Latest news from FE Week | FE Week

Budget 2024: What the chancellor announced for FE and skills

Chancellor Rachel Reeves delivered Labour’s first budget in almost 15 years this afternoon.

Here’s what was announced for FE and skills.

£300m for FE – but for what?

The headline funding announcement was a £300 million additional cash investment for further education.

But Treasury documents fail to say exactly what this funding is to be spent on or whether it will just be colleges that receive a slice of it.

Unions have been quick to say the funding should be used by colleges to match the 5.5 per cent school teacher pay rise for their staff, following this summer’s snub.

The Department for Education said colleges have “freedom to use the funding in the way that best suits their needs, and the government does not set their pay and conditions”.

It hasn’t however said how the £300 million will be distributed. The last additional cash injection for colleges was controversially funded through the 16 to 19 funding formula – meaning colleges with big adult provision missed out.

Colleges to get help with national insurance hike…

Reeves announced that an increase in employers’ national insurance contributions of 1.2 percentage points from April 2025 would raise around £25 billion as part of around £40 billion in tax increases.

Such a rise would likely cost colleges around £50 million a year, according to the Association of Colleges.

The Treasury has told FE Week that the Department for Education will get some extra money to help schools and colleges towards these costs.

However, the amount it will get and whether costs will be fully funded won’t be revealed until the spring.

…But private providers will be hit

Reeves also reduced the level at which employers start to pay national insurance (NIC) from £9,100 per year to £5,000 per year until 2028. Personal finance expert Martin Lewis estimated this will cost employers who pay it an added £615 per employee per year.

The chancellor also increased the employment allowance to £10,500 and removed the £100,000 employment allowance eligibility threshold for small businesses.

Ben Rowland, CEO of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP), said the NIC announcements were the biggest area of concern to small employers.

He said his membership body is “currently modelling this so we can work out how different-sized providers will be impacted”.

Minimum wage boosts

The budget announced an 18 per cent apprentice minimum wage rise to £7.55 an hour and national minimum wage increases for 18-20-year-olds by £1.40 to £10 an hour, effective from April 2025.

Reeves also confirmed a 6.7 per cent boost to the national living wage from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour. The AoC expects this will be an added £50 million cost to colleges.

Whilst the apprentice wage increase will “ease the burden” on their cost of living, the rise has sparked concern from sector leaders who have warned it might put off small businesses from taking on apprentices.

Apprentify’s director of education Dale Walker said: “Workers deserve to be paid the fair rate for the job but without adequate support for businesses this might make SMEs hesitant to hire apprentices.”

While businesses do not pay NIC on apprentices aged under 25, Stephen Evans, CEO of Learning and Work Institute, told FE Week today’s changes could still impact apprentices starting out in their career after completing education.

“Most apprentices are paid more than the legal minimum wage, though the rises in employer national insurance contributions are likely to lead to lower pay rises for them in future years,” he said.

England’s largest apprenticeship provider Lifetime Training said the changes to employer NIC threshold, the minimum wage rises and the strengthening of employment rights will cause “continuing instability” to employers it works with in the care, retail and hospitality sector.

CEO David Smith said: “We have to be realistic about the impact this is likely to have on recruitment and investment in the skills agenda.

“The pressure will also be felt within the ITP sector, facing the same pressures as our partners and compounded by no increases in course pricing.”

£40m for shorter and foundation apprenticeships

Treasury’s documents also show the government will invest £40 million to help deliver new foundation and shorter apprenticeships in “key sectors” as part of initial steps towards a reformed growth and skills levy, set to replace the apprenticeship levy.

Both initiatives were first announced at Labour party conference in September.

It’s not clear whether the £40 million will come from the current apprenticeships budget or is new funding.

The law currently states that apprenticeships must be a minimum duration of 12 months. The policy was introduced in 2012 but some have complained the requirement is too arbitrary as apprentices can become qualified in a shorter timeframe.

It is not yet clear how much shorter the government plans to make apprenticeship duration.

