’s new cost-cutting boss

    Controversial minister Lord Agnew has been given responsibility for a new college financial warning system, as well as oversight of FE Commissioner’s office. The unpaid minister for the school system has from today taken on the FE “provider market, including quality and improvement” and this afternoon the Department for Education confirmed this includes a new…

    18.12 Sep. 12th, 2019 | News