Author: Yasemin Craggs Mersinoglu

A sixth-form college in Blackburn is set to be the first of its kind to remove its Catholic status, FE Week understands. St Mary’s College, now in government “supervised status”, will make the move in order to secure a merger partner to survive after running into severe financial difficulty. Earlier this week, an FE Commissioner […]

The government has agreed to write off the loans for another group of learners left with no qualifications after their provider closed, despite a previous investigation that concluded they were still liable to make repayments. Questions have now been raised about the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) after it appeared to re-open their cases […]

Staff and students from four colleges brushed shoulders with royalty today as they picked up their Queen’s Anniversary Prizes in a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace. London South East Colleges, Dudley College of Technology, Tyne Coast College and Belfast Metropolitan College were among 22 education providers to receive the accolade from the Prince of Wales […]

A bank has pulled a cash-strapped college’s overdraft facility as the clock ticks for its survival – which rests upon a last-ditch merger. Southampton City College is currently operating on government bailouts but its 2018/19 accounts were signed off on a “non-going concern” basis and warn that it will run out of cash by October. […]

An MP has hit out at the proposed closure of a college in his constituency and is set to meet with FE Commissioner Richard Atkins to demand it stays open. The RNN Group is planning to shut its “under-utilised” campus in Dinnington by July. At least 40 full-time jobs are expected to be lost and […]

As the run-up to WorldSkills 2021 picks up pace, FE Week reporter Fraser Whieldon went behind-the-scenes at a Squad UK bootcamp to find out how we train our competitors for the international stage Nearly 120 skilled young people came from across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to Loughborough last weekend for their first bootcamp […]

More than half of all young learners who enrolled in September at ungraded merged FE colleges now find themselves studying at Ofsted grade three providers. FE Week analysed the performance of these mega-colleges ahead of the imminent publication of a grade three report for Capital City College Group (see here for full story). In total, […]

One college and one private provider lost their ‘outstanding’ grades in a mixed week for the FE sector. Gateshead College dropped two grades to ‘requires improvement’ due to poor leadership and management and apprenticeship provision, as reported by this newspaper last week. But its report, published today, shows it is still rated ‘outstanding’ in its […]