New foundation apprenticeships are expected to offer training to young people who are not ready to start at level two or three.

Labour teased plans to introduce a scheme similar to traineeships, scrapped by the previous government due to low take up, in June.

FE Week understands that unlike traineeships, foundation apprenticeships will be a paid job.

No further detail has been released on how the £40 million announced today will be spent.

More capital cash

Reeves also announced she would hand the DfE £6.7 billion in capital funding next year, a “19 per cent real-terms increase” on this year.

Of this, £950 million will be for “skills capital, including £300 million of new funding to support colleges to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estate”.

UKSPF gets ‘reduced’ lifeline

The UK Shared Prosperity Fund will be budgeted “at a reduced level” of £900 million next year.

UKSPF is a flagship Conservative post-Brexit policy that replaced European Union funding for social projects and employment schemes that was supposed to reach £1.5 billion by 2025-26.

But the Chancellor’s budget today said £900 million for next year will be a “transitional arrangement” to cover existing skills and business support schemes reliant on the fund in advance of “wider funding reforms”.

The government faced increasingly vocal concerns about the budget “cliff edge” schemes faced from March 2025, which threatened to derail many projects that had only recently been set up.

Henry Foulkes, policy and public affairs lead at the Employment Related Services Association said they are “pleased” to see the scheme continue, which will hopefully prevent “job losses and organisations closing down” in the employment sector.

UKSPF was designed to gradually increase in size between its launch in 2022 and 2025.

But complexity, cash delivery delays and rule changes have impacted many of the schemes it funds, according to metro mayors and a government evaluation.

LLE delayed again

The Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) has been delayed again (full story here).

Today’s budget pushed back the student application window and course start dates by 12 months but did not explain why.

Students now won’t be able to apply for an LLE student loan until September 2026 for courses starting in January 2027.

This is the second time the government has delayed its introduction.

£240m to ‘Get Britain Working‘

The government will soon publish a white paper setting out how it will spend £240 million on getting 2.8 million people back into work, partly by better signposting them to skills programmes.

The ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper will outline ways to tackle long-term sickness, support young people who are ‘not in education, employment, or training’ (NEET), and help people to develop their careers.

£240 million funding will be divvied out to mayoral combined authorities to “streamline” local services and 8 ‘trailblazer’ areas across England and Wales to test out early interventions of ill health.

Extra cash will be also given to existing programmes to create eight youth guarantee trailblazer areas which aim to support young people at risk of becoming NEET.

Devolution

From March next year, two ‘trailblazer’ combined authorities, West Midlands (WMCA) and Greater Manchester (GMCA), will be given a consolidated “single flexible pot” of funding to spend on their local priorities.

Devolved mayors say this will unlock more funding and extra flexibilities for their local skills provision.

In line with a ‘deeper devolution deal’ agreed with the government in 2023, WMCA and GMCA will have the first “integrated settlements” in 2025-26.

But due to its “unique devolution arrangement”, the Greater London Authority will fall behind the two trailblazers and only has a government commitment to “explore” how the capital could follow with equal flexibility in 2026-27.

Despite this, London Mayor Sadiq Khan called the budget “historic” and praised the government for “working with us here in the capital, not against us”.

Several other combined authorities are also set to follow the trailblazers with their own single settlement from 2026-27: Liverpool City Region, North East, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire.

The West Midlands believes the deeper devolution deal will equal “hundreds of millions of pounds” more for the region.

The mayoral combined authority will have to agree a “streamlined, overarching, single” accountability framework with the government that includes specific targets for five “pillars” including skills and net zero, and local growth and place.

This will mean the government should treat it as a “single government department” with certainty over funding agreed at each spending review.

Budget 2024: Lifelong learning entitlement delayed again

The lifelong learning entitlement has been delayed again.

Windows for student applications and course start dates for the flagship higher education scheme have been pushed back by a year in today’s Budget.

Applications were initially due to open in February 2025 for courses starting in September 2025.

