Author: Billy Camden

A multi-million-pound flagship national retraining service has been scrapped by the Department for Education after several mayors, including London’s, declined the opportunity to take part, FE Week can reveal. The Get Help to Retrain website was the first of several “products” planned to make up the national retraining scheme pilot, which was announced to much […]

Colleges in high and very high Covid-19 risk areas will be forced to close entire campuses to cater for “substantially high” GCSE resit student exams in November, the Association of Colleges has warned. In a letter to schools minister Nick Gibb today, AoC chief executive David Hughes (pictured) said the resits for maths and English […]

End-point assessments for around 30 apprenticeship standards could be scrapped under new plans announced today. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education said it is preparing to “simplify and strengthen” apprenticeships that have a “statutory regulator” and an “established professional competency test”. It would mean that in situations where an apprentice has met a statutory […]

Two new members have been appointed to the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education’s (IfATE) board. John Cope and Dayle Bayliss will serve as non-executive board members for three years starting from next month, the government’s apprenticeship quango announced today. Bayliss has worked in the construction sector for over 20 years and is currently a […]

A flexibility that allows apprentices to take their end-point assessment before their functional skills exam is set to be reintroduced, FE Week understands. It follows an investigation by this publication that found thousands of apprentices “stuck in limbo” as awarding bodies struggle to adapt their functional skills assessments in the face of Covid-19. Ministers are […]

The proportion of staff being trained has dropped to its lowest level since 2011, according to the government’s latest employer skills survey. More than 81,000 employers across England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in the biennial survey for 2019 – the results for which have been published today by the Department for Education. It […]

The government’s national retraining scheme pilot has been rolled into the national skills fund, Gillian Keegan announced today. In a ministerial statement, the skills minister said the decision to amalgamate the two programmes was taken in order to “reduce complexity” in the adult education landscape. The retraining scheme was first announced in the 2017 Budget […]

Students will still sit one GCSE English and one GCSE maths exam before the summer half term next year, despite a move to push most other exams back by three weeks. The Department for Education has confirmed today that most GCSE and A-level exams will take place three weeks later than usual in 2021, to […]

A new app that forecasts the spread of Covid-19 in colleges has been launched. Developed by the University of Exeter in collaboration with colleges, the free online tool is said to analyse individual college data according to various inputs such as class-based bubbles, larger year group bubbles and attendance on different days. It also allows […]