Author: Billy Camden

Somerset MPs held an emergency meeting on Wednesday with the skills minister to reverse the massive £3.3 million funding cut imposed on a 10,000-learner community-based provider. Four of the county’s five Conservative MPs, Marcus Fysh, James Heappey, Rebecca Pow and David Warburton, met with Anne Milton to “urgently review” the 97 per cent cut to […]

A former Wales international footballer and three other men conspired to scam colleges and the government out of around £5 million of apprenticeship funding, in some cases faking “ghost learners”, a court has heard. Mark Aizlewood, aged 57, from Aberdare, who played for Wales 39 times in the 1980s and 1990s, appeared today before Southwark […]

The Learndirect saga has taken a fresh twist today, after a government spokesperson admitted that the nation’s largest FE provider submitted and then withdrew a bid to the adult education budget tender, contrary to previous briefings. It emerged yesterday that despite its recent ‘inadequate’ from Ofsted, Learndirect would receive another £45 million from the AEB […]

A large adult community learning provider in Somerset has found itself at the sharp end of the adult education budget chaos, after its funding was slashed to just three per cent of its previous level. Somerset Skills & Learning, which teaches around 10,000 students and has around 200 staff, won a new AEB contract in […]

The government is refusing to release a crucial report that would show whether or not the forecasting tool it has developed to predict apprenticeship starts is actually working. The Department for Education is suppressing a report that scrutinises the model it uses to anticipate starts at large and small employers, even while arguments still rage […]

The nation’s largest FE provider has been handed around £45 million from next years’ adult education budget even though it didn’t participate in the tender process and despite its now-infamous grade four from Ofsted. The news was confirmed by the Education and Skills Funding Agency in letters, seen by FE Week, sent to providers which […]

Labour’s shadow skills minister has demanded official answers on whether Learndirect is getting special treatment from the government after Ofsted hit it with its worst possible rating. Gordon Marsden has tabled a series of probing parliamentary questions for the education secretary over the size of the adult education budget allocation the nation’s largest training provider […]