In April, the previous government delayed opening the application window to September 2025 and course start dates to January 2026.

However students can now not apply for LLE funding until September 2026 for courses starting in January 2027.

Treasury documents published today do not explain the reasons for the delay.

“The government will deliver the lifelong learning entitlement, but will postpone its launch by one year. The LLE will launch in September 2026 for learners studying courses starting on or after January 1, 2027,” the Treasury said.

The scheme will, when launched, give students access to student loans to cover tuition and maintenance for higher education courses and higher technical qualifications between levels 4 and 6.

Its main selling point is the ability to access loan funding for shorter courses and modules worth up to £37,000.

The scheme was delayed in April to give the Student Loans Company more time to develop and test its systems.

This further delay will give the Department for Education more time to work out what courses can be delivered by higher education providers and how much they can charge.

It will also give independent training providers more time to register and gain approval from the higher education regulator, the Office for Students.

Today’s budget provides £10 million for the LLE in financial years 2027-28, 2028-29 and 2029-30.

Maintenance loans are another stand-out feature of the LLE, but no detail has emerged on what students will have access to, despite being announced in 2023.

Budget 2024: Extra £300m for FE

An “additional” £300 million will be handed to the further education sector next year, the chancellor has announced in today’s budget.

Details on exactly what this extra cash is earmarked for have however not been released in the Treasury’s budget documents. £300 million was the annual cost of increasing teaching hours for 16- to- 19-year-olds by 40 hours under the previous government.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed the funding boost while also announcing a £1 billion uplift for special educational needs as part of a £2.3 billion increase to the core schools budget to “support” the government’s pledge to hire thousands more teachers.

Budget documents state: “The government is committed to addressing skills challenges, which are holding back growth across the country, alongside supporting people into work. The government has already established Skills England to begin addressing these challenges.

“In the budget, the government is going further by providing an additional £300 million for further education in England, while increasing the core schools budget by £2.3 billion, which increases per pupil funding in real terms.”

The Treasury told FE Week that it will be for the Department for Education to decide what the £300 million can be spent on, including whether it should be used for teacher pay rises. DfE has been approached for comment (see end of article for update).

Schools got £1.2 billion of government cash over the summer to raise teacher pay 5.5 per cent, but colleges received nothing.

The Association of Colleges previously said it would cost the government £250 million to match the school pay award.

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said the £300 million announced today for FE “must be used to match the 5.5 per cent pay rise that schoolteachers received and help close the £9,000 pay gap”, adding that if pay doesn’t rise, colleges will “continue to haemorrhage staff and there will be no one left to train the workforce of tomorrow”.

Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, also claimed the additional £300 million will “enable colleges to match the 5.5 per cent pay settlement agreed for school teachers” following this summer’s funding snub.

AoC chief executive David Hughes said his organisation has started “detailed conversations” with the DfE to “understand the implications for colleges and will communicate more when we know more”.

National insurance hike

Employer national insurance contributions will increase by 1.2 per cent in April. The Treasury has told FE Week the Department for Education will get some extra money to reimburse colleges and schools for this rise, but can’t confirm whether costs will be fully funded until the spring.

The AoC estimates that the national insurance rise will hit college budgets by around £50 million. The membership body also calculates that national minimum wage increases will cost a further £50 million.

Independent training providers are unlikely to see any compensation for rising employer national insurance, which is the “biggest area of concern” from today’s budget for Ben Rowland, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP).

Rowland said: “We are currently modelling this so we can work out how different-sized providers will be impacted” but welcomed the £40 million for foundation apprenticeships and £950 million for skills capital.

More £ for capital and apprenticeship reforms

Reeves also announced she was giving the Department for Education £6.7 billion of “capital investment” next year, which she said was a 19 per cent real-terms increase on this year.

Of this, £950 million will be for “skills capital, including £300 million of new funding to support colleges to maintain, improve and ensure suitability of their estate”.

