An Essex-based nursery group is celebrating a perfect sweep of Ofsted judgments.
Seymour House’s apprenticeship academy received ‘outstanding’ grades across the board in a report published today following its first full inspection.
The employer began directly training its own staff in February 2023. It had 47 apprentices on the level 3 early years educators standard working across 10 nurseries in Essex and one in Hertfordshire at the time of Ofsted’s visit in July.
Inspectors lauded the “highly positive attitudes” of apprentices who “take pride in their work”, show “exemplary” personal and professional behaviour and have high attendance to teaching sessions.
Apprentices also “quickly become important members of their workplace teams” and develop “valuable knowledge and skills and strategies to help them work inclusively with children and families in their settings”.
Seymour House’s leaders were praised for having “high expectations” and “ambitions” for apprentices. Bosses ensure that their apprentices are “nurtured and receive a high-quality training experience that is designed around the needs of their specific early years settings”.
This is reflected in “high” achievement rates.
Emma Price, head of apprenticeships at Seymour House, said: “We are absolutely thrilled to achieve outstanding across the board in our first Ofsted inspection.
“Our apprentices work incredibly hard and are truly passionate about giving children the best start in life. This result reflects their dedication, as well as the wonderful support provided by our tutors, assessors and nursery teams.”
Ofsted praised Seymour’s “wide range” of enrichment opportunities, which apprentices “relish”, such as exploring healthy eating with specialist caterers, visiting forest school settings and supporting local charities.
Leaders were lauded for ensuring that staff are “knowledgeable and experienced”, while expert tutors use a “wide range of teaching strategies very effectively to make lessons interesting and informative”.
The strategic board also have an “excellent understanding of the strengths and areas for improvement of the provider” and give “effective challenge” to leaders.
A Seymour House spokesperson said this was a “milestone” moment for the nursery. Price added: “We’re proud to offer a programme that inspires and develops aspiring early years educators, and we’re delighted that Ofsted has recognised the positive impact this is having.”
The handover of the administration of teachers’ pensions to new provider Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been delayed to next summer, the Department for Education has confirmed.
But the DfE has now confirmed to FE Week the final handover has been pushed back to “summer 2026”.
Its spokesperson would not explain the reason for the delay, nor give further details, but said it was “vital that after almost thirty years of running the Teachers’ Pension Scheme, Capita’s handover to Tata Consultancy Services, is a smooth one.
“The change in handover date will not impact any pensions or benefit entitlements, and we continue working with both providers to ensure current and retired teachers remain protected in this process.”
The DfE previously said it would “transition” the TPS to Tata over two years beginning in October 2023, before the new contract began in October this year.
Firm aims to ‘digitalise’ TPS
Capita took over the scheme in 1996, before being re-appointed in 2011 under an £80 million contract. The company was then given a three-year, £32 million extension in 2018, and a further four-year extension in 2021, worth £60 million.
After Tata was announced as the successful bidder in 2023, the firm’s president for financial products and platforms, Vivekanand Ramgopal, said it was “delighted” to partner with the DfE to “digitally transform” the administration of the TPS.
“Enhanced customer service has been the cornerstone of our platform’s value proposition to clients in the UK pensions industry,” he said at the time.
The DfE said at the time the new contract would “provide a more automated, digitalised and personalised service to our members and employers”.
This included providing “enhanced” access to data and an “improved ability” to self-service pension processes.
A college in Cumbria has appointed a new principal ahead of the next academic year.
Jason Turton has taken the helm at Kendal College following the retirement of Kelvin Nash who held the post for seven years.
The college said Turton brings “extensive experience” in both further and higher education leadership, with a “proven track record of driving improvement, forging powerful partnerships, and embedding innovation across institutions”.
Turton joins from Barking and Dagenham College where he spent six years in leadership roles, with the last four as deputy principal for curriculum and quality.
Prior to that he worked at Preston College for 15 years before holding roles at Havering College of Further and Higher Education and Salford City College.
