Author: Billy Camden

The crisis hit National College for HS2 has hired a team of lawyers to stop Ofsted publishing a highly critical report, FE Week can reveal. The government-backed flagship college launched in 2017 but has struggled to recruit learners and this time last year received close to £5 million in a bailout deal to keep the […]

Part-time evening courses were once a route that allowed tens of thousands of adults to retrain. But government funding cuts have seen this long tradition begin to fade away. As one champion of the provision enters Downing Street, Billy Camden delves into the current offer in colleges across England and questions whether this form of […]

The Department for Education is to cut the budget for adult traineeships by more than half from August 2020. In a letter seen by FE Week, dated 5 February and marked “sensitive”, it states that the 19 to 24 traineeship remains a national programme and the budget has been revised from £20 million to £8.55 […]

Lord Agnew is to leave the Department for Education, FE Week’s sister paper FE Week understands. The junior academies minister and Tory peer took on the responsibility for FE provider market in September. He has been promoted to the role of minister of state at both the Cabinet Office and Treasury.

A training provider is offering a reward of just under £30,000 for simply adding their data on achieved learners to a government funding claim. Taking up the emailed offer of a “cohort of achieved learners” from City Gateway, a charity that has trained disadvantaged young people in the London for eight years, would be a […]

Ofsted has apologised and overturned a provisional ‘inadequate’ judgement after a college complained when inspectors alleged that student safety was at risk. Scarborough Sixth Form College was left concerned after a two-day visit in October. Its provisional rating was a grade four, which FE Week understands related specifically to safeguarding. Principal Phil Rumsey lodged a […]

Michelle Donelan has been appointed as the new universities minister – and has not ruled out also taking on the FE and skills brief. The MP for Chippenham has been covering for Kemi Badenoch as children and families parliamentary under secretary of state, with some responsibilities for FE, while she has been on maternity leave. […]

Gavin Williamson is to stay on as education secretary following a post-Brexit ministerial reshuffle. However, it’s not known whether the MP for South Staffordshire will keep the FE and skills brief he has held since his appointment last July. Many calls, including from Conservative MPs, have been made for prime minister Boris Johnson to appoint […]

The director of George Osborne’s Northern Powerhouse Partnership has called for skills policy to be fully devolved from Whitehall, claiming the government has “failed” to deliver the system the north needs. Henri Murison, speaking at the launch of the Northern Skills Network in Leeds today, pinned the failure on the Department for Education’s officials and […]