Author: Billy Camden

The government has been left red-faced after FE Week found thousands of apprentices with no organisation responsible for checking the quality of delivery of their training. The apprenticeship accountability statement, published by the Department for Education, says responsibility for oversight of level six and seven programmes does not lie with Ofsted but with the Office […]

A college has refused to explain why it has given £16.5 million over the last three years to a subcontracting partner that employs fewer than 10 people. Brooklands College relies on SCL Security Ltd, a private provider run by Andrew Merritt, to deliver hundreds of level-three IT apprenticeships every year, for mostly 16-to-18-year-olds. The company […]

A deal has been struck between the country’s largest college group and union members at its two London colleges to settle a long-running bitter pay dispute. Staff at the Lewisham and Southwark colleges, who were involved in a controversial long-distance merger with NCG last year, took a total of four days’ strike action in May […]

The government will not ban new apprenticeship providers from recruiting adult learners if they’re making ‘insufficient progress’ in that theme alone in Ofsted monitoring visits, after FE Week highlighted the grey area last month. Updated policy guidance was published this afternoon by the Education and Skills Funding Agency which has finally brought some clarification to […]

The government is going to evaluate its troubled National Colleges policy to identify what has gone wrong with the scheme and help avoid the same mistakes in the rollout of Institutes of Technology. A tender from the Department for Education went live on Monday asking for a research company to take on the in-depth evaluation […]

A broker has admitted it was a “bad idea” to offer cash to former staff of Aspire Achieve Advance in exchange for referrals of apprentices affected by the collapse. The now-defunct apprenticeship giant, better known as 3aaa, ceased trading on October 11 when the government pulled its skills contracts following a second investigation into success-rate […]

Colleges are being invited to bid for cash in a new round of the strategic college improvement fund – but it’s unclear how much is left in the £15 million pot. A pilot for the SCIF was run last year in which 14 struggling colleges shared £2 million (the winners of which can be found […]

Multiple training providers have attempted to poach staff and apprentices from the now-defunct Aspire Achieve Advance using underhand tactics – and have been warned their own funding could be withdrawn because of it. Apprenticeship giant 3aaa was put into compulsory liquidation last week after it ceased trading on October 11 when the government pulled its […]

The Department for Education will spend £10 million on 200 “external experts” to advise it on policy areas including university technical colleges, vocational education and sixth forms. A tender document published this week reveals that the department is searching for organisations to join a “register of external experts”, made up of “individuals who have expertise […]