The Treasury’s documents also show the government will invest £40 million to help deliver new foundation and shorter apprenticeships in “key sectors” – initiatives announced at Labour party conference in September – as part of initial steps towards a reformed growth and skills levy, set to replace the apprenticeship levy.

Ministers have also decided to push back the launch date of the lifelong learning entitlement to January 2027.

[UPDATE: A day after the budget the DfE said in a blog that “colleges have freedom to use the [£300 million] funding in the way that best suits their needs, and the government does not set their pay and conditions”. The department later changed this wording to simply say the budget “allocated an additional £300 million to further education”, adding that “we’ll set out in due course how the funds are to be distributed”.

[The last additional cash injection for colleges was controversially funded through the 16 to 19 funding formula.]

Apprentice minimum wage to rise to £7.55

Apprentices will see an 18 per cent bump to the minimum hourly wage next year, the Treasury has announced.

Ahead of the autumn budget tomorrow, chancellor Rachel Reeves said that the apprentice wage will rise from £6.40 to £7.55 an hour from April 2025.

Reeves will also raise the national minimum wage for 18-20-year-olds by £1.40 to £10 – the largest increase in the rate on record.

The move appears to ignore an independent advisory body’s March recommendation that the government should link the apprentice hourly rate to the national minimum wage for over 18s during the first year of their apprenticeship.

Employers pay at least the apprentice minimum wage for apprentices aged 16-18, and for apprentices aged 19 or over in the first year of their apprenticeship. After their first year, apprentices aged over 19 should receive at least the national minimum wage, or the national living wage, depending on their age.

The Low Pay Commission (LPC) undertook a review into abolishing the apprentice minimum wage last year after hearing “widespread” concern that the “low” rate was discouraging people from taking apprenticeships. It recommended to keep the rate but link it to age to narrow the gap between the national minimum wage for apprentices and non-apprentices.

The Treasury also today confirmed a boost to the national living wage from £11.44 to £12.21 an hour, a 6.7 per cent increase. The rate applies to those aged 21 and over, after the age boundary was lowered last year from 23 to 21-years-old.

Last year, the apprentice minimum wage rose by 21 per cent from £5.28 to £6.40.

The government will deliver the 2024 autumn budget tomorrow afternoon – Labour’s first in almost 15 years.

Reeves said: “This government promised a genuine living wage for working people. This pay boost for millions of workers is a significant step towards delivering on that promise.”

Deputy prime minister Angela Rayner said: “Our changes will see a pay boost that will help millions of lower earners to cover the essentials as well as providing the biggest increase for 18–20-year-olds on record.”

A government spokesperson claimed the Department for Business and Trade estimate over 3 million workers will directly benefit from the 2025 national living wage increase, nearly 200,000 workers will benefit from the increase to the national minimum wage for 18 to 20-year-olds, and over 130,000 workers will benefit from the uplifts to the rate for apprentices and those aged under 18.

Minimum wage rates from April 1, 2025

	Per hour rate	Annual increase	Percentage increase
National Living Wage (21 and over)	£12.21	£0.77	6.7%
18-20-year-old national minimum wage	£10.00	£1.40	16%
16-17-year-old national minimum wage	£7.55	£1.15	18%
Apprentice rate	£7.55	£1.15	18%

Assessing Skills for Job-Ready Learners

Further education is at a pivotal moment, shaped by the growing skills gap. As industries evolve, employers are struggling to find job-ready candidates, especially in trades and technical fields. The gap between what learners are taught and the skills employers need—both technical and soft skills like communication, problem-solving, and adaptability—is widening across industries.

This disconnect between education and workforce needs is particularly pressing for apprenticeships and vocational programs. Learners need adaptable, job-ready skills that can transfer across different industries and sectors. New approaches are essential to develop and validate these skills, focusing on mastery through hands-on learning, continuous feedback, and authentic assessment.

Bridging Learning and Work in Apprenticeships

The skills gap continues to challenge employers who are looking for candidates that possess both technical expertise and essential soft skills like teamwork, communication, and critical thinking. For vocational education and apprenticeship programs, aligning skill development with real-world job expectations is key.

