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‘apprenticeships’

Apprentice quality assurance charges to end from October

Controversial £40 charges for the external quality assurance of apprenticeship endpoint-assessment will start being phased out as soon as October, it has been confirmed. The fees will end as the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education hands over EQA responsibility for over 300 apprenticeship standards to Ofqual. Federation of Awarding Bodies chief executive Tom Bewick […]

News

Loss of some autonomy for colleges is a step in the right direction

Appointing regional FE directors would enable colleges to stop competing and work together for the best learning provision, writes Tom Richmond. When education secretary Gavin Williamson recently described colleges as “the beating hearts of so many of our towns”, I’m sure many people in the FE sector were smiling and nodding their heads. The money […]

Opinion

NAO reveal £726m in college bailouts and loans with ‘nearly half’ in intervention

Nearly three-quarters of a billion pounds in public funds has been spent on bailing out and restructuring colleges, while the government is intervening in nearly half of them, a new report has revealed.  The National Audit Office has today released its ‘Financial sustainability of colleges in England’ report, which details how the Department for Education […]

News

Ofsted chief now ‘open to exploring’ direct inspection of all FE subcontractors

For the first time Ofsted is exploring a move to directly inspect all FE subcontractors, something until now it has ruled out. Subcontracting in FE is big business, with 2,221 subcontracting arrangements at 856 subcontractors accounting for “around 14 per cent of the spending on apprenticeships and adult education” in 2018/19, according to Ofsted. The […]

News

Investigation: College sector recruitment highs & lows after virus and exams fiasco

As colleges re-open their doors after a summer like no other, staff have had to cross their fingers and hope new learners turn up, on the right courses for them. The outlook was nerve-wracking – schools that would usually hold students’ hands until they reach college hadn’t seen their pupils in months. Employers normally offering […]

Feature, News

Apprentices to fill junior exec vacancies at DfE and ESFA

Staff have been told that they must fill junior executive vacancies with apprentices, as part of a three-month trial in the Department for Education and Education and Skills Funding Agency. Skills minister Gillian Keegan said the change in recruitment policy was to show that “we practise what we preach” when it comes to boosting the […]

News

Student numbers soaring at new UTC

The first new university technical college to open its doors for two years has been deluged with students, while its licensing body says that admissions across the network have shot up after years of underrecruitment. Doncaster UTC has vastly exceeded its recruitment target of 160 students, with nearly double that number starting lessons this week. […]

News

Colleges and ITPs miss out again on Covid relief funds

A cash-strapped college is among more than a quarter of training providers to have had a bid for help rejected as part of the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s second Covid-19 supplier relief scheme. The news came as the country’s public spending watchdog revealed that the total estimated cost of the ESFA’s financial support scheme […]

News

Law to be changed to help those made redundant finish their apprenticeship

The government is changing the law to allow more redundant apprentices to complete their course. A Statutory Instrument (SI) has today been laid in parliament that will allow the Education and Skills Funding Agency to continue to fund apprentices to complete their training if they are at least 75 per cent of their way through […]

News