Jess Staufenberg | FE Week

Gill Alton, chief executive, TEC Partnership

After 35 years in the sector, Gill Alton, CEO of TEC Partnership, retired last Friday. She talks to Jess Staufenberg about leadership – and keeping it snappy One night, when she was working in the hotel sector, Gill Alton and her staff heard a commotion from an upstairs bedroom. A group of Welsh rugby fans, […]

Staff voices get marginalised in hierarchical workforces

Lecturers for ‘lower ability’ groups are sometimes not treated with the same respect as A-level staff, writes Chantal Brown We all know that FE is already considered the poor counterpart to HE, secondary and primary learning. But inside FE institutions themselves, does another hierarchy exist? A hierarchy where teachers rate themselves as more or less […]

Royal charter status for IoTs needs more detailed thought

Royal charter status is not the quick win it at first appears, writes Mark Taylor The levelling up white paper sets out the government’s plans for successful institutes of technology (IoTs) to apply for royal charter status. In May last year I commented in this newspaper on the then newly published skills bill. My conclusion […]

Is the Teaching Excellence Framework useful – or just another audit burden?

FE providers already evidencing excellence might not need another framework, writes Stephen Corbett The introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for higher education has created another mechanism of reviewing FE providers. This, in addition to existing audit mechanisms, such as Ofsted, does raise a question: is it really useful to layer “quality audits” on to […]

Focus on adult education is promising – but lacks ambition

It is also surprising the levelling up white paper has so little to say on green skills, write Aveek Bhattacharya and Amy Norman For those of us who have been following the government’s skills and post-18 education policy, the levelling up white paper was very familiar. We knew many of the key announcements already: local […]

Elite sixth forms: is there room for optimism?

Let’s have ‘elite sixth forms’ for hospitality, catering, caring and so on, writes Ben Gadsby My New Year’s resolution was to be more optimistic. New Year’s resolutions are always harder to keep in February, and it’s not helped by this week’s announcement of “specialist sixth-form free schools”. According to the government, these are “to ensure […]

Disabled students are still being segregated within FE institutions

Funding to support SEND learners is being used to separate them from peers, writes Simone Aspis You may or may not know, but this government has signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is an international treaty setting out disabled people’s human rights. In particular, Article 24 sets […]

Introducing… Simon Parkinson

Simon Parkinson, chief executive and general secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association, has been a lifelong learner himself. He tells Jess Staufenberg why a ‘community learning centre’ in every town must be delivered on now Simon Parkinson, chief executive and general secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), took over at a time of relative […]

Switching off Treasury cash for apprenticeships is a big mistake

Many of the same problems plague the apprenticeships system as a decade ago. We need a big review, writes Tom Bewick This week, the Treasury switched off the £3,000 incentive scheme to boost England’s apprenticeships during the pandemic. That’s a real pity. Because by all accounts, the scheme had been an incredibly successful way of […]