Author: Jude Burke

UPDATED: To ensure we’re comparing like with like, the table has been updated to include provisional figures from August to December 2016, as the figures for this period in 2017 are still provisional. Figures for May to July are final for both 2016 and 2017. Apprenticeship starts were down 23 per cent in December on […]

Fourteen general FE and sixth-form colleges have received grants through a fund designed to support failing colleges to improve the quality of education and training. Details of the successful applicants to the two pilot rounds of the £15 million ‘Strategic college improvement fund’, along with the colleges that will support them, have been published by […]

Two providers managed to pull themselves up from grade four this week – one to ‘good’ and the other to ‘requires improvement’. But at the other end of the scale there was disappointment for another provider as it failed to improve from its previous ‘inadequate’ grade. Adult and community learning provider Essex county council boosted […]

FE champion Shakira Martin (pictured above) has survived a row over allegations of bullying to be re-elected as president of the National Union of Students. The incumbent scored a comfortable victory over challengers Momin Saqib and Sahaya James at this year’s annual conference in Glasgow. Ms Martin won in the first round with 50.9 per […]

The Federation of Awarding Bodies has announced skills and enterprise policy expert Tom Bewick as its new chief executive today. Mr Bewick (pictured above speaking at FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeships Conference last week) will take up the helm from May 1, replacing John McNamara, who has led FAB on an interim basis since the departure […]

A cash-strapped college that was forced to seek a merger after it became only the second institution to return to FE commissioner intervention has announced its new partner. Guildford College will become the fifth college member of Activate Learning later this year. John Denning, Guildford’s governing body chair, said the partnership was “very good news” […]

An ex-chief executive of a training provider and two of her former colleagues have been sentenced to a total of more than 10 years in prison for defrauding a college and a private provider out of almost £460,000. Joanne Mounter, Paula Bolan, Kym Adrian Norman, who all worked for Team Wearside, were each convicted for […]

The second wave of strike action by University and College Union members has begun, in an ongoing dispute over pay. Staff at five colleges or groups – four in London and one in the Midlands – have walked out for two or three days this week in protest at a one-per-cent pay offer from the […]

The chair of the Commons education select committee has urged the government to “deliver” on its election promise to cut travel costs for apprentices. Robert Halfon made the call in his speech on the final morning of FE Week’s Annual Apprenticeships Conference in Birmingham. “In its manifesto the government pledged to help apprentices with transport […]