FE Week Reporter | FE Week

It’s time to share the secret

Former House of Commons Education Select Committee specialist Ben Nicholls is head of policy at London’s Newham College. He writes exclusively for FE Week, every month. Last year, I was lucky enough to visit Singapore for a few days with MPs. Once we’d got used to the temperature, and established that smoking and gum-chewing weren’t […]

Provider told ‘no chance’ of growth request

A training provider in the Midlands slashed its growth request by 75 per cent after local staff at the Skills Funding Agency said there was “no chance of putting forward any form of growth case for classroom-based provision for the unemployed”. Bosses at Leicester-based Skillspoint, which has around 450 learners in sectors including construction and […]

Better learning opportunities for prisoners

Weston College is educating inmates at 13 prisons across South West England having won the region’s Offender Learning and Skills Service (Olass) contract. Principal Dr Paul Phillips talks about the challenges he and his staff, not to mention offenders, face. When we decided to bid for delivery of the Olass for the South West of […]

Minister holds FE technology roundtable

Technology that can revolutionise FE learning was on the agenda at the first of a series of roundtable meetings hosted by FE Minister Matthew Hancock. Sector experts were invited to the inaugural meeting of the FE Learning Technology Action Group last week by Mr Hancock, who chaired alongside education business leader and co-founder of Bleinhem […]

Guild consultation ends

The FE Guild project leader has described responses to a consultation on the proposed organisation as “positive and constructive”. Peter Davies CBE said written responses and contributions from 12 consultation events, were “useful”. The consultation, which ended last Monday, initially triggered concerns that providers would struggle to meet the three-week deadline. But Mr Davies said […]

Deadline ‘degrades’ ILRs

The Association of Colleges (AoC) believes that the data quality of Individualised Learner Record (ILR) returns could be “degraded” by moving the final return deadline forward three weeks. Julian Gravatt, assistant chief executive at the AoC, spoke out after the Information Authority’s (IA) board, with support from FE Minister Matthew Hancock, agreed a new deadline […]

Hoyle’s level playing field legacy

Warm tributes have been paid to Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) chief executive Graham Hoyle after the announcement of his retirement. The 66-year-old is expected to step down this summer after 11 years at the helm having achieved “more of a level playing field between colleges and independent training providers”. Martin Dunford, AELP […]

College merger tweet shock

Bosses at a college in the Midlands claim they found out about two competitors’ multi-million pound merger plan — which is being investigated over procedural concerns — thanks to a local newspaper “tweet”. Plans for Stourbridge and Birmingham Metropolitan Colleges to form “one of the largest and most significant further education providers in the country” […]

Guide to FE Learning tech

Nothing moves faster than technology. No other sector has seen as much rapid change and development in such a short space of time, and education technology is no exception. Faster, more powerful computers, cheap and accessible tablet devices and innovative learning resources have opened the door to a world of possibility in learning. Around the […]