Nick Linford | FE Week

BREAKING: First official apprenticeship levy figures show a 61% fall in starts

Total apprenticeship starts for May, June and July fell a staggering 61% compared to the same period last year. Provisional figures published by the DfE this morning, as part of the Statistical First Release, include the apprenticeship starts after the levy system began on the 1 May. All apprenticeship starts from May (with the exception of […]

Ofsted watch: A ‘good’ week for FE as providers maintain grade twos

There was good news across the FE sector last week as both providers with reports published maintained their grade two standards. Birmingham’s Gordon Franks Training was congratulated for taking “very effective action” to reverse a decline in the numbers of apprentices achieving their qualifications in 2015/2016. The independent learning provider delivers short study programmes to […]

Milton in the middle

Sat at the front of a breakfast event, I was witness to a refreshing account from a skills minister from whom we’d not really heard since June. On the morning of the third day of the Conservative conference, Anne Milton was speaking at her fifth fringe event. Freed from the shackles of civil servant minders, […]

Somerset provider reopens courses after major AEB increase – but it’s still £1m short

A large community learning provider in Somerset has reopened courses today after the government granted it substantial extra emergency funding, but warned that it has no “long-term solution”. Somerset Skills & Learning, which teaches around 10,000 students and employs around 200 staff, received the good news it had been hoping for on Friday – that […]

Labour conference: Corbyn to tackle automation jobs threat with free FE

Jeremy Corbyn will pledge to tackle the threat to jobs from automation by offering free tuition for all FE courses, in his closing speech to the party conference. The Labour leader will tell delegates that the country needs to harness lifelong education in order to face down the challenge of robotics that may well make […]

Grenfell community rage over college sell-off

Leaders of a college that sold its main campus to make way for housing ahead of a planned merger have been shouted down and slow-clapped at a heated public meeting. The site on Wornington Road, one of Kensington and Chelsea College’s two main campuses, was sold for £25.3 million to the Royal Borough of Kensington […]

Revealed: How to get the DfE Institute of Technology kite-mark

UPDATE: The Department for Education has now confirmed they’ve published documents launching the IoT invitations on the lep network website. You can access them here. After more than two years and three Skills Ministers since the Institutes of Technology (IoT) concept was announced, FE Week can exclusively reveal the “process and timeline” ahead of […]

ESFA row-back on plans to increase apprenticeship performance threshold

The government has today scrapped plans to increase by three percentage points the apprenticeship minimum standard achievement threshold. The minimum standard is an important performance measure as the Education and Skills Funding Agency “monitors delivery against that minimum standard, which could trigger intervention to support improvement”. The ESFA: “calculate how many of the apprenticeships or […]

IfA interviewing chief executive candidates

Interviews for a permanent chief executive at the Institute for Apprenticeships will at last begin later this month, finishing in October. The hunt for a full-time successor to Peter Lauener began way back in April, with a closing date of May 22 for applications. But the IfA turned to headhunters in July after failing to […]