Jess Staufenberg | FE Week

Do you know how to support a student with a recent autism diagnosis?

As a member of staff with Asperger’s Syndrome, I have first-hand experience of the kind of support that can really help, writes Harry Empsall I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome in 1999 at the age of four. My journey hasn’t been an easy one because along the way I have encountered ignorance and bullying. But […]

The funding consultation doesn’t tackle our biggest challenges – but there’s hope

FE desperately needs simplified funding lines but this consultation must go further, writes Marguerite Hogg It didn’t seem like the best time of year to launch a government consultation when most of the college sector was trying to get a summer break. However, the Department for Education’s second funding and accountability consultation launched at the […]

Adult literacy must be top of the new PM’s despatch box

Changes in government policy and funding in the last decade have reversed previous positive trends, writes Robert Glick We should acknowledge the chronic low levels of adult literacy, which ranks the UK below average in the OECD – especially since Friday was international literacy day. Resolving this challenge offers the new prime minister a way […]

The future is digital – but not exclusively so

Technology will help us improve assessment for certain courses and groups of pupils, writes Jo Saxton, but we won’t be drinking the digital Kool-Aid I’m always telling my teenage children to get off their phones. Yet, however determined I might be that they actually talk in person to one another and their friends, I also […]

A one-size-fits-all approach to assessment undermines equity and diversity

We need assessment settings and systems that give students what they need based on a careful and methodical attention to their circumstances, writes Jeff Greenidge When students come from various origins, experiences, and perspectives, it is impossible for them to all have the same needs. Equality has not worked. On the surface it appears to […]

The Future of Assessment

A free FE Week and Schools Week supplement in partnership with NCFE, diving into assessment reform

So it’s GCSE results day – but where are BTEC results?

As thousands of students celebrate results today, another cohort feel forgotten – and not for the first time, writes Alice Barnard There is one key question since last week’s results. Where is the data on BTEC results? The full suite of BTEC results have still not been released and we can only imagine the uncertainty […]

We are working with a fraction of the prisoners we could be

The next prime minister must take radical action on prison education as evidence shows education providers face multiple barriers, writes Peter Brammall “While talent is spread equally across our country, opportunity is not. Levelling up is a mission to challenge, and change, that unfairness. Levelling up means giving everyone the opportunity to flourish.” So said […]

T Level results are welcome but need further scrutiny

Almost a third of T Level students did not receive their university offer which merits closer investigation, writes Lisa Morrison Coulthard We are delighted to see the results for the first three T Levels in construction, digital and education and childcare. They offer the first insights into the impact of the government’s flagship technical alternative […]