Author: Billy Camden

Covid is being blamed for recruitment concerns at the government’s new flagship Institutes of Technology (IoT), FE Week can reveal. Despite demand for more traditional FE courses booming, the Department for Education is understood to be in negotiations with several IoTs over revising down contractual student number targets. A crunch meeting was held in June […]

Plans are afoot to revive the level 2 business administration apprenticeship under a new name, FE Week can reveal. A group, led by representatives in local councils and the health sector, last week held an online meeting with around 100 different employers, such as police forces and charities, to sound out support for the bid. […]

A competition to create the next wave of Institutes of Technology has been launched by the education secretary Gavin Williamson today. Bids are now being invited to open a further eight IoTs, backed with £120 million. The deadline for applications is 14 December 2020. The decision to open up a further eight was announced at […]

Training providers have been given less than three weeks to bid in the government’s much-anticipated tender for 19 to 24 traineeship funding. The Education and Skills Funding Agency yesterday launched an “accelerated” bidding process worth an initial £65 million to expand the provider-base for adult traineeships. A deadline of 28 October has been set for […]

A former technical qualifications director at the exams watchdog has signalled intention to establish another end-point assessment organisation (EPAO) membership body. Phil Beach, who left Ofqual last month to become chief executive of the Energy and Utility Skills Group – which itself is an EPAO, is sounding out interest for a group “run by EPAOs […]

Apprenticeship starts for the whole of 2019/20 fell 18 per cent on the previous academic year, new figures show. Provisional data published this morning by the Department for Education has revealed there were a total of 319,200 starts last year compared to 389,000 in 2018/19. A drop was to be expected owing to impact that […]

The Department for Education broke data protection laws in the way it handles student data, the information watchdog has ruled, following an investigation that revealed widespread failures. The Information Commissioner’s Office has concluded that the DfE failed to meet several articles of the general data protection regulations (GDPR), which govern the management and use of […]

The Department for Education is gearing up to launch a new £80 million tender for the national adult education budget. It will be a “re-procurement” exercise, and follow the same scope as the controversial AEB tender that caused havoc in 2017 – the contracts for which will expire next year. A “commercial pipeline” DfE document, […]

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has today published its annual accounts for 2019-20, revealing a substantial pay discrepancy between the quango’s former and new chief executive. This is the third year of the institute’s existence. Here are five things we learned from the accounts.   1 – Sir Gerry was paid £20k more […]