Billy Camden | FE Week

More loans misery as provider goes under

Yet another training provider has gone bust, leaving dozens more blameless learners left with plenty of loans debt but no qualifications to show for it. Focus Training & Development Ltd, a Darlington-based training provider with a £1.5 million allocation from the Skills Funding Agency, went into liquidation on November 29 last year. It closed soon […]

SFA blasted over ‘mystery shopper’ scheme

FE Week readers are up in arms about the Skills Funding Agency’s new mystery shopper scheme to test apprenticeships, because many of them don’t even know when or if they’ll be able to start delivering their own. The SFA announced its new initiative in its online update on March 8, and said it would use […]

National Apprenticeship Week 2017: More than 10,000 back world record attempt through giant careers advice assembly

More than 10,000 young people joined-in for a giant careers advice assembly, through a world record attempt for National Apprenticeship Week 2017. Schools, young people, parents, and employers from across the country tuned in to the event, called ‘The Big Assembly’, from 8.45am to 9.15am this morning. It was introduced by apprenticeships and skills minister Robert […]

Lord Baker: careers advice amendment originally just for UTCs and Studio Schools

Lord Baker hit the headlines last week after he won a major concession in the House of Lords, to force schools to give FE providers access to their pupils. Speaking exclusively with FE Week’s Billy Camden, the former education secretary this week sets out his vision Incredibly, Lord Baker, the architect of the UTC programme, […]

Government silent on adult skills behavioural research centre funding

The government is refusing to say whether more funding will be given to two “pioneering” FE research centres after their start-up grants end shortly. The Behavioural Research Centre for Adult Skills and Knowledge was given £2.9 million by the former Department for Business Innovation and Skills back in 2014, to carry out randomised control trails […]

Banned subcontracting hidden through widespread ‘associate partnerships’

Colleges and training providers are hiding banned subcontracting through the use of so-called ‘associate partnerships’, FE Week can reveal – potentially allowing millions of pounds-worth of public funds to change hands without proper scrutiny. A recent Ofsted report has for the first time listed “training provided by an associate partner” as an arrangement not “sanctioned […]

Shocking associate partnerships need to be tackled

It is clear the SFA crackdown on subcontracting is increasingly pushing it underground. Our findings this week on the rise of this hidden subcontracting have genuinely shocked me. Some will try to claim ‘associate partnerships’ aren’t subcontracting because it is no different from using a recruitment agency to source a trainer. This is nonsense, given […]

Another 100 students left with FE loans and no courses after demise of provider Edudo

Another 100 learners appear to have been left with heavy student loans debt but no qualifications to show for it, after their training provider under investigation by the Skills Funding Agency went bust. FE Week is demanding justice for them and hundreds of others left in the lurch – through our new #SaveOurAdultEducation campaign which […]

Ofsted watch: FE college overcomes ‘inadequate’ period

An FE college has climbed its way out of being ‘inadequate’ while an adult and community learning provider and a private provider boosted their provision upwards to ‘good’ in this week’s Ofsted reports. City College Coventry was rated ‘requires improvement’ in a report published Wednesday (February 22) following an ‘inadequate’ grade in November 2015. While […]