Author: Billy Camden

Thirteen more colleges will receive a total of £1.8 million in grants through a fund designed to support struggling colleges, the government announced today. Skills minister Anne Milton has named the second round of colleges set to receive the cash, which is part of the £15 million strategic college improvement fund. The 13 institutions are: […]

A training provider is launching legal action against the Education and Skills Funding Agency following an allegedly botched European Social Fund tender. The agency ran its latest ESF procurement, worth around £282 million in total, towards the end of last year and was supposed to award contracts to the winning bidders on January 29. But […]

The government’s consultation on plans to withdraw funding for thousands of applied general qualifications including BTECs is not manipulation of the market to ensure T-levels are a success, the skills minister has insisted. Speaking to FE Week, Anne Milton said: “There is no manipulation whatsoever. If somebody is providing or teaching qualifications that are of […]

Up to 300 jobs are on the line at England’s largest college group, after it announced plans to close its two private training providers. Staff at Intraining and Rathbone Training, which are part of NCG, are being consulted on the redundancies. The providers currently train 4,500 learners between them, of which two-thirds are apprentices. Some […]

The future of thousands of applied general qualifications including BTECs hangs in the balance as the government launches its first consultation on plans to withdraw their funding. The Department for Education has been reviewing vocational qualifications at level 3 and below since announcing plans to introduce new “high-quality” T-levels. The review includes applied generals, tech […]

The tender process for the second wave of T-levels has been launched by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education. From today, awarding organisations can bid for an “exclusive license” to develop and deliver the next seven T-levels, which will be taught from September 2021. They will be split across six separate contracts worth over […]

The police has today launched a formal criminal investigation into disgraced apprenticeship firm Aspire Achieve Advance (3aaa). It follows a meeting between the Department for Education and police yesterday where a number of allegations of fraud against the firm were discussed. FE Week understands the allegations against 3aaa, which had over 4,200 learners and 500 […]

Outsourcing giant Interserve is reportedly going to be put into administration today with nearly 5,000 apprentices on its books. However, the company has insisted this will not be a Carillion-style collapse and it is very much business as usual, with no big job losses anticipated. Shareholders at Interserve, which employs 45,000 people in the UK, […]

West Nottinghamshire College entered the public eye last year when it ran into financial difficulties that led to government bailouts, substantial job losses, and, ultimately, the resignation of its longstanding, high-profile principal, Dame Asha Khemka. An FE Week investigation has now uncovered more details about the scale of trouble at the beleaguered college   Bailouts […]