Author: Billy Camden

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 […]

The ESFA is extending the non-levy tender’s 10-day standstill period to December 28, meaning no contracts will be given to successful providers next week, FE Week understands. Results of the procurement, which has frustrated the sector all year after being plagued with delays and an aborted first attempt, were finally released on December 7. The […]

An organisation that went out of business two months ago has been awarded a contract in the non-levy tender – even while several high-profile colleges ranked ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ missed out. PTM Group, which incorporated in May 2015 but has never held its own direct contract with the ESFA to deliver apprenticeships, last week became […]

Two ‘inadequate’ training providers in Essex are making “reasonable progress” in improving their grades, but still have a long way to go in pulling themselves away from Ofsted’s lowest possible rating. In what was a quiet week for FE inspections, Epping Forest College and Essex County Council each had their third monitoring visit reports published […]

The National Audit Office has today published its report into the circumstances surrounding the monitoring, inspection and funding of Learndirect. The nation’s biggest FE provider was given an ‘inadequate’ rating by Ofsted in a report published in August, and the government offered it special treatment by allowing it to retain its contracts for almost a […]