FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Let’s get behind Team UK

It’s only a couple of months away now . . . Jaine Bolton counts down to WorldSkills Leipzig 2013 This summer, 34 of the UK’s most talented young people will head to Germany to take on the best from across the world at WorldSkills Leipzig 2013. WorldSkills is the largest international skills competition in the […]

A chance for a hands-on experience

November may seem a long way off, but plans for The Skills Show are already well underway, says Ross Maloney More than 70,000 people visited The Skills Show last year — and most of them were impressed with its format. Of the young people questioned as they left the show at Birmingham’s NEC, 72 per […]

Robin Landman, CEO, Network for Black Professionals

Robin Landman’s experience of social injustice is rooted much deeper than the workplace. Being forced to flee apartheid-era South Africa as a boy for the London suburb of Eltham — where schoolboy Stephen Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack in 1993 — helped the 61-year-old understand the need for a Network for Black Professionals […]

Principal questions local merger

Two Midland colleges planning to merge have been accused of “ignoring” guidance from Skills Minister Matthew Hancock. Stourbridge and Birmingham Metropolitan Colleges are set to become one institution with the 12,500-student Stourbridge’s property, rights and liabilities transferring to Birmingham Met, which had 26,000-plus learners two years ago. The proposals had triggered a letter from Mr […]

NAS investigates apprentices’ hours

The National Apprenticeship Service is investigating claims that apprentices are regularly working “over and above their contracted hours”. UnionLearn, the learning and skills organisation of the Trades Union Congress, has reported that apprentices are breaking their contracts by doing their contracted hours in the workplace — and then studying on top without pay. A UnionLearn […]

New website misses national providers

A newly-launched apprenticeship website aimed at employers could be leaving out national providers, it has been claimed. A mandatory postcode section, combined with a mandatory distance field, means that providers without a base in the search area won’t show up in the results. The Association of Employment and Learning Provider’s director of employment and skills, […]

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SFA ‘moves goalposts’ for small contracts

The future of the Skills Funding Agency’s minimum contract level policy has been called into question after it emerged 50 providers have been given allocations of less than £500,000. More than £7m could be paid out by the agency on contracts below its minimum level. The smallest of these is for £11,274 and the biggest […]

Scott makes it through the Maze

A young chef from Lincolnshire has joined celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant in London. Scott Brackenbury, 17, who is completing a catering apprenticeship at Boston College’s restaurant, was given just two days’ notice to attend a trial day at the top restaurant. Staff were so impressed that they offered him a job as commis […]