Kendal College was judged ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted at its most recent full inspection in 2023. It employs over 300 people and holds a ‘good’ financial health rating.
Its student population includes over 1,500 16-to-19-year-olds, almost 1,000 apprentices, over 50 higher education students and more than 850 adult learners.
Kendal College chair, professor Rob Trimble, said: “Following an extensive national search and a field of exceptionally strong candidates, Jason stood out as the leader who could truly take Kendal College to the next stage of its journey.
“His vision, expertise, and ability to connect strategy with community impact make him the ideal person to lead our college into the future.”
Turton added: “Kendal College is already a vital and respected part of the region, with a proud history and a clear mission. My focus will be on building on these strengths—enhancing our partnerships, embracing innovation, and ensuring every learner leaves with the skills, values, and self-belief to make a real difference in their chosen path.”
Funding for eight “youth guarantee” pilot programmes designed to tackle the rising youth NEETS crisis has been extended into 2027.
The programmes, dubbed “trailblazers”, are testing a range of initiatives aimed at reducing youth inactivity and unemployment in eight devolved English regions.
It means that the programmes launched in Spring but only funded until March 2026 will now continue until March the following year.
News of the funding extension comes as new Office for National Statistics figures revealed that 948,000 young people aged 16 to 24 years old were estimated to be not in employment, education or training (NEET).
The “stubbornly” high figures for January to March this year show a 0.3 per cent increase on the previous quarter, caused by an estimated 25,000 increase in young women classed as NEET.
Work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said: “This government will not stand by while so many young people are not in education or training – robbing them of their potential and our country of its future.
“The extra £45 million in funding I have announced today will help us ensure that no young person will be left behind as we unlock economic growth and secure prosperity for all under our Plan for Change.”
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said the schemes, all of which are run by mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority, will “pave the way” for the national rollout of a youth guarantee that will ensure all 18 to 21-year-olds are “earning or learning”.
However, the government is yet to confirm when a national youth guarantee programme may begin.
The eight youth “trailblazer” areas are located in Liverpool, West Midlands, Tees Valley, East Midlands, West of England, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough, and two in London.
Although the funding is being made available for the same areas, the government did not confirm whether it would continue to fund the same schemes or seek to fund new initiatives.
Lizzie Crowley, senior skills adviser at the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), welcomed the announcement but said “bolder action” is required.
She added: “The latest NEET figures show no improvement, with stubbornly high numbers persisting.”
The youth guarantee trailblazer programme was announced in November last year, alongside the government’s Get Britain Working white paper, and officially launched in May this year.
Initiatives being funded in the 2025-26 financial year include Kickstart-style paid work placements, tailored support for care leavers, and “enhanced destinations tracking” systems to gather extra information on 17 to 19-year-old school and college leavers.
Each area has been allocated £5 million, with the remaining £5 million being used to run a national evaluation to inform the government’s “future roll-out approach”, as well as potential “additional support” for local areas during the year.
Laura-Jane Rawlings, CEO of Youth Employment UK and chair of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough trailblazer, said: “I think it’s a good indication that we’re seeing continued funding, because we know that these programmes for some young people do need longer. You can’t just switch them off and expect them to be in a positive destination.
“But I worry that we don’t quite know what works and are committing to spending before we have a full picture.”
Education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “The number of young people who are currently not in education, employment or training is unacceptably high, which is why we’re determined to spread opportunity into all corners of the country.
“The Youth Guarantee is just one of the steps we’re taking to get young people into skilled work and training, with reforms to the apprenticeship system to direct more funding to young people, cutting red tape to make it easier to start or complete an apprenticeship, and introducing foundation apprenticeships to give young people a route into careers in critical sectors.”
This year’s GCSE results have once again laid bare a persistent contradiction: remarkable individual successes for adult learners on one hand, and stubborn system-level failures on the other.
