Nick Linford | FE Week

You’re fired! Lord Sugar could cut ties with DfE over apprentice champion role

The entrepreneur Lord Alan Sugar could be about to quit his role as the country’s apprenticeships champion after receiving no contact from government officials after six months on the job, FE Week can reveal. The businessman, best known for his role in the hit TV show The Apprentice, was appointed “enterprise tsar” by former prime […]

Apprenticeship funding ‘u-turn’ – but how far does it really go?

Despite the very public “U-turn” the government made on proposed apprenticeship cuts on Tuesday, funding is still due to be cut from key frameworks by up to 50 per cent, exclusive analysis by FE Week has shown. In August, this newspaper discovered that cuts proposed by the Department for Education would cause framework funding rates […]

Four changes in the apprenticeship announcements you need to know

This morning FE Week was the first to report that the Department for Education had released documents confirming the level of funding for apprenticeships from May 1, 2017. Click here. The three week consultation on the provisional proposals began on the August 12 and had 892 responses, but the government had feedback via other means including […]

Final levels of apprenticeship funding revealed

This morning the government released an update to their apprenticeship reform plans, including final levels of funding for new framework and standards starts from May 1, 2017. Click here to read. The latest information first appeared in a ministerial statement here, and follows a three week consultation on provisional plans that was published in August. Final funding levels announced […]

Apprenticeship standards without assessment organisations should not be approved for delivery

Dr Pember is absolutely right to be mad with the government for exposing apprentices to so much needless anxiety over unknown end point assessment organisations. And it is frankly absurd that a funding body is maintaining the list of approved awarding organisations, when we have a perfectly good watchdog that could and should do the […]

Area reviews: either publish guidance or extend timescales

DfE officials should be applauded, under the circumstances, for trying to support colleges as best they can by letting them see the area review guidance in draft form. I would like to encourage them to keep the sector as informed as they possibly can, as area reviews and apprenticeship reforms press on at breakneck speed. […]

Apprenticeship funding reforms: May 1, 2017 contingency coming?

There is a sad inevitability to the repeated delays to the unrealistic timetable for apprenticeship reforms. So much of the provisional detail is contested, and with a new minister in post grappling with plans, the situation won’t improve any time soon. As I wrote in a recent blog for NCFE, we haven’t given ourselves a […]

Mr Halfon, please correct the record

As editor of FE Week I’m used to skills ministers being economical with the truth. I’m used to questions going unanswered or hearing non-answers to the question being asked. What has come as a new surprise, though, is the new minister claiming in a DfE blog something that simply is not true. Essentially, he argued that […]

The AoC has a right to defend its members

The Association of Colleges is right to resort to legal action when defending its members from glaring government inconsistency. This should not be viewed as a waste of AoC money, as the secretary of state must be held to account. The DfE were rightly concerned about the destabilising effects that new smaller sixth forms have […]