Nick Linford | FE Week

College staff plan December strike over pay

Further education colleges in England are set to be hit by staff strikes over pay early next month. Members of the University and College Union (UCU) are expected to take industrial action on Tuesday, December 3. More than two-thirds (71 per cent) of UCU members who voted backed strike action after employers offered a pay […]

Ofsted clash on work experience

Further education leaders clashed with Ofsted over whether students needed work experience outside of their colleges. The exchange took place during a packed debate at the Association of Colleges annual conference on November 20, chaired by FE Week editor Nick Linford and sponsored by NCFE, on new study programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds. Panelist Asha […]

Skills Show 2013 souvenir edition

Download your free copy of the FE Week 16-page Skills Show souvenir supplement, sponsored by City & Guilds. Click here to download (14 mb) The supplements includes all the gold, silver and bronze medalists as well as a winners league table for the top 12 organisations (results supplied by WorldSkills UK).

Powerful new FE Commissioner announced

A former principal and ex-president of the Association of Colleges has been appointed as the government’s first FE Commissioner. Dr David Collins CBE, also a former interim chief executive of the Learning and Skills Improvement Service, will take the new troubleshooter post which comes with the power to call for the closure of failing colleges. […]

Two big employers hit Ofsted low

Two big name employers have been hit with damning grade four Ofsted inspection results. InterContinental Hotels Group Services Company (IHG) and G4S Care & Justice Services (UK) Ltd and were both branded inadequate across the board by the education watchdog in inspection reports published this month. IHG, which incorporates Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn among […]

Hancock, Whitehead and the £40bn employer spend claim

Is the claim, most recently made in the Whitehead Review, that employers in England spend £40bn on training true, asks Mick Fletcher. Ministers and government officials increasingly quote a figure of ‘more than £40bn’ as the amount spent by ‘employers’ on training. The implicit and sometimes explicit comparator is the £2.7bn spent by the Skills […]

Whitehead’s bonfire of the quals

Around 95 per cent of the adult vocational market’s 19,000-plus qualifications could be axed under radical proposals to “de-clutter the system,” FE Week can reveal. The move, put forward by BAE Systems group managing director Nigel Whitehead in a review requested by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock, would leave just “hundreds” of qualifications. Mr Whitehead’s report, […]

Training provider under investigation

A London-based training provider is under its second investigation from the same awarding body following complaints from learners. Bright Assessing, which provides qualifications for unemployed people who want to re-enter the workplace, is under the spotlight of NCFE (formerly the Northern Council for Further Education) once again. The provider boasts a pass rate of between […]

Hawk swoops for a grade one

The 14-month wait for an outstanding independent learning provider (ILP) under Ofsted’s current common inspection framework is over. The education watchdog visited Twickenham-based Hawk Training late in September and on November 1 issued it with a glowing, grade one inspection result. It was the first ILP to achieve the feat under Ofsted’s latest inspection regime […]