At WM College, we’re celebrating the extraordinary achievements of our adult learners. In just 30 weeks, individuals – many of whom carried long-standing anxieties, challenging past experiences, and heavy responsibilities – embraced and conquered assessments that school-age students spend years preparing for. Some secured their target grades; others made giant strides in progress. Today, a young learner I spoke to said that he came into class not knowing how to add fractions, but he opened his envelope to a Grade 7. It’s a testament to their grit and motivation, and the tailored support we provide.
Yet despite WM College celebrating results that are double the national average, the national figures tell a sobering story. Nearly 40 per cent of all GCSE candidates failed to achieve a grade 4 in English today, and over 41 per cent failed to meet the same mark in maths – a rise on last year’s failure rates. For those aged 17 and up, the picture is starker: only 19.7 per cent passed English, and just 15.3 per cent maths. In effect, many adult resit learners remain trapped in a cycle of repeat attempts.
This “resit crisis” isn’t new. FE Week and others have raised the alarm, stating that repeatedly forcing learners into the same assessments with diminishing returns is demotivating – particularly when no robust alternatives or additional supports are in place.
Socioeconomic gaps remain entrenched too. Disadvantaged students, deprived of supportive learning environments during COVID lockdowns and beyond, are still significantly less likely to reach grade 5 in core subjects compared to their wealthier peers. While our colleges strive to fill these gaps with personalised teaching and pastoral care, the scale of the problem demands national-level action.
What’s more, rising numbers of resit entries – nearly 30 per cent for 16-year-olds and over 80 per cent for 17–19 year-olds in some subjects- are unsustainable and signal structural issues in how GCSEs are deployed and weighted.
Four policy shifts are urgently needed:
Introduce alternative pathways for adult learners: Rather than repeatedly resitting GCSEs, offer modular or vocationally oriented qualifications that recognise progress and competence, not just exam performance.
Rethink assessment models: For adult learners, we need flexible, less punitive assessment systems that focus on functional skills and confidence-building, not only high-stakes exams. Currently a lot of maths assessments test for language proficiency rather than an ability to solve a sum.
Target funding to tackle inequality: Areas most affected by historic deprivation need sustained investment and tutoring support. Policy discussions must extend beyond the pandemic-era rhetoric.
Make Functional Skills an employment standard: Functional skills qualifications, which focus on practical, day-to-day maths and English skills, should be recognised as the baseline employment standard. We already expect this of apprentices, so why not all employees? Employers need to be encouraged, or even required, to value functional skills not merely as an alternative to GCSEs, but as the essential qualification for workplace readiness.
At WM College, our learners have outperformed national averages despite their starting points because we commit resources, adapt creatively and refuse to let past failure define future success. Every learner who showed up and sat an exam this year rewrote a narrative of their own capabilities and they all deserve the right level of support to succeed.
If the government is serious about meeting its national skills and productivity targets, it cannot rely solely on young learners in schools. Adult learners – many retraining, reskilling, and filling critical workforce gaps – are essential to bridging this divide. Yet funding cuts, shrinking support programmes and an exam system that doesn’t account for their unique challenges risk undermining this potential. Without properly investing in adults who are returning to education, we will continue to see a disconnect between national ambitions and reality. Supporting these learners is not just a moral imperative; it is an economic necessity.
Innovate Awarding has appointed a new managing director following Charlotte Bosworth’s promotion to CEO of the Lifetime Training group.
Rob May, who previously held senior roles at City & Guilds Group and YMCA Awards, will take the reins at the apprenticeship assessment and awarding body in mid-September.
He replaces Bosworth who held the position for eight years. She took on the CEO role at Lifetime Group, which runs England’s largest apprenticeship training provider as well as Innovate Awarding, from David Smith earlier this year.
May has spent the last two decades of his career working in youth development and education.
He said: “I am thrilled to be starting this journey as the new managing director of Innovate Awarding. It has always struck me as a vibrant company and one that takes real pride in delivering high-quality, real-world learning solutions.”
