Author: Billy Camden

Ofsted will expose training providers who rip-off apprentices by collecting subcontracting management fees without taking “responsibility for quality”, the chief inspector has revealed. Amanda Spielman made the promise in a fierce speech at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeship Conference, warning prime providers that the inspectorate would not stand idly by while poor provision goes unmonitored. “Our […]

The government is launching a review into how the current system of funding for FE meets the costs of “high-quality” provision, Anne Milton has revealed. The skills minister announced the plans in the House of Commons today during educations questions, after she was asked what the Department for Education had made of “recent trends” in […]

The majority of NHS trusts in England will spend their apprenticeship levy at a faster rate than other employers – even though most are frustrated by the policy’s “inflexibility”. The news will be welcomed by the government as it struggles on to reach its three million apprenticeship starts target by 2020 – given that the […]

It was mostly a week of celebration for FE providers, as five rose to ‘good’ Ofsted ratings. Two of them achieved the feat in their first ever inspection. However, one private provider fell to the ‘inadequate’, and another was brutally criticised in Ofsted’s first early-monitoring visit report on a newcomer to apprenticeships, prompting ministerial intervention. […]

The Department for Education is backing HMRC’s decision to collect VAT on subcontracting management fees. The tax office has launched a major investigation into subcontracting to find out why primes have not been applying a mandatory 20-per-cent charge to their top-slices. The crackdown, which involves a team of around 20 special investigators, has rocked a […]

A new best-practice threshold for a 20-per-cent limit on subcontracting management fees has already been undermined, after multiple colleges and their representative body refused to comply. The guideline, agreed last week between the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, Holex and Collab, a provider group, was conspicuously missing sign-off from the Association of Colleges, which […]

The chief executive of one of London’s largest colleges has announced plans to leave at the end of the academic year to take up the same position at a much smaller college in the south west. Garry Phillips will leave Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College in the summer in preparation for his move to […]

The Association of Employment and Learning Providers has washed its hands of the Education and Training Foundation, claiming it is “no longer an organisation run by the FE sector for the sector”. “We don’t feel the programme being proposed and funded by the DfE supports our membership,” said AELP boss Mark Dawe, who insisted the […]