Author: Billy Camden

Health secretary and former skills minister Matt Hancock has awarded a permanent role in his office to his apprentice. Chloe Osborne-Wilson, aged 21, has been the “eyes and ears” for Hancock as a caseworker within his constituency of West Suffolk while making “tremendous progress” completing a level 3 business administrator apprenticeship over the past 18 […]

Providers will be forced to log apprentices’ off-the-job training hours from September, following high-profile concern about non-compliance with the unpopular rule going unchallenged. A new data field for individual learner records (ILR) is being introduced for 2019/20 to “provide information about the quantum of off-the-job training delivered” and “help demonstrate compliance with the funding rules”, […]

The decision to close down Stourbridge College was a “shock”, the digital minister and town’s local MP has said, describing its loss as “tragic”. News broke this morning that Birmingham Metropolitan College will sell off the college just four years after it underwent a multi-million pound makeover. It’ll transfer its 900 learners to nearby Dudley […]

The University and College Union has written to the justice secretary urging him to intervene over a training provider’s plans to cut more than 100 jobs. The union said in a letter addressed to David Gauke that Novus, a prison education provider part of the LTE Group, which also runs The Manchester College, has placed […]

A college that underwent a £5 million makeover just four years ago is set to close, following a review by the FE Commissioner. Stourbridge College, which makes up Birmingham Metropolitan College, alongside four other main divisions, will transfer its 900 learners to two other nearby colleges in September. Dudley College of Technology will take on […]

The boss of England’s biggest teaching union has told FE Week it is “blindingly obvious” that colleges should be brought back under local authority control. The National Education Union held its annual conference two weeks ago and last on its list of motions was one for post-16 education. Whilst the union echoed the calls of […]

The government will reopen the option for sixth-form colleges to academise in the post-area review era – but they could have to fork out the full conversion costs themselves, FE Week understands. Converting to academy status, and in doing so enjoying the luxury of not paying VAT, has been a possibility for nearly all SFCs […]

The government is expected to announce which regulator will inspect the quality of learning for level 6 and 7 apprenticeships without a prescribed HE qualification, such as a degree, in the coming days. FE Week was first to expose the lack of oversight for thousands of these apprenticeships in November, which are currently not the […]

The government should raise the funding rate for 16 to 19-year-olds by a “significant amount” in the upcoming spending review, the Social Mobility Commission has said, piling yet more pressure on the Treasury. The commission’s 2018-19 State of the Nation report says funding for the age group has “fallen 12 per cent since 2011-2012 and […]