Nick Linford | FE Week

The Budget — a quick checklist for colleges

A new apprenticeship levy for large employers stole the Budget show yesterday as far as FE is concerned, but Julian Gravatt gives a wider view — while also looking at that levy issue. There is a vast amount of official information about the summer budget. Here are the key points — Chancellor George Osborne presented the […]

Guiding the way to better skills policy

The Skills Commission added the 68-page Guide to the Skills System to its growing library of sector-related reports as it was launched at the House of Lords yesterday. Commission co-chair Dame Ruth Silver outlines why the guide was needed and what she hopes it will achieve. The Guide to the Skills System has come from a place […]

Clock ticks down to start of Team UK’s Brazilian WorldSkills adventure

The clock is well and truly ticking with 880 hours to go before the UK’s top apprentices jet off to Brazil to take on the best of the rest at WorldSkills 2015 — and FE Week and City & Guilds want to wish them all the very best in the quest for golden glory. Yes, […]

Professor Wolf calls for all employers to pay apprenticeship levy as she rejects Conservative manifesto funding plans

A leading government vocational education adviser today warned the government would have to make all employers pay a levy to fund apprenticeships growth. Professor Lady Alison Wolf (pictured above), author of the 2011 review of vocational education, outlined her plans in a new report despite Conservative manifesto commitments to fund extra starts by switching classroom-based […]

‘Resource FE colleges properly to deliver higher level technical skills’

Responding to Lady Alison Wolf’s report — Heading for the precipice: can further and higher education funding policies be sustained? — Anne Constantine says skills policy is on a roller-coaster ride and calls for the government to resource FE colleges properly to deliver higher level technical skills. Alison Wolf is a highly respected academic and […]

Pensions write-off in EFA deal to shed cash-strapped college

The government paid a “one-off settlement” to write off the pension liabilities of a cash-strapped sixth form college as part of a deal to secure new owners and remove it from the public sector, FE Week can exclusively reveal. The Education Funding Agency (EFA) paid Hampshire County Council the undisclosed figure, believed to run into […]

Trailblazer apprenticeship figures revealed for first time

Official figures for the government’s Trailblazer apprenticeship scheme have been published for the first time — and they show around 300 starts in the first nine months. And it looks like the programme, in which new apprenticeship standards are being drawn up in consultation with employer groups, has also stalled with just 100 of these […]

Boles justifies apprenticeships favour

Skills Minister Nick Boles has justified the government’s emphasis on apprenticeships at the cost of adult education by pointing to research showing the programme had a 43 per cent greater return on public investment. Speaking on day one of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers annual conference [click here for the FE Week supplement] […]