Author: Billy Camden

The government has confirmed that colleges and training providers can begin face-to-face contact with adult apprentices from 15 June, but reiterated that 16 to 19 apprentices should be “prioritised”. In updated guidance published this afternoon, the Department for Education repeated their view that providers should include apprentices in their wider reopening plans alongside students on […]

A huge training provider that delivers hundreds of apprenticeships for the civil service is planning to make major redundancies. Training giant QA Limited, which currently employs over 2,250 staff, is bracing itself for business to plummet following recent conversations with their clients as a result of Covid-19. FE Week understands that hundreds of those jobs […]

The sixth webcast in FE Week’s series – further education sector’s response and requirements to coronavirus pandemic – was broadcast yesterday. This week, FE Week publisher Shane Mann was in conversation Christian Kaye, the senior regional business development manager at insurance firm Gallagher, who provided an overview of what organisations should consider in terms of […]

The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education has launched an online survey to find out what impact coronavirus has had on recruitment and what more they can do to support employers. Apprentice employers are being asked to forecast how their recruitment over the summer will compare to the same time last year and for “key […]

The Department for Education is setting up its own “rapid rebuttal unit” to tackle so-called “fake news” in the media. It is said to be one of the first department-specific teams in government to challenge “misinformation at the source” and rebuff “misleading content” before reaching the mainstream. Two DfE job adverts for media officers to […]

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers has decided to not pursue legal action against the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s Covid-19 supplier relief scheme. Lawyers have advised that the only challenge they could now take would be to seek a judicial review, which the board of the membership organisation believes would come “at a […]

The Department for Education has published updated guidance for colleges and other FE providers about the return of more students next month. It comes after the prime minister, Boris Johnson, confirmed the government was pushing ahead with plans to start to provide face-to-face support for year 12 and equivalent students from June 15. The original […]

Boris Johnson has given colleges the green light to begin their wider reopening to students from 15 June after announcing the government’s “five tests” for easing lockdown were all being met. The prime minister said today that the country can now make “limited and cautious” changes, including that primary schools can begin welcoming back pupils […]

Apprenticeship starts for the month of March 2020 are down by a quarter while April plunged by 72 per cent on the previous year, new government data has revealed. Monthly provisional figures for both of those months were published by the Department for Education this morning and show the huge impact that the Covid-19 pandemic […]