Expert Contributor | FE Week

Ofsted’s new provider monitoring and subcontracting visits explained

Paul Joyce, one of the inspectorate’s head skills honchos, lays out the thinking behind the two new forms of visit Ofsted will be making in the FE sector Ofsted recently announced it would be conducting two new types of monitoring visit. The first, as announced by HM chief inspector Amanda Spielman last November, are monitoring […]

How WorldSkills is just like the Olympics

With over 100,000 people at WorldSkills 2017, you realise the size of the task facing our top apprentices as they prepare for the next “skills Olympics”, explains Peter Bakare I always tell people that training for WorldSkills, is no different than training for the Olympics. I see the same hunger and determination in the apprentices […]

How FE can help prepare the UK’s next generation of doctors

Medicine has long been the near-exclusive preserve of higher education, but the QAA’s Julie Mizon has big plans to change that In a speech to the Conservative Party conference in 2016, the health secretary Jeremy Hunt set a target for training up to 1,500 more new doctors each year from 2018 – 25 per cent […]

What lessons can we learn from end-point assessments?

End-point assessment is a vital part of any apprenticeship, and Thomas Burton explains how to get it right. The government wants its trailblazer apprenticeship reforms to have independent end-point assessment (EPA) to drive up productivity. Seen as a vital source of ammunition in the nation’s economic arsenal, the reforms are designed to redress a skills […]

Time to close the loophole that harms Catholic SFCs

A legal anomaly is stopping Catholic sixth-form colleges from reaping the benefits of academisation. Putting this right would be a simple matter, writes Paul Barber. In the wider Catholic school sector there are a variety of legal safeguards which protect the distinct character and ethos of Catholic schools – for instance the emphasis put on […]

Market or system – what’s the best model for FE?

Further education is increasingly being used as a laboratory between competing models of education, and the market model is winning. Ewart Keep explains why marketising education might not be such a safe bet Although many in FE still instinctively talk about the “system”, in reality there are now only markets for different segments of provision […]

Why is there no T-Level pathway for sport?

Elite sports is one of the hardest industries to break into, yet there are no plans for any technical routes, laments Jo Maher The independent panel on technical education’s report in 2016 identified “15 clear routes to skilled employment” where there is a “substantial requirement for technical knowledge and practical skills”. Sport was not one […]

The government should focus on apprenticeship quality, not quantity

Without proper focus on apprenticeships at the top end, the government will never achieve its ambition to close the skills gap, claims Adrian Anderson While most of the current apprenticeships headlines have been about the recent falls in starts, there’s another issue that’s been taxing officials on the side. It’s no secret that the DfE […]

Degree apprenticeships shouldn’t just be repackaged degrees

Martin Doel believes there can be a place for higher and degree apprenticeships – but they can’t be near-exact replicas of regular degrees I followed Apprenticeship Week at a distance this year, and was struck by the emphasis in much of the media coverage on degree apprenticeships. There was also much interest from my hosts […]