Expert Contributor | FE Week

Colleges ‘deeply concerned’ about £650m non-levy tender

The Education and Skills Funding Agency was accused of plunging the relaunched non-levy apprenticeship funding tender process into chaos last night, as new “clarifications” and document updates were sent out. David Hughes reflects on college concerns below. Colleges are very frustrated and deeply concerned about the timing and the details of this procurement. Concerned because […]

AEB procurement fears for third sector providers

Third Sector National Learning Alliance chief executive Tim Ward, wrote the following open letter to outgoing Institute for Apprenticeships and Education and Skills Funding Agency boss Peter Lauener. He expresses below grave concerns about the adult education budget procurement process, which he warns is likely to reduce the number of directly contracted third sector providers. Dear […]

GCSE results week: How FE can leverage digital channels to win learners

Colleges and providers need to get smarter in attracting new learners who’ve just had their GCSE results – here’s how to do it, says Lucy Perkins Students’ decisions on their future are being made increasingly last-minute: last year, a record one in eight university students found their place through clearing. In today’s rapidly evolving post-16 […]

How government can widen participation through FE

To boost participation of under-represented groups in higher education, further education colleges should play a greater role, argue Profs Claire Callender and Kevin J Dougherty If the government truly wants to widen participation in higher education in England, it should provide more financial support and policy attention to the role FE colleges can play. Ways […]

The employer knows better than the ‘man from the ministry’

The levy was supposed put employers in control – don’t shunt them into the back seat just because you don’t agree with their choice of apprenticeships, argues Adrian Anderson Through the apprenticeship reforms, ministers rightly put the employer in the driving seat – which created the conditions that enabled the government to introduce the apprenticeship […]

Teaching is at the heart of the skills plan

In order to deliver the skilled workers our economy needs, education and industry need to forge closer links, says Paul Kessell-Holland The rapid pace of change in technical education shows no signs of slowing. There has been an endless succession of commissions, reports, recommendations and plans, with the over-arching theme being ‘we need more engineers/scientists/technicians […]

Prison education and training needs fixing – here’s how

Prison education has been sidelined for too long and major change is needed now, says Rob Mills The general election brought us our third justice secretary in under two years. And with Dame Sally Coates’ report into prison education now a year old, the white paper on prison safety and reform not fully implemented, and […]

To boost social mobility, we need more degree apprenticeships

If we really want to develop our economy, we should focus more on the top echelons, suggests Adrian Anderson At the recent AELP June conference there was a lot of talk about the value of intermediate apprenticeships and the importance of not equating quality apprenticeships with those at a higher level. But let’s be quite […]

20% off-the-job training should be the minimum for apprentices

The countries with the best apprenticeships in the world have far more training than we do in the UK, explains Tom Richmond Now that Ofsted expects numeracy to be embedded across the curriculum, let us take this opportunity to practise a little maths ourselves. Say an apprentice is employed for 35 hours a week, seven […]