Nick Linford | FE Week

Featured: Harrow helps Faye on road to Rio

Paralympic athlete Faye McClelland is being backed all the way to Rio 2016 by her former college, with the current crop of students also reaping the benefits of a sponsorship deal, writes Billy Camden. Four-time World Paratriathlon Champion and three times European Champion Faye McClelland will have Harrow College partly to thank if she wins […]

Agency under fire for refusing to list changes to quals

A college strategic funding manager has hit out at the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) for refusing to publish a list of which qualifications have lost full funding through a widely-criticised consultation. The review, which ran from February 10 to 29, requested views on plans to end full-funding ‘core’ entitlement for up to 524 full level […]

Fears over lack of assessment organisations

Concerns have been raised over delays with government approval of apprentice assessment organisations (AAOs) for Trailblazer apprenticeship standards after just 13 were cleared. The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) first began taking on submissions to their new Register of Apprenticeship Assessment Organisations (RoAAO) in March last year. But FE Week has found that despite 88 apprenticeship […]

Fall in number of employers posting apprenticeship vacancies

Government figures showed a 6 per cent fall in employer numbers posting apprenticeship vacancies in the same week it admitted to delaying the launch of a service it hopes will improve the situation. Skills Funding Agency (SFA) and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) data published on Tuesday (April 5) showed that 23,800 employers […]

Movers and Shakers: Edition 169

Ben Blackledge has been appointed as the director of education at WorldSkills UK, the organisation that oversees the selection process for the British WorldSkills team. Mr Blackledge, who was previously head of education and development, joined the organisation in April 2014. He was previously at the Skills Funding Agency, where he was responsible for establishing […]

The great college merger ‘rush’

> Exclusive analysis finds potential for 15 mergers in 2016 > Union warns of time needed for meaningful consultation Bury College is in talks over a potential merger with a nearby university, becoming one of up to 15 mergers involving 32 institutions across the country. Bury is expected to launch a consultation into plans to merge […]

National curriculum should end at 14, House of Lords says

A House of Lords report into social mobility has called for the national curriculum to stop at age 14 rather than 16. The document by the Lords Social Mobility Committee, called ‘Overlooked and Left Behind: improving the transition from school to work for the majority of young people’, concluded that a new 14–19 transition stage […]

Annual survey: Power to the people? Or a ruse to disguise further spending cuts?

CLICK HERE TO COMPLETE The third annual FE Week and Policy Consortium FE and Skills Survey 2016. Devolution and localism are the Government’s latest big ideas for education and skills — backed up with a rhetoric that speaks of power going to localities, institutions and professionals. The Policy Consortium wants to test the FE sector’s […]