FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Promise of pre-apprenticeship product

L-R: Graham Hoyle OBE, AELP, Martin Dunford,OBE, AELP, Sarah Benioff, NAS, David Russell, DfE and Martin Doel, AoC The skills minister said he had “unfinished business” with pre-apprenticeships on the first day of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) National Conference 2012. John Hayes MP said the government needed to provide a “better […]

Barclays: Banking on young talent

Launching an apprenticeship programme is a big challenge for any private sector organisation. At Barclays, we set an ambitious target at the start of this year to take on 1,000 young people not in education, work or employment and took the programme from conception to getting our first apprentices into work within four months. The […]

FE loans must work for disadvantaged learners

We are all acutely aware of how tough things are economically and therefore appreciate that Government spending must go towards helping the most underprivileged first. In Higher Education, loans have been part of the system for over a decade now and while the jury is still out on the long-term financial returns of this system, […]

Privatise FE: Dynamite or damp squib?

There has been much debate in the education press about the implications for further education colleges of the new powers they have under the Education Act 2011 which came into force on 1 April 2012. Indeed those new powers have been described as, effectively, the privatisation of FE colleges. Is that the case? Under the […]

A potential opportunity for work based learning

There is no doubt that the government’s introduction of Raising the Participation Age (RPA) to age 18 will present a significant business development opportunity to work based learning providers. For those unfamiliar with the DfE proposals, the RPA is being introduced in two phases: for 16-17 year olds in August 2013 and for 17-18 year […]

Concern over VAT on FE loans

Learners taking out an FE loan next year could be forced to pay 20 per cent VAT if they study with an independent training provider, according to Graham Hoyle, Chief Executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) . The charge will be introduced as part of the “24+ advanced learning loan” scheme […]

CBI report reveals basic skills deficit

Employers remain dissatisfied with school and college leavers’ basic skills according to a report by CBI. Around a third of employers said that young people lacked the necessary skills for work – the same amount as a decade ago. CBI, a business lobbying organisation, found that 42 per cent of businesses had to provide remedial […]

Richard Review interview

Entrepreneur Doug Richard is to lead an independent review into the future of the apprenticeship programme in England. The former Dragon’s Den investor has been commissioned by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and Department for Education (DfE) to look at how the government can build on the record number of new apprentices. […]

It’s a disaster for workplace learning

I am a huge advocate of Functional Skills. I believe it represents our best chance in a decade to address the skills crisis in the UK, highlighted only a couple of days ago by the latest CBI/Pearson survey which showed that four out of ten companies are now carrying out remedial training in maths and […]