Author: Billy Camden

Three leading associations from across the university, private provider and college sectors have united to call on the government to fund 16 to 18-year-old apprentices through general taxation. The membership organisations, who often hold divergent views, agree that the apprenticeship levy should not be used to subsidise this age group. They say that this cohort […]

A three-way merger is on the cards to help secure the long-term future of a college that has been surviving on government bailouts. City College Southampton, Itchen Sixth Form College and Richard Taunton Sixth Form have all agreed the move would be a “positive” step following a local area review by the FE Commissioner. It […]

Ministers have ordered the FE Commissioner to investigate a principal’s “deeply concerning” corporate credit card use after her college was forced by FE Week to reveal £150,000 was spent in just four years. Over 500 receipts obtained by this newspaper following a year-long freedom of information battle with Highbury College have lifted the lid on […]

A whistleblower reported the £20 million Brooklands College subcontracting scandal to the Education and Skills Funding Agency in 2017 but no action was taken until FE Week exposed it nearly two years later. Former chancellor Philip Hammond, who is the MP for the constituency the college is based in, said the revelation was “very concerning” […]

Labour is “looking at all options” for an overhaul of the school and college accountability system, including replacing Ofsted, Angela Rayner has said. In an exclusive eve-of-conference interview with FE Week’s sister paper FE Week, the shadow education secretary repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping the inspectorate and replacing it with a new system to […]

The Department for Education has surpassed the government’s public sector target for recruiting apprentices for the second year in a row, the education secretary has claimed. Ever since the apprenticeship levy was launched in April 2017, public-sector bodies with 250 or more employees have been set a target of employing at least 2.3 per cent […]

Cyber criminals have hacked into the personal data, and potentially bank details, of students and staff at Swindon College, in the latest computer crime to affect a further education institution. A statement from the college says the data breach happened in the latter half of last week, and it has affected both past and present […]

Simon Connell, the new chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust, is on a mission to change perceptions of university technical colleges, he tells Billy Camden   Things are changing at the organisation that runs university technical colleges. The Baker Dearing Trust’s new chief executive Simon Connell is determined that it will move from “quantity […]