Author: Billy Camden

> MPs demand answers over ESFA approving sale of Learndirect Apprenticeships in 2016 > PAC inquiry to quiz Ofsted on decision to delay inspection month before sale collapsed MPs furious at the long-running Learndirect debacle are asking the public accounts committee to find out why the government supported the sale of the provider’s apprenticeships business, […]

Multiple providers have successfully overturned the government’s decisions not to award them contracts in the controversial non-levy tender – including several big hitters. The ESFA last week began contacting organisations that had appealed the outcome of the procurement before Christmas. Among the winners were Focus Training Group, which has a ‘good’ rating from Ofsted, Basingstoke […]

A provider has successfully overturned the government’s decision not to award it a contract in the recent controversial non-levy tender. Focus Training Group, which is rated ‘good’ by Ofsted and has delivered apprenticeships in the south-west for 20 years, was originally told it had not reached the minimum threshold score to secure a contract, but […]

The Institute for Apprenticeships is losing a vital member of staff, one who was “instrumental” in setting up the organisation. Michael Keoghan, the Institute’s deputy chief executive, will leave at the end of this month to take up a new job as chief economic adviser at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. He […]

A community learning provider in Somerset that found itself at the sharp end of the adult education budget debacle has been handed a lifeline, with a vital funding meeting with the ESFA. Somerset Skills & Learning, which teaches around 10,000 students but had its funding cut by £1 million last year, will meet officials on […]

Two large colleges in the south-east, which teach a combined total of nearly 30,000 FE students every year, have announced plans to merge. Bracknell and Wokingham College will join the Activate Learning group – which currently encompasses Reading College, City of Oxford College and Banbury and Bicester College – from August 2018, subject to a […]

The bosses of two colleges located just 10 miles apart have been awarded CBEs in the Queen’s new year’s honours list. Judith Doyle, the principal of Gateshead College, and Dr Lindsey Whiterod, the chief executive of Tyne Coast College (formerly South Tyneside College), were recognised with one of the highest accolades awarded in the list […]

The architect of the apprenticeship levy gives his own account of how this landmark policy was brought to fruition, and explains just how much of a “big and risky” move it was. In an interview with the Institute for Government think-tank, the former skills minister Nick Boles revealed that his boss at the time, the […]

A man who spent decades spearheading the fight to raise the profile of adult learning has been knighted in the Queen’s New Year honours list. Alan Tuckett, who led the National Institute for Adult Continuing Education for 23 years and became known as FE’s “campaigner-in-chief” for lifelong learning, has been recognised with the prestigious accolade […]