York College
‘Jobs’
One of the biggest college groups in the country has said it has “no alternative” than to cut staff numbers as it battles to cut its deficit, knowing it will “no longer be ‘bailed out’ by the government”. The RNN Group, which has around 1,200 staff and nearly 15,000 students, has put 130 jobs at […]
News
A college has announced plans to cut its staff numbers by 10 per cent, months after the FE Commissioner reported it was in a “cash crisis”. Fifty one full-time jobs out of a total of 466 are expected to go at Northumberland College, which was graded as ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted before merging with Sunderland […]
Government officials forced a major bank to halve a £40 million unsecured loan after threatening to put a college into insolvency. In a highly unusual move, Lloyds Banking Group agreed to slash Bradford College’s debt to £20 million in return for halving the write-off costs with the Department for Education. The details of the last-minute […]
Spectacular failures could be the cost for a more innovative FE sector, says Mick Fletcher. But is it a price worth paying? Hadlow College is the first to experience the Department for Education’s new college bankruptcy regime, but we can be fairly certain that it won’t be the last. After all, the government wouldn’t have […]
Opinion
A troubled land-based college is to be broken up and merged with two other colleges, following two consecutive ‘inadequate’ ratings by Ofsted. Easton and Otley College was told to urgently improve its leadership earlier this year after the FE Commissioner raised serious quality and financial concerns. Just a few of months ago the college, which […]
A university centre at the troubled West Nottinghamshire College has had to revise down its learner growth numbers by a massive 76 per cent. A report by local enterprise partnership D2N2 reveals Vision University Centre, based on the college’s main campus in Mansfield, is aiming to increase its number of students by just 140 in […]
New apprenticeship providers came in for some stinging criticism this week, with three found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in early monitoring visits. The only wholly positive report was for adult and community learning provider Sunderland City Metropolitan Borough Council, which climbed its way up to ‘good’ after being rated ‘inadequate’ in January 2018. Since […]
The Prime Minister delivered a speech this morning in response to the much anticipated Augar review on post-18 education. Theresa May spoke passionately about the strong case for much more investment in FE, which in her own words has been “left overlooked, undervalued and underfunded”. FE Week was in attendance and has transcribed her speech […]
A university membership organisation has criticised those opposing PhDlevel apprenticeships, saying such resistance shows a “bewildering lack of understanding of higher education provision and contemporary skills programmes”. Writing for FE Week, Mandy Crawford-Lee, director of policy and operations at the University Vocational Awards Council, argues that “the whole concept” of knowledge, skills and behaviours or […]
