Author: Fraser Whieldon

A provider of British Sign Language qualifications and an engineering awarding organisation are among the winners of this year’s Federation of Awarding Bodies’ awards. FAB’s fifth celebration of the awarding and assessment sector was a glitzy ceremony in Leicester, attended by over 230 experts in awarding and assessment. Chief executive of FAB Tom Bewick said […]

Ofqual’s chief regulator has tasked awarding organisations with answering three questions as part of the watchdog’s work on ensuring “public confidence” in qualifications. Addressing the first day of the Federation of Awarding Bodies’ annual conference, Sally Collier said she wanted AOs to “be in the best shape you can be” and it was “the time […]

Federation of Awarding Bodies chair Paul Eeles will make five wishes to education secretary Gavin Williamson at the membership organisation’s annual conference today. His first request will be the return of a dedicated skills and apprenticeships minister. After Anne Milton quit the role ahead of Boris Johnson becoming prime minister, the FE and skills brief […]

Apprenticeships covering agriculture, environment and animal care will be probed by the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education in its fourth route review. Eleven of the standards, including arborist, forest operative and golf greenkeeper, will be reviewed in total, and there will be a supporting eight-week consultation, running from today until 4 December. The institute’s […]

The FE Commissioner is recruiting more college leaders and governors to firm up the National Leaders of Governance and Further Education schemes. The Department for Education reopened applications to the programmes today, and said candidates have until 11pm on 29 October 2019 to apply. A spokesperson would not specify how many national leaders are being […]

A company claiming to be the UK’s largest compliance support and business consultancy provider for financial services has been rapped by Ofsted. New Model Business Academy (NMBA), the not-for-profit training arm of SimplyBiz, has made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of its provision to 113 apprentices on level 4 financial adviser and paraplanner standards, during […]

A major financial services provider to high-profile employers and over 3,500 apprentices, has made ‘significant progress’ following a previous bad result, while others scored reasonably well in this week’s run of Ofsted reports. Kaplan Financial, which also has 10 adult learners and 185 advanced learner loan learners, was downgraded to a grade three last year, […]

The government has come under fire for planning to spend £500,000 helping small employers get “onboarded onto the Apprenticeship Service”. A tender was launched last week by the Department for Education seeking a supplier to help “intermediaries”, such as local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) and membership organisations, ensure non-levy payers engaging in apprenticeships are aware of […]