Author: Billy Camden

A college’s future is in doubt after officials demanded it pays up to £20 million back to the government following investigations into a major subcontracting scandal, FE Week can reveal. Brooklands College has been told to pay the funding clawback owing to its dealings with mysterious training firm SCL Security Ltd, owned by Andrew Merritt. […]

Anne Milton’s tenure as apprenticeships and skills minister came to an abrupt end on 23 July when she resigned just minutes after giving evidence to the Parliamentary education select committee. She’s often described the role as “the best job in government”, but it was her “grave concerns” about leaving the EU without a Brexit deal […]

The Education and Skills Funding Agency is bolstering its compliance and prevention teams amid high-profile cases of provider failure and alleged fraud in the FE sector. A recruitment drive for almost 30 individuals to work in the agency’s provider market oversight division, led by Matthew Atkinson, got underway at the beginning of this month. The […]

Controversial minister Lord Agnew has been given responsibility for a new college financial warning system, as well as oversight of FE Commissioner’s office. The unpaid minister for the school system has from today taken on the FE “provider market, including quality and improvement” and this afternoon the Department for Education confirmed this includes a new […]

A top director in the Education and Skills Funding Agency has warned that colleges are “still running out of money”, as officials launch a new early warning system for college finances. It was announced this morning that college financial returns will be consolidated into a single annual return from January 2020. Providers have historically submitted […]

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers is lobbying government to U-turn on its proposal to introduce yet another data field for logging apprentices’ off-the-job training hours. Last week the Education and Skills Funding Agency said a mandatory “off-the-Job training – actual hours” data field would added to individual learner records (ILR) from 2020/21, subject […]

Yet another minister in the Department for Education has been given some responsibility for further education. It was announced this afternoon that Lord Agnew, the unpaid minister for the school system, will take on responsibility for the “further education provider market, including quality and improvement”. He will also lead on EU exit preparation, delivery of […]

A Welsh college is to be suspended from recruiting apprentices in England after Ofsted found it making ‘insufficient progress’ in all areas of an early monitoring visit. Gower College Swansea, which claims to have “award winning apprenticeship delivery” in Wales, moved to deliver the provision across the border in October 2017. Its apprenticeship offer in […]