Billy Camden | FE Week

Funding audits to restart this month for private providers – but not colleges

New routine funding audits will restart on a remote basis for independent training providers from this month – but colleges will continue to have theirs put on hold until November, the government has announced. The Education and Skills Funding Agency will also carry out a “risk assessment on restarting site visits” for audits and investigations, […]

Why further and higher education aren’t a zero-sum-game

To truly level up the country, instead of arbitrary targets we need a joined-up system of higher and further education where every student has access to the courses that are right for them, writes Andy Norman After two decades of steady progress, Tony Blair’s target for 50 per cent of young people to participate in […]

DfE launches new matching and redundancy support service for apprentices

A new service that allows employers to share their vacancies with redundant apprentices has been launched by the Department for Education. The “vacancy sharing service” has been set up alongside a new online and telephone support service for apprentices who have lost their jobs during Covid-19 outbreak. Apprenticeship vacancies can already be viewed via the […]

ESFA scraps minimum duration repeat rule for returning apprentices

A minimum duration rule that was preventing some people from returning to and finishing an apprenticeship will be scrapped from tomorrow, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced. Rules for funding apprenticeships in 2020/21 were updated yesterday and for the first time included a new exception to the 12 month minimum duration policy. Paragraph […]

Adult education charity to close despite plans for a rescue deal

A long-running adult education charity in Brighton is to close with the loss of almost 50 jobs tomorrow after a local council rescue deal collapsed at the eleventh hour. Staff at the Friends Centre were expecting to transfer to Brighton and Hove City Council, which the learning provider subcontracts from, on August 1 with the […]

ESFA scraps provider achievement rate reports

Colleges and training providers will not have access to qualification achievement rate (QAR) reports to use internally for 2019/20, the Education and Skills Funding Agency has announced. At the beginning of lockdown the agency said that it would not publish institution-level achievement rates for the current academic year due to disruption caused by Covid-19 pandemic. […]

Monthly apprenticeships update: May starts fall 60%

Apprenticeship starts for the month of May 2020 fell 60 per cent on the previous year, figures published this morning show. According to Department for Education data, there were 22,300 starts in May 2019 but this dropped to 9,000 12 months later, which would have been caused by the Covid-19 lockdown. Young people appear to […]

300 redundancies planned at England’s largest apprenticeship provider

England’s largest apprenticeship provider is planning to slash around 300 jobs as it battles with “significantly reduced” learner numbers caused by Covid-19, FE Week can reveal. The move by Lifetime Training Group will see its workforce drop by up to a quarter. Chief executive Alex Khan said that historically his provider has averaged around 1,800 […]

How EdTech can transform further education post-lockdown

The silver lining of the Covid-19 pandemic could well be a revolution in how further education utilizes the power of EdTech, writes Dana Dabbous It has long been accepted that technology in education is vital for filling the digital skills gap. Successive governments have promoted greater use of EdTech in the FE sector. This includes […]