Author: Billy Camden

A university has been told to repay £119,000 by its funding body after an investigation found a payout to its ex-principal – who now chairs an influential college commission – breached financial rules. The Scottish Funding Council, which oversees further and higher education funding north of the border, has today published its report into the […]

Gillian Keegan has been named as the new apprenticeships and skills minister. She joined the Department for Education as a parliamentary under secretary of state on Friday following Boris Johnson’s reshuffle. Her title was confirmed this evening along with all ministerial portfolios. It is not clear at this stage, however, if she will be responsible […]

With the budget less than a month away, and the prime minister confirming the apprenticeship levy needs reform, there are signs that the government could quickly revisit the original tax credit recommendation from 2012. Education select committee chair Robert Halfon has called for the policy to be introduced on numerous occasions over the past year. […]

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 […]