By focusing on both technical and soft skills, educators can ensure that learners are prepared to meet workforce demands with confidence and competence. These assessments not only validate learners’ abilities but also help them gain practical experience that directly translates to the workplace.

Rethinking Skill Assessments for Job Readiness

Traditional exams often focus on theoretical knowledge, but they don’t capture practical, job-ready skills. Authentic assessments simulate real tasks, allowing learners to demonstrate job readiness. Skills for success are built through hands-on practice, reflection, and feedback. These practical, job-related skill assessments challenge learners to apply their skills in realistic settings, ensuring they’re not only knowledgeable but also competent and confident in their abilities.

Get the Ultimate Guide to AI Assessments in the AI Era

The Power of Authentic Assessments

Traditional assessments fall short in preparing learners for real-world work. Authentic assessments validate practical skills by testing learners in realistic scenarios, ensuring they’re job-ready. These assessments bridge classroom learning and job readiness by focusing on tasks that reflect workplace environments.

Key benefits of authentic assessments include:

Validate Skills in Action: Real-world scenarios test learners’ ability to perform tasks effectively.
Encourage Deeper Learning: Critical thinking and problem-solving are fostered, moving learners beyond simple memorization.
Promote Continuous Feedback: Learners receive actionable insights, refining their skills through practice and reflection.

Authentic assessments play a vital role in closing the skills gap by ensuring learners are fully prepared to meet the demands of modern apprenticeships and skilled work environments.

Explore this Authentic Assessment Toolkit

Preparing Learners for Job Success

In further education, preparing learners for real-world job success means combining technical knowledge with hands-on, practical skill development. Learners need opportunities to practice and refine their skills through real-world tasks, allowing them to gain the confidence and competence required in today’s workforce. This cycle of practice, reflection, and feedback is crucial for building job-ready skills that translate directly to workplace success.

A New Approach to Skill Mastery

Traditional teaching methods alone are no longer enough to meet the demands of modern apprenticeships and vocational programs. GoReact provides a solution by using the power of video to enable authentic assessments that mirror real-world tasks. With GoReact, learners can demonstrate and practice skills, self-reflect, and receive targeted feedback from instructors to continuously improve.

GoReact not only helps learners, it saves instructors time by allowing them to observe and assess skill demonstrations from anywhere and using tools, including the AI Assistant, provide instant and meaningful feedback to drive continuous improvement. Whether training the next generation of welders, electricians, or healthcare professionals, GoReact equips learners with the confidence and hands-on skills they need to thrive from day one on the job.

See how GoReact helps learners gain hands-on practice in any skill across any industry.

Revealed: The new education committee membership

The 11 MPs who will sit on the new education committee have been confirmed.

The parliamentary committee consists of seven Labour MPs, two Conservatives and two Liberal Democrats.

It will be chaired by Labour MP Helen Hayes, the former shadow children’s minister who was elected to the position in September.

The committee plays a key role in holding the Department for Education and its executive agencies and arms-length bodies to account.

Party: Labour

Constituency: Penistone and Stocksbridge, South Yorkshire

Disability rights campaigner and former charity policy and legal officer. Stood against Hayes for committee chair.

First elected in July.

Caroline Voaden

Party: Liberal Democrats

Constituency: South Devon

Former journalist, member of the European Parliament and leader of the Liberal Democrats in the European Parliament.

First elected in July.

Neglecting over-50s in the training world must change – here’s how we do it

At 50, workers still have 15 years until state pension age. So why do so many of the nine million over-50 workers feel that their days of learning and development are behind them?

Employers, training providers and society all have a part to play in the perception that learning is for the young. Is it any surprise that just 21 per cent of workers aged 50-59 say their employer encourages them to upskill, compared to 56 per cent of workers aged 18-29?

While some training providers focus primarily on younger learners, aiming to attract those who might return for training over the coming decades, this overlooks the immense value older learners bring to the workplace and their industry.

