FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Chief executive role for new IfA finally advertised

This afternoon the Institute for Apprenticeships advertised for a chief executive. The IfA launched this month and is expected to have an annual budget of around £8m and up to 80 staff. Perhaps surprisingly it is only a fixed term contract, of up to five years, with a salary of up to £142,500. The advert says […]

BREAKING: Agency writes to apprenticeship providers with further details on non-levy pause

Today the Education and Skills Funding Agency has written to providers regarding non-levy funding for apprenticeship from 1 May (see full ESFA letter below). After the pause to non-levy allocations, many providers will be relieved that “to maintain stability through the transitional period we will continue to apply current subcontracting rules to the delivery of […]

Government to ‘formally intervene’ at 35 providers with achievement rate failures

More than 30 private training providers, colleges and councils have been slapped with a notice of concern or serious breach, for falling below qualification achievement rate thresholds. The Education and Skills Funding Agency has today published an update list of providers given the notice, which for the first time lists those providers now subject to formal intervention […]

Government adds Birmingham college to register of apprenticeship providers

After significant political pressure the Department for Education has added one of the Birmingham colleges onto the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers (RoATP). At least one provider had already gone bust when the register was first published, so FE Week yesterday asked the Department for Education why there had been no revision to the list of providers […]

Apprentices to receive welcome card to be used with an off-the-job training calculator

Did we catch you out? This year’s FE Week April Fool was just believable enough for some, especially as Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, got in on the act. Check it out below if you missed it first time round…. In an effort to monitor the controversial minimum […]

Breaking: Full Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers finally published

Almost 75 per cent of applicants to the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers were successful, the Skills Funding Agency has revealed. The full list of providers on the new register has finally been published by the agency (click to download full list), almost 24 hours after providers began to learn their fate via the SFA’s […]

Making sense of the plans for T-Levels

As reported in FE Week yesterday, the Budget on Wednesday will announce new money for technical education to fund what some national newspapers have called ‘T-Level’. The government said it was “the most ambitious post-16 education reforms since the introduction of A-levels 70 years ago.” Is the introduction of T-Levels a new announcement? No. The […]

Chancellor to announce ‘over £500m’ per year in extra funding for post-16 skills reform

The Budget will invest new funding in FE from 2019 to pay for increasing the amount of training for 16 to 19-year-olds by more than 50 per cent to over 900 hours a year. This will come as a welcome surprise to the FE sector, as when the Sainsbury reforms were first outline in the Post-16 Skills Plan last […]

‘Shocked’ staff sent packing as huge apprenticeship training provider goes bust

One of the largest apprenticeship providers in England has called in the administrators after the Skills Funding Agency terminated their contract, FE Week has learned. First4Skills, which holds an annual £15m apprenticeship allocation and is 60 percent owned by City of Liverpool College, this afternoon told around 200 ‘shocked’ staff to pack their belongings and leave. It is […]