FE Week Reporter | FE Week

Staying on after school has a new meaning

Thanks to the raising of the participation age, staying on after school no longer means sitting in class after the end-of-day bell rings — it also means big changes for education along with benefits for 17 and 18-year-olds, as Lesley Donoghue explains. Most parents and adults who work in education will be aware that from […]

Colleges join Cameron on largest delegation to India

College principals were among a ground-breaking UK trade delegation to India, led by Prime Minister David Cameron. West Nottinghamshire College’s Asha Khemka OBE, New College Nottingham’s Amarjit Basi and Norman Cave, from Birmingham’s Bournville College, formed part of the biggest ever UK delegation. It consisted of more than 100 companies — including Rolls-Royce, London Underground […]

Ben Nicholls, head of policy, Newham College

Meet Ben Nicholls — not too many in the world of FE will have heard of him, but quite a responsibility rests on his shoulders. The recently-appointed head of policy at Central London’s Newham College shies away from playfully-suggested titles such as FE tsar and FE champion, but with his trailblazing role within the sector, […]

New regional roles at Ofsted

The identities of six new Ofsted regional directors have been announced following a shake-up aimed at driving up provider standards. Each regional director will report directly to Ofsted boss Sir Michael Wilshaw and will be responsible for quality of inspection in their region along with the improvement of standards in childcare, schools, and learning and […]

Providers to get transitional funding protection from new system

Providers are to be protected from potentially huge drops in funding when a new payments regime is introduced from August. The Skills Funding Agency exclusively told FE Week that “transitional protection” would be in place for the new adult funding system after research showed the value of many qualification would fall by more than 20 […]

Provider shift ‘unjust’ says creditor

The boss of a firm set to lose thousands of pounds after a provider went into administration branded it “unjust” that another company could operate with the same board of directors, based in the same offices — having also taken over the same training contract. M2 Training, that was responsible for 4,000 learners, had a […]

SFA warned over plans to stop qualifications funding

The Skills Funding Agency “risks destabilising the system” with plans to stop paying out for more than 1,000 qualifications, it has been claimed. The Federation of Awarding Bodies (FAB) hit out at the agency over its moves to “rationalise the publicly funded offer for adults for 2013/14”. It could result in the end of agency […]

[download#98]

Data for course directory to be rated

Providers will be scored on information they submit to the National Careers Service (NCS) online course provider directory in a bid to combat problems with missing and incomplete data. The provider quality dashboard, to be introduced in April, will rate providers according to the quality of the data they upload to the directory and will make […]