Author: Nick Linford

The government has announced it will be extending the traineeship programme to cover 19 to 24-year-olds as part of today’s spending review. Traineeships, which combine work experience placements with maths, English and employability training, are set begin in August for 16 to 19-year-olds. A government spokesperson has told FE Week the extension to 24-year-olds will also […]

The government plans to revise health and safety red tape to make it easier for employers to take on work experience students. In an open letter to employers, Ministers Mark Hoban, Vince Cable, Matthew Hancock, Oliver Letwin and Michael Fallon committed to ending bureaucracy that might have put employers off offering experience to young people. […]

More than £6m of Skills Funding Agency cash was written off last year, an increase of nearly 50 per cent on the previous year. The agency’s annual report and accounts show a 43 per cent increase, £1.871m, in its losses for the 2012/13 academic year. The overall loss of £6.192m was largely accounted for by […]

Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw has launched a scathing attack on the FE and skills sector, branding success rates among colleges as “palpable nonsense”. Speaking at Westminster’s Church House on Thursday, he reissued his call — originally made at the time of the education watchdog’s annual report in November — for the government to “shine […]

Governors’ clerks have been assured that their training will continue after the Learning and Skills Improvement Service (LSIS) closes at the end of next month. Sir Geoff Hall, interim chief executive of the Education Training Foundation, which will take over from LSIS, said there was “no basis for thinking the clerks’ course won’t continue”. Clerking […]

The former head of FE and skills investment at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is to lead a review of college governance. Dr Susan Pember, who retired from the civil service just over two months ago, has taken up the post of governance review adviser at the Association of Colleges. Her first […]

A teenage student was suspended from a college in Yorkshire after claiming she was raped and sexually assaulted by fellow learners, jurors at Hull Crown Court have heard. Three men are accused of abusing the woman, in her late teens, on campus at Bishop Burton College, in East Riding, in September. She claimed all three […]