Author: Billy Camden

Colleges and training providers in the third wave of the T Level rollout are being invited to bid for a slice of £135 million to help upgrade their facilities. The capital fund, launched today, is being made available to those that will offer the new technical qualifications from 2022. It follows previous funds that totalled […]

Ofsted’s planned monitoring visits will take place remotely until after the February half term, the watchdog has announced. The inspectorate had been due to begin in-person “supportive” inspections of schools from next week, but had yet to say whether its plans for restarting FE provider monitoring visits would go ahead during the national lockdown. However, […]

The popular level 7 senior leader apprenticeship will have its funding slashed by 22 per cent when a revised version is made available in March and its controversial MBA component is axed. In a blog post published this afternoon, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education announced that the revision of the standard is now […]

The Department for Education has released a “remote education framework” to support colleges and training providers to identify “areas for improvement” in their online teaching. The voluntary framework has been designed to be adapted to “fit the context of your provider” and to “signpost them to resources that can help them improve their practice”.  It […]

FE staff should be moved up the priority list for Covid-19 vaccines so that providers can reopen to all students safely, college principals have said. Ministers have been under pressure to vaccinate teachers, with a petition being debated in parliament this evening and education secretary Gavin Williamson saying he “hopes” those working in education get […]

Ofqual’s new interim chief has warned that the solution to replacing this summer’s exams “won’t be the same for all” qualifications. Simon Lebus, the former Cambridge Assessment group chief executive, offered a message to students to continue to engage “as fully as you can” in education on Wednesday morning ahead of the education secretary’s speech […]

The outcomes for the government’s traineeships tender have been delayed, the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced today. In a message to bidders at 3pm this afternoon, the agency said the “high volume of tenders received” has “necessitated having to inform you that notifications of award will be delayed slightly”. The ESFA had planned to […]

The Department for Education has finally updated its main Covid-19 guidance document to include details of how FE leaders should handle this year’s partial college and training provider closures. Many of the instructions on how to keep providers Covid-secure are similar to or the same as they were before, but there are some new instructions. […]

The January vocational exam series descended into chaos at the start of the week as the government passed the buck to colleges to decide whether they go ahead, while telling the rest of the nation to “stay at home” as the new variant of Covid-19 causes cases to spiral. In a live TV broadcast on […]