Author: Billy Camden

The AoC wants colleges to be excluded from the government’s published progress data claiming it is based on school models and unfairly represents the delivery of FE. It has written to Damian Hinds asking him to intervene. On Thursday, the new Progress 8 results showed that the 17 colleges which offered direct entry last year […]

Apprentices left jobless following the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion will not be paid after January, it has been claimed. Around 1,400 trainee bricklayers and carpenters have been left with uncertain futures ever since the UK’s largest employer of construction apprentices entered liquidation two weeks ago. They were being taught at the company’s skills division, […]

More than half of the 17,000 apprentices due to complete their course with Learndirect last year failed, as its achievement rate slumped a further 8.6 percentage points, FE Week can reveal. These latest figures now mean that nearly 25,000 learners have failed to successfully complete their apprenticeship at the nation’s biggest FE provider over the […]

Luton Sixth Form College has become the latest FE provider to lose its prized grade one status. It follows last week’s Ofsted Watch in which three other providers all fell from ‘outstanding’. Inspectors said that progress mentors at grade two-overall rated Luton, which teaches over 2,500 learners, do not have the “information that they require” […]

Peter Lauener will donate the £25,000 salary he will earn as chair of one of the UK’s largest college groups to a student hardship fund. Apparently one of the busiest men in FE, the former boss of the ESFA and the Institute for Apprenticeships, who currently leads the Student Loans Company, bagged himself yet another […]

Top training providers and colleges still denied non-levy contracts are turning to influential MPs in an effort to squeeze the cash they need from the government. Exeter College, which FE Week rates as the best college in the country, and Hull’s HYA Training both appealed the ESFA’s decision not to fund their apprenticeships with smaller […]

A high-profile ‘outstanding’ college has asked its influential local MP to help it overturn the decision not to give it any non-levy funding, after its appeal was rejected. Exeter College, which FE Week recently crowned the best college in the country for the second year running, was denied a contract in the recent tender for […]

The new education secretary will ensure that every apprentice affected by the collapse of outsourcing giant Carillion will be found new employment to complete their training, he has claimed. Damian Hinds responded this afternoon to a letter sent last week by Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee, who asked him to guarantee […]