Nick Linford | FE Week

Prime Minister’s apprenticeships ‘troubleshooter’ taskforce officially unveiled

[slideshow_deploy id=’36007′] This is Prime Minister David Cameron’s new “troubleshooter” taskforce set to track government progress on its 3m apprenticeship starts by next parliament target. It contains eight MPs including Skills Minister Nick Boles and his predecessor Matthew Hancock, who is the Cabinet Office Minister and also chairs the group. They will be joined […]

Lewisham Southwark College loses employment tribunal case over blind worker’s access to software

Lewisham Southwark College discriminated against a blind employee by failing to make reasonable adjustments to help him do his job, an employment tribunal has ruled. It found, last week, that disability officer Michael Lambert (pictured above) had been put at a “substantial disadvantage” to his colleagues after the college refused to give him access to […]

Apprentice employers honoured at London awards ceremony

Apprentice employers have been honoured at a glitzy London ceremony at the Oxo Tower. The third national AllAboutSchoolLeavers Awards were judged using employee satisfaction surveys, with research on every aspect of young people’s working lives — from job satisfaction and career progression, to company culture and work-life balance. Nineteen awards were up for grabs on […]

Go for it Team UK! Our competitors for WorldSkills Brazil are announced

[slideshow_deploy id=’35870′] These are the 41 UK youngsters upon whose shoulders the hopes of a nation will rest at WorldSkills 2015 in São Paulo, Brazil, in less than two months. They were put through a gruelling four days of head-head competitions at a special selection event at Central College Nottingham and Burton and South Derbyshire […]

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Fetl chief executive Mark Ravenhall to step down after ‘unexpected expansion in role’

The chief executive of the Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) is standing down with his post having grown to “take much more of my time than I originally expected,” FE Week can reveal. The Fetl appointment of former National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) policy director Mark Ravenhall (pictured above) was announced in July last year, […]

Colleges put on colourful flower show of success

Budding gardeners from six colleges across the country took to the stage at the Chelsea Flower Show 2015. The show kicked off last week with a special visit from the royal family on Monday before competitions started the following day. And among the horticulture learner winners was Hadlow College’s floristry department who won a gold […]

Fall in number of young people not in education, employment or training

Latest official figures have shown the proportion of young people not in education, employment or training (Neet) in the UK during the first three months of this year was the lowest of any quarter in the last five years. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) report said that there were 943,000 16 to 24-year-old Neets during […]

All systems go for 3m apprenticeship starts target as government plans take shape

It’s all systems go to hit 3m apprenticeship starts as the government today revealed for the first time how it was aiming to hit the target. An email from deputy apprenticeships chief Jennifer Coupland (pictured below right), and seen by FE Week, tells how the government’s “most important and high profile commitment is to deliver […]