FE Week Reporter | FE Week

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 […]

SFA already finding ineligible employer incentives and will ‘strengthen’ funding rules

The apprenticeship funding rules will be beefed up to stop inappropriate employer incentives, just two months ahead of the launch of levy-funded apprenticeships. The Skills Funding Agency said in their weekly update that they were aware of providers offering incentives, such as payments to employers to refund fees, which was ‘contrary to the policy intent’. “Following […]

School funding ‘done rather well’ and it’s cuts to 16-18 that’s the ‘bigger story’ claims Institute for Fiscal Studies

Researchers at the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) have contrasted cuts to 16-18 funding with “spending shifting towards earlier in youngsters’ lives” in the last 25 years. The IFS today publish a report into education spending and are keen to point out that despite school funding cuts hitting the headlines in recent weeks, in the […]

BREAKING: Apprenticeship achievement rate falls to 67 per cent under new method

The percentage of people passing their apprenticeship has fallen to 67 percent, figures released this morning show. The overall achievement rate for apprenticeship frameworks fell from 71.7 percent to 67 percent in 2015/16, however this follows a change to the methodology. Applying the new methodology to 2013/14 and 2014/15 shows overall achievement rates remain at 67 percent (see table […]