Author: Nick Linford

The Association of Colleges (AoC) maintained its support for allowing member colleges to recruit unqualified lecturers, despite some college principals and other senior leaders joining a campaign to reverse the government policy. The Further Education Teachers’ (England) Regulations 2007 requirement for teaching qualifications was scrapped under legislation published by the government in August. The AoC […]

Hundreds of Elmfield Training staff could still be in the dark about their futures more than a week after it announced that directors had “taken steps to protect the company through an administration process”. As FE Week went to press there had been no further public statement from the firm, thought to have more than […]

A Lancashire-based training provider has been stripped of its £2.5m Skills Funding Agency contract following a damning Ofsted grading and monitoring visit. Training for Travel (TfT) an independent provider offering workplace training in the travel sector to more than 2,000 learners, was deemed inadequate across the board by the education watchdog, following an inspection in […]

The Skills Funding Agency will not remove City College Coventry’s Notice of Concern, despite Ofsted ruling it had made “reasonable progress” since its damning grade four inspection result. The college received inadequate ratings across the board when it was inspected in March, but a monitoring visit carried out last month by the education watchdog found […]

The Department for Education (DfE) has rejected calls by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) for a huge expansion in family learning to be paid for with Pupil Premium cash. A Niace report spelling out the benefits for disadvantaged children, parents and carers of rolling out extra family learning schemes across the country […]

Figures released this morning show just 239 loans for apprenticeships have been applied for  since the scheme began — 162 in September. The figures are dramatically below government forecasts, in which around 25,000 applications for apprenticeship loans were expected this academic year (by July 31, 2014). Provisional figures for the last academic year (ending July 31, 2013), before 24+ advanced learning […]

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has been hit with further criticism over “serious difficulties” faced by colleges because of delays in the release of critical new software. Lynne Sedgmore, 157 Group executive director, has written to the SFA today to add her voice to growing sector concerns about the wait for new programmes that generate the […]