Innovate Awarding has almost 200 staff. It assesses around 10,000 learners and awards 25,000 qualifications every year. It is one of the largest apprenticeship assessment organisations, assessing over 60 approved apprenticeships.
May added: “It’s a pivotal time for apprenticeship assessment. With the 2025 reforms bringing more flexibility and modular assessment, our priority will be to support and guide employers and training providers through these changes, ensuring we remain the trusted voice for businesses and apprentices alike.”
May led on business development strategy at City & Guilds for over seven years and spent three years as a director at YMCA Awards.
He recently held the position of chief executive officer at ABE, part of the Institute of Leadership and Management, for eight years.
He is also a governor at the Royal Agricultural University and has held numerous board positions including as a non-executive director at the Federation of Awarding Bodies.
Bosworth said: “We are thrilled to welcome Rob on board. His background in education and development of apprenticeship qualifications means he is uniquely placed to support the group’s mission to equip young people with the skills to help them reach their potential.
“I am looking forward to the next year of collaboration and partnership, ensuring we deliver high-quality assessments to meet the evolving needs of learners.”
Pass rates in GCSE maths and English resits have remained stable despite a spike in the number of post-16 students sitting the exams this summer.
Figures published this morning show that 17.1 per cent of the 206,732 learners aged 17 or older taking GCSE maths in England achieved at least a grade 4 – a marginal fall from 17.4 per cent last year which had a cohort 11 per cent smaller of 185,727.
It means the maths resit pass rate is still around 4 percentage points lower than the pre-pandemic level of 21.2 per cent.
For GCSE English, 20.9 per cent of the 175,118 post-16 students who sat the exam this summer achieved a grade 4 pass. This is the exact same proportion as 2024 which had a cohort almost a fifth smaller at 148,569. This pass rate is almost 10 percentage points lower than 2019.
The results, published by the Joint Council for Qualifications, mean there are over 35,000 more people who have gained their GCSE maths grade 4 or above after failing to do so at school, and over 36,500 in English.
Ofqual chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham said the data shows a “picture of great stability”, adding that the “increased number of entries doesn’t seem to have affected the performance” of resit students.
Boys overtake girls in maths
The gender gap in pass rates has flipped in post-16 GCSE maths. This year, 16.4 per cent of females achieved a grade 4 or above – falling from 18.2 per cent in 2024. Meanwhile, 17.8 per cent of males passed the subject this year, up from 16.6 per cent in 2024.
In English, 25 per cent of females reached at least a grade 4, which was a slight fall from 25.9 per cent in 2024. For males, 17.9 per cent obtained a pass, up marginally from 17.3 per cent the year before.
Older post-16 students, who are not subject to the government’s condition of funding rule, also continue to perform better than their younger peers.
Today’s data shows that 19.7 per cent (31,411) of students aged 17 to 19 passed GCSE English compared to 33.2 per cent (5,178) of learners aged 20 or older.
And for GCSE maths, 15.3 per cent (28,590) of young people aged 17 to 19 passed compared to 34 per cent (6,746) of 20-year-olds and above.
English resit entries will rise again
Colleges can expect a slight increase in their English resit cohorts next year, based on today’s results for 16-year-olds.
Pass rates for school leavers achieving a grade 4 in GCSE English and maths have fallen. This year, 29.4 per cent did not achieve a grade 4 in English, up from 28.8 per cent in 2024. In maths, 28.1 per cent did not achieve a grade 4, up very slightly from 28 per cent.
The very slight fall in the grade 4+ pass rate for 16-year-olds in maths is offset by a fall in the size of the cohort, so the number of students required to continue maths is roughly the same as last year, around 175,000.
There was also a decline in the size of the English cohort in schools, but the larger fall in the grade 4+ pass rate indicates a slight rise in the numbers required to continue post-16, up from around 181,000 to 186,000.
Will resit rules soon change?
Introduced in 2014, the government’s resits policy forces students who have not achieved a grade 4 pass in English and/or maths GCSE by age 16 to continue to work towards achieving these qualifications as a condition of their places being funded.