In fact, their experience and institutional knowledge are crucial to futureproofing industries, especially in sectors facing skills shortages.

That’s why training providers must focus on long-term growth and progression, not just for individual employees but for employers and the training sector as a whole. If training programmes don’t help safeguard the industry against skills shortages and workforce attrition, they are falling short.

Changing perceptions around who should be trained is key to this.

Post-pandemic, businesses are evolving rapidly. Many workers who have spent years in office environments now find themselves working remotely, often with little investment in their development.

Without the opportunity to upskill, their careers can feel stagnant. Career development is directly linked to job satisfaction, and for older workers, continued learning is vital for retaining talent. Investing in their growth fosters motivation and workforce diversity.

Tailored and inclusive courses

Offering courses tailored to individual learners and inclusive of all is a surefire way to attract more older generations to your training programmes.

Some workers may not have been in formal education for decades, so it’s important to avoid school-like environments and offer alternatives to traditional essay-based assessments. In addition, providing refresher sessions on study skills, time management and exam preparation can be helpful.

Start with short courses to build confidence and gradually show the impact of training on the learner so they feel empowered to progress their training.

Flexible and responsive provision

Flexibility in both learning styles and technology is essential. If your course is solely delivered via Zoom, but a learner prefers in-person mentorship, you run the risk of learners losing interest before they’ve even enrolled.

Everyone has their own preferred way of engaging with learning, and it’s important to cater to everyone. Some learners may need extra guidance to navigate online learning platforms, so providing tech support from the outset is crucial.

Many older workers also have family or caregiving responsibilities, so it’s key to recognise that training must fit around their lives rather than the other way around. Offering flexibility in course timings and duration ensures that learners can get the rest they need while still finding the course accessible.

In this context, a blended approach—combining in-person and online learning—can enhance both accessibility and flexibility.

Motivated and supported learners

Older workers seek training for a variety of reasons: career changes, staying competitive in the job market or personal fulfilment.

Training providers will likely see success when they take the time to truly understand each learner’s motivation. An introductory meeting focused on this allows the provider to tailor the course and set clear, achievable goals. A taster session will also spark interest in learning and allow the learner to reflect on their goals.

Additionally, training providers should position themselves as trusted advisers, both to the learner and the employer.

Older workers bring a wealth of knowledge, experience and previous education – and a finite amount of time to learn more. Providers should guide these learners to prioritise training that aligns with their interests, meets their career goals, remains relevant to their current roles and can be practically applied or passed on to others.

As a training provider, we are embracing learners of any age. The economy demands that our whole sector does too. Celebrating and leveraging their extensive experience is key to growth and so much more.

Streamlined skills and jobseeker support to cut ‘ballooning’ benefits bill

The government is hoping to cut its “ballooning” benefits bill by targeting disabled and unemployed people with better skills, work and health support.

Mayoral combined authorities and several unidentified English ‘trailblazer’ areas will receive a share of a £240 million “Get Britain Working package”, aimed at the 2.8 million who are out of work due to long-term sickness.

The funding will “streamline” local services and fund the testing of “early interventions” that target specific barriers to work faced by the long-term unemployed.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Due to years of economic neglect, the benefits bill is ballooning.

“We will build a Britain where people who can work, will work, turning the page on the recent rise in economic inactivity and decline and towards a future where people have good jobs and our benefits bill is under control.”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer first announced the move this morning ahead of Wednesday’s budget, alongside a new £3 cap on bus fares until 2025, up from £2, which is likely to impact on college students.

The £240 million package will focus on encouraging the unemployed to use existing local skills courses and employability support rather than fund new provision, FE Week understands.

Locations of ‘trailblazers’ will be announced in “due course,” according to the Treasury announcement.

Labour has pledged to raise the country’s unemployment rate from 75 to 80 per cent through several new measures including a board of labour market expert advisors, merging careers advice with job centres and devolved employment support.

