Author: Billy Camden

College leaders are being asked for their views on the ESFA’s oversight of financial management – after the FE Commissioner found staff there had failed to accurately assess Hadlow College’s finances. It was announced last week that Dame Mary Ney would lead a review into the way the government monitors college finances. The review was […]

The Department for Education has announced that Michelle Donelan will take over Kemi Badenoch’s brief as she goes on maternity leave. It is expected this means that Donelan (pictured), the MP for Chippenham, will hold the remit for supporting further education. Badenoch was appointed a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in Boris Johnson’s recent reshuffle, […]

An additional £10 million will be released by the Treasury to teach English to those who speak it as a second language, the chancellor announced today. In his spending review speech, Sajid Javid confirmed that the Integration Areas Programme he launched as communities secretary in 2018 will continue into a second wave. Training providers will […]

The government’s effort to raise awareness of T-levels has been criticised after new research found three in five parents still haven’t heard of them, just 12 months before they’re due to be rolled out. A survey of 824 parents with children aged 11 to 18 in England, commissioned by the Chartered Management Institute, also revealed […]

Plans for Ofsted to publish financial ratings as part of inspection reports have been announced – but full details are yet to be drawn up. In November last year chief inspector Amanda Spielman told FE Week the watchdog could take a more proactive role in factoring in financial management when grading a provider, but said […]

All FE and skills providers rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted will no longer be exempt from routine inspections, the Department for Education has confirmed. The government announced the move yesterday, but only that it would apply to schools. A spokesperson for the DfE has today told FE Week the change will also impact colleges, independent providers, […]

The government has launched an additional European Social Fund tender, after finding there were a number of contracts in this year’s procurement where no bidding providers met the “required criteria”. A bidding process for £4.2 million of the funding has gone live today in four local enterprise partnership areas: York North Yorkshire & East Riding, […]

The new chief executive of the Baker Dearing Trust has defended the decision to nearly double the membership fee that university technical colleges have to pay. The annual fee will increase from £5,500 to £10,000 from September. The unexpected hike comes despite the majority of UTCs struggling to survive due to dwindling student numbers, a […]

A provider has hit out at Ofsted after the inspectorate sampled just a fraction of its apprentices to decide it was making ‘insufficient progress’ in an early monitoring report. AAA Training and Recruitment is expected to be suspended from recruiting new apprentices by the government after it was given the rating in two of the […]