Author: Pippa Allen-Kinross

Fears are growing for the future of a popular management apprenticeship as the government deliberates on whether to slash its funding by a third. The level four associate project management standard is in line to have its funding rates cut from £9,000 a year to £6,000, according to the Association for Project Management (APM) which […]

Twenty ‘insufficient’ apprenticeship providers have now been banned from taking on new starts as Ofsted’s scrutiny of new providers continues. Four new providers have been added to the barred list in the latest update to the register of apprenticeship training providers, published today, after making poor progress in at least one area monitored by the […]

Employers have used just under 14 per cent of their apprenticeship levy funds in the first 18 months since the policy was introduced, FE Week can reveal. Last month, skills minister Anne Milton revealed the total balance of employers’ apprenticeship service accounts was £2.7 billion as of the end of September.  In response to a […]

The proportion of learners taking management apprenticeships has doubled in the last two years, with just ten of the controversial standards now making up a fifth of all apprenticeship starts on standards. FE Week found that a single management-apprenticeship standard was responsible for a staggering 66 per cent of all level five starts on standards […]

Banning ‘insufficient’ new providers from recruiting apprentices may not be as simple as once thought, as confusion appears to surround the case of a private university.  BPP University, part of the global BPP Professional Education Group, was warned it was making poor progress in an early monitoring visit report of its apprenticeship provision from Ofsted […]

The high-profile boss of a college in financial crisis resigned from her post without accepting any financial payout, walking away from at least £130,000, FE Week can reveal. Dame Asha Khemka stepped down as principal of West Nottinghamshire College at the start of October. Her resignation came shortly after FE Week revealed the college had […]

The government has confirmed colleges will be expected to pay an extra £142 million a year in employer contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme. The increase comes into force in September 2019, but as this is half way through the financial year the Department for Education has estimated that colleges will have to pay £80 […]

Ofqual has launched a consultation into how best to regulate the government’s new digital skills qualifications, which will be provided for free to adults lacking in basic skills. The exam regulator’s proposals for the new qualifications include not setting any rules on the number of assessments required and implementing a single pass/fail grading model. All […]

The government has launched its Trip Advisor-style review tool to let employers rate apprenticeship providers, and Ofsted intends to use the data to inform inspections. The tool, called “what employers are saying”, allows employers who have registered apprentices on the apprenticeship service to feed back on specific aspects of their programmes. Employers rate training providers on […]