Author: Paul Offord

The written response from apprenticeships minister Robert Halfon to an open letter, complaining about the Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers’ selection process, wrongly claimed that there are no ‘inadequate’-Ofsted rated providers on it.  Team leader and assessor at Acacia Training, Anne-Marie Morris, wrote the open letter expressing her sense of injustice – as published in […]

Allocation worth up to £440m for delivering apprenticeship training to non-levy employers have been delayed by the Skills Funding Agency, FE Week can reveal. It is understood that everyone who applied for the non-levy funding has been sent a notification on the government’s Bravo e-tendering portal – seen by FE Week – confirming the delay. It […]

Spending priorities for 2017-18 have been set out by minister Robert Halfon in the annual Skills Funding letter. The letter from the skills and apprenticeships minister to Skills Funding Agency boss Peter Lauener has just been uploaded onto gov.uk. There are no surprises in terms of spending plan, with the £1.5bn commitment to support participation […]

A former Ofsted ‘outstanding’ studio school has announced it will stop recruiting from age 14 and only offer provision for 16 to 19-year-olds from 2018/19. Rye Studio School, in East Sussex, wrote to parents to inform them of the conversion to a sixth form centre last week. It will become the 16th institution of its […]

The Skills Funding Agency has launched a new “mystery shopper” scheme to find out how prepared providers are for the new apprenticeship reforms. The announcement was made in the online SFA Update just uploaded onto gov.uk. It said: “To help us understand how prepared providers are for the new apprenticeship reforms, we are carrying out […]

Today’s spring budget has been hailed as a “breakthrough budget for skills” as chancellor Philip Hammond confirmed major extra investment for technical education. The measures for FE and skills announced today – but revealed by FE Week on Sunday – include an additional £500 million a year for 16- to 19-year-old technical students and the […]

A key meeting that the Skills Funding Agency was supposed to hold today, to reach final decisions on which providers will be allocated a non-levy employer funding allocation, has been cancelled. FE Week has also learned that no date has been set, for when this will be rescheduled. The Skills Funding Agency was due to […]