Students who achieve a grade 3 have to retake their GCSE, while students with a grade 2 or below can either take a functional skills level 2 or resit their GCSE.
The policy has split the sector since its inception, with some arguing it is a vital lifeline for young people who struggled at school, while others say that forcing students to repeatedly retake the exams is demoralising.
In 2018, then-shadow education secretary Angela Rayner vowed that a Labour government would scrap the resits policy.
The issue is currently being explored by Professor Becky Francis’ independent curriculum and assessment review.
Her interim report, published in March, said students who fail to pass GCSE English and maths at school should still be required to study the subjects in post-16 education – but with “greater nuance in measures”. Francis’ full report is due to be published this autumn.
Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said today’s results show that “once again the majority of students who retake GCSE English and maths in post-16 education under a government policy of mandatory resits continue to fall short of a grade 4 standard pass”.
“It is utterly demoralising for these young people and there has to be a better way of supporting literacy and numeracy. We urge the curriculum and assessment review to grasp this nettle,” he added.
The government’s fresh target of 2,000 more nursing apprenticeships has been described as “less ambitious” than pledges made when the Conservatives were in power.
In its “10 Year Health Plan for England”, published last month, the government pledged to recruit an extra 2,000 nursing apprentices over the next three years.
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) hopes the target will help improve career opportunities for people from working-class backgrounds and support people into healthcare roles “within their communities”.
The apprenticeship target has been welcomed as a “positive step” by health sector experts, who say the NHS has workforce shortages in the “tens of thousands”.
However, this appears to be less than a target set in the 2023 NHS long-term workforce plan, which aimed for apprenticeships to account for about 20 per cent of the 40,000 nursing training intake by 2028.
Nuffield Trust researcher Lucina Rolewicz said: “The commitment to add 2,000 extra nursing apprenticeships over the next three years should be welcomed, however this does represent a less ambitious commitment than that detailed in the previous long-term workforce plan – which aspired to almost 9,000 nursing apprenticeships by 2028/29.”
Between 2020-21 and 2023-24 academic years, annual starts on the level 6 registered nurse degree apprenticeship were between 2,200 and 3,400, according to Department for Education statistics.
Mandy Crawford-Lee, chief executive of the University Vocational Awards Council, agreed that the 2,000 new apprenticeships target is a “small contribution” while Dr Rocco Friebel, associate professor of health policy at the London School of Economics (LSE), called the figure “modest”.
The nursing apprenticeship pledge is the only apprenticeship training target revealed in the 10-year health plan, ahead of a “refreshed” long-term workforce plan expected later this year.
The refreshed workforce plan is expected to be “very different” to the 2023 version as staff in 2035 will be “better treated, more motivated, have better training and more scope to develop their careers”.
Target ‘not sufficient’?
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) head of students Lorna Mayles said: “The College welcomes alternate routes into nursing to address the immediate and future supply problems that continue to put patient care at risk.
“It must be recognised, however, that the apprenticeship route is not sufficient to solve workforce gap issues.
“The reality is that to recruit the highly skilled nurses we need at scale and speed, the government must deliver new investment in nursing education, in both apprenticeships and traditional degrees.”
The DHSC has been contacted for comment.
Despite concerns about nursing staff shortages, NHS statistics suggest nurse numbers in England are the highest in at least fifteen years and vacancy rates are the lowest in at least seven years.
Some newly qualified nurses have also reportedly struggled to find work in the NHS due to a hiring freeze and overseas recruitment.
There are about 25,600 vacancies of full-time equivalent nursing and midwifery posts in England – about six per cent of the total planned posts. This is the lowest rate since comparable statistics began in 2018, when the rate was about 12 per cent.
The overall number of nurses and health visitors working in the NHS is currently 368,000, a gradual increase from about 280,000 ten years ago.
Apprenticeship v university
Most experts also agreed that expanding the apprenticeship route into nursing is a “positive step” that offers an alternative to “traditional university-based training”.
