FE Week Reporter | FE Week

TyneMet and Northam Community College to reboot science, tech and maths courses

Engineering staff from TyneMet College, four teachers from Norham Community Technology College and Jo Lyons from the North Tyneside Education Business Partnership, visited Siemens’ Energy Services Plant. Staff from the two colleges discussed teaching and learning resources with experts at the major firm. While there, they met Carl Hopper, Energy Services STEM Ambassador, to […]

Government figures show adult apprenticeships more than tripled

Figures published this morning show that the number of apprenticeship starts aged 25 and above has more than tripled, to 175,500 in 2010/11. Provisional figures in the October 2011 Statistical First Release (SFR) show that whilst the number 0f 25+ increased by over 250% (from 49,100 to 175,500), all age apprenticeships starts increased 58% from 279,700 in 2009/10 […]

Poor vocational qualifications scrapped from performance tables by DfE

Vocational qualifications will not count in performance tables unless they’re high quality, the Department for Education (DfE) announced under new guidance today. The changes mean that vocational subjects will only be included on a ‘one-for-one’ basis with academic qualifications from 2014. The DfE hopes the new rules will stop schools from choosing subjects simply to […]

Anger over threat to legal status of student governors

UNISON have published a press release stating that “last-minute amendment to the Education Bill could remove the legal right to staff and student governors on further education college governing bodies”. Click here for the full text The press release continues: “The amendment (83A*), which will be debated in the House of Lords today, was placed […]

Education unions join forces to lobby over pension cuts

A petition opposing pension cuts was delivered to the Department for Education (DfE) by all seven education unions this morning. The ‘Decent Pensions’ petition had more than 154,000 signatures from lecturers and head teachers. Sally Hunt, General Secretary of University and College Union (UCU), said: “They’re angry, they’re hurt and they’re also frightened.” Brian Lightman, General Secretary of […]

Short 12 week apprenticeships are off the menu

The government’s Data Service promised to publish apprenticeship recruitment figures for 2010/11 today at 9.30am. They did not disappoint, and in the spirit of all things short, within eight minutes FE Week published their analysis of the figures (click here). Whilst the supplementary tables show the number of 16 year-olds starting apprenticeships rose just 1% from […]

Unionlearn launch dyslexia awareness campaign‏

Unionlearn, the education arm of the TUC, is launching a campaign to help employers understand more about dyslexia. Events and assessments designed to help make workplaces more dyslexia friendly will take place during Dyslexia Awareness Week. An online survey carried out by Unionlearn found that over half of their learning support representatives said workers with a […]

FE Week hits over 100,000 views

Since FE Week launched in early September our website has had over 100,000 page views. On average that means 2,131 visits to our site and article reads per day! So far the FE Week team has delivered extensive coverage of key events, profiled influential figures, delivered exclusives and given expert advice. By reporting from behind […]

Sixth-form funding expected to fall dramatically in next three years

Sixth-form spending is expected to fall by 15.8 per cent in the next three years, according to a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). The IFS estimates that the Department for Education’s (DfE) Deparmental Expenditure Limit (DEL) for sixth-form funding will drop from £2.4 billion in 2011-12 to £2.2 billion in 2014-15. The […]