Further details of government’s plans – such as localised work, health, and skills plans – are expected in a “groundbreaking” Plan to Get Britain Working white paper this autumn.

Been here before?

Language such as ‘trailblazer’ is not the only echo of Conservative policies in today’s announcement.

The Restart Scheme, one of several Plan for Jobs measures announced in 2020, also offers the long-term unemployed careers advice, coaching, training and wellbeing support.

The Work and Health Programme, launched in 2017, specifically targets long-term unemployed people with a disability, health condition or disadvantage circumstances with up to 15 months support including health and wellbeing support, work coaching, and training.

The £238 million Job Entry Targeted Support scheme, which ran from 2020 to 2023, also targeted people who had been out of work for three months with support including “specialist advice” on building skills.

‘Get Britain Working’ was also an initiative launched in 2011 under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition that included benefit reforms, work programmes and pushing local support services to work together.

Boris Johnson’s government also revived sector-based work academy programmes in 2020, a scheme first attempted under the 2011 Get Britain Working, that offers unemployed people a short-term combination of training and work placement, followed by a guaranteed job interview.

The Plan for Jobs also included free training for people without a level 3 qualification through the Free Courses for Jobs scheme and short, flexible Skills Bootcamps that are free for the unemployed.

Education spending ‘protected’?

On Sunday, Reeves vowed to “protect” education priorities at this week’s budget, including by committing £1.4 billion to funding the existing school rebuilding programme next year.

She said this as she repeated the new Labour government’s line that the party is having to make “tough decisions” in the face of a £22 billion blackhole in public finances inherited from the Conservatives.

But there is a lack of detail from the government about exactly what it means by “protected”. There have been no other announcements regarding FE and skills spending decisions so far.

Global education investors snap up Corndel

One of the country’s largest apprenticeship training providers “partnered” with a French education empire in a private equity deal announced today.

Galileo Global Education has bought private equity firm THI Investments’ share in Corndel, a provider that trains 4-5,000 higher level business and IT apprentices each year.

The company’s co-founder and chief executive officer James Kelly said the purchase follows months of negotiations with Galileo.

He added: “It’s about higher education and workplace education coming increasingly together as things go forward.

“That’s partly why the fit works for us. It’s about organisations that equip people for the world of work and careers.”

‘Network of excellence’

The London-based training provider will join Galileo’s roster of more than 60 institutions in 18 countries, including Regent’s University London, Italian fashion school Instituto Marangoni and Paris School of Business.

Kelly said Corndel will “focus on growth” within Galileo’s network of education providers.

He has told staff Corndel will remain “organisationally independent” while benefitting from being in a “network of educational excellence”.

Higher ambitions

According to the training provider’s accounts for the year up to December 2023, its turnover increased 25 per cent to £37.4 million while its profits increased 66 per cent to £5.6 million.

In 2021-22, Corndel received £25 million in apprenticeship levy funding, the seventh highest sum in the country.

The company, set up in 2016, specialises in training apprentices in management, senior leadership, data analysis and project management at advanced or higher levels.

Kelly has said he hopes Corndel College London, a division of the main company, will become a new higher education organisation that is “free from the constraints and burdens of traditional structures”.

Equity deals

Galileo was bought in 2020 by its current owners – a consortium including the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board, Montagu Private Equity and Tethys Invest, the main shareholder of L’Oreal. The French group was reportedly on the market for £2.1 billion.

Corndel’s Stuttgart-based seller THI Investments, owned by the Hagenmeyer family, reportedly manages assets worth £1.7 billion.

Marc-Francois Mignot Mahon, chief executive officer of Galileo said: “We are very pleased to welcome Corndel to the Galileo group and are looking forward to supporting Corndel to build on its exceptional reputation for delivering the highest quality professional training programmes to the UK’s leading business.”

Mihir Kotecha, chief executive officer of THI Investments, said: “THI has greatly valued the opportunity to have been part of Corndel’s tremendous growth story over the last four years during which time learner numbers have tripled. We wish both Corndel and Galileo every success for the future.”