Author: Nick Linford

Student leader Joe Vinson has been given a seat on the director’s board of the Education and Training Foundation (ETF) after talks to ensure top-level learner representation. Mr Vinson, vice president for FE at the National Union of Students (NUS), takes the post despite initial ETF board plans in which learners did not feature. However, […]

Ofsted inspectors have been issued new guidance on judging colleges’ provision of independent careers guidance. According to the education watchdog, its revised handbook for inspectors visiting FE providers has undergone “minor clarifications” in areas like good practice visits, re-inspection monitoring visits and the reporting process. And it has also seen the introduction of a section […]

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock has apologised for the Skills Funding Agency’s (SFA) new payment software fiasco after initially seeming to suggest the problem was down to providers’ “own internal management information systems”. Mr Hancock said he took “full responsibility” for the disruption caused to providers trying to calculate how much government cash they were due. […]

The Department for Education (DfE) is facing a second National Audit Office probe, with efforts to increase participation in education and skills among England’s 16 to 18-year-olds set to come under the spotlight. The DfE’s Education Funding Agency had already been under investigation since June last year by the audit office, which has been looking […]

The FE loans system could lead to a drop in learner numbers of up to 18 per cent, a thinktank has suggested. Research by New Economy predicts the number of 24-plus learners in skills training in Greater Manchester will fall by between 15 and 18 per cent in the wake of the introduction of advanced […]

Colleges will be hit by a controversial funding rate cut for 18-year-olds far worse than school sixth forms, a much-anticipated government impact assessment has revealed. The report on plans to reduce the full-time funding rate for 18-year-old learners to 17.5 per cent less than 16 and 17-year-olds was published by the Department for Education today — […]

Skills Minister Matthew Hancock has laid the blame for the Skills Funding Agency’s new payment software fiasco on providers’ “own internal management information systems”. He claimed providers were at fault as they struggled to work out what they are owed for delivery of education and training — calculated with the agency’s new and troubled funding information […]