Dr Friebel, at the LSE, said the route is a “realistic career option” for workers who want to avoid university debt or are unable to study full-time due to life circumstances.
“However, 2,000 additional places over three years is modest when considered against the backdrop of the challenges facing the NHS,” he added.
“We are dealing with workforce shortages in the tens of thousands, and demand for nursing services will only increase as the population ages and the burden of chronic disease grows.
“Apprenticeships will help, but they cannot be relied upon as a single solution. They should complement, not replace, other measures such as sustained investment in university-based nurse training, targeted international recruitment, and strategies to improve retention among the existing workforce.”
Crawford-Lee said some NHS trusts have “struggled” to make nursing apprenticeship degrees their primary training intake.
She added: “Challenges including managing the supernumerary status of apprentices, affording apprentice salary costs, funding the off-the-job learning requirement and backfill have all acted as a brake on the level of take up by NHS Trusts.
“One of the solutions to this has been the use of the nursing associate apprenticeship as a route into nursing for diverse groups that provides a stepping-stone to progress to the registered nurse degree apprenticeship after two years.”
AI is moving faster than any of us can comfortably keep up with. New tools emerge almost daily, each bringing opportunities for teaching and learning but also challenges for assessment, safeguarding and governance. No single college or individual can hope to stay on top of it all. That’s why communities matter.
In further education we face a uniquely broad set of stakeholders when it comes to AI. Teachers want to know how to use it to save time and support learning. Regulators and awarding bodies wrestle with the questions of integrity. Safeguarding teams need to understand risks to learners. IT departments are focused on security, and governors are asking about strategic implications, while learners need clear guidance on how to use it effectively and responsibly.
Work based learning adds further perspectives on the changing skills needed by employers. Each view is legitimate, but without spaces to share and work together the risk is fragmentation and duplication.
Communities of practice are uniquely placed to respond to this complexity. By bringing diverse voices together, they allow us to cut through the noise and focus on what really helps learners and staff. Over the past year, Jisc’s AI in FE community has demonstrated the power of this approach. Scores of staff from across the sector have been connecting, comparing notes and tackling common problems.
As an example, we brought together staff from nine colleges to explore how AI is reshaping assessment. We didn’t begin with a fixed outcome, but with shared questions about fairness, integrity and the skills learners need. Over several months, the group considered assessment from different angles – from design to learner AI literacy and wellbeing.
The result was a set of top tips structured around what staff can do before and after assessment. Before assessment: set clear expectations, design tasks that promote higher-order thinking, and create safe opportunities for learners to practise and reflect on their AI use. After assessment: approach suspected misuse with empathy, check understanding through multiple methods, and build in time to reflect on what worked well.
It is not a strict set of rules, but practical, adaptable guidance that colleges can tailor to their own context
The process behind this work is as valuable as the output. Because the guidance was shaped by practitioners across roles and institutions, it is trusted and grounded in reality. Staff can see their own concerns reflected and know it was not written in isolation.
This collaborative approach also means the guidance will not stand still. As tools evolve, so too will the advice. Communities create the conditions for living guidance: a resource that can be updated, debated and improved as the technology – and our understanding – develops. In a landscape moving as quickly as AI, that agility is vital.
The benefits go further. Communities reduce duplication by sharing solutions openly, so that every college does not have to reinvent the wheel. They help staff respond at speed without feeling isolated. And they give the sector a more confident, unified voice when engaging with policymakers or technology providers.
Most importantly, communities show us that we are not navigating these changes alone. At times it can be easy to feel overwhelmed, to believe we are always behind. But working together reveals the collective expertise and creativity that already exists across FE. By pooling that knowledge, we can not only keep pace but collaboratively shape how AI is used for the benefit of learners.
As AI continues to evolve, the role and importance of communities will only grow. They are how we make sense of change together, how we ensure diverse perspectives are heard, and how we turn uncertainty into practical guidance. If AI is going to reshape education, then communities are how we make sure it does so on our terms.
