York College
‘apprenticeships’
An experienced commercial training provider new to the apprenticeships market has been heavily criticised after Ofsted found staff at an employer were being forced onto their apprenticeship programme. WDR Limited, which has 83 apprentices, received insufficient ratings cross the board in its first monitoring visit since it started receiving public funding to train apprentices in […]
News
The police has today launched a formal criminal investigation into disgraced apprenticeship firm Aspire Achieve Advance (3aaa). It follows a meeting between the Department for Education and police yesterday where a number of allegations of fraud against the firm were discussed. FE Week understands the allegations against 3aaa, which had over 4,200 learners and 500 […]
Outsourcing giant Interserve is reportedly going to be put into administration today with nearly 5,000 apprentices on its books. However, the company has insisted this will not be a Carillion-style collapse and it is very much business as usual, with no big job losses anticipated. Shareholders at Interserve, which employs 45,000 people in the UK, […]
West Nottinghamshire College entered the public eye last year when it ran into financial difficulties that led to government bailouts, substantial job losses, and, ultimately, the resignation of its longstanding, high-profile principal, Dame Asha Khemka. An FE Week investigation has now uncovered more details about the scale of trouble at the beleaguered college Bailouts […]
Four providers – including a major college – have boosted their grades from three to two this week, while seven others either maintained the ‘good’ rating or achieved it in either their first inspection. Elsewhere it’s been a busy week for monitoring visits, with 16 reports published – 14 for new apprenticeship visits which produced […]
A university has called for the scrapping of an apprenticeship funding rule that stops them from using unspent levy funds to support local businesses. The University of East London delivers apprenticeships to large employers, but after missing out on a non-levy allocation they have to turn small employers away. One solution would be to share […]
This week the Treasury confirmed that the apprenticeship fee – known as co-investment – will halve from 10 to 5 per cent from the start of April. Or to put it another way, the public subsidy for apprenticeships running at an average cost of £9,000 (according to the National Audit Office) will rise from 90 per cent (£8,100) to 95 per cent (£8,550). I was quick to […]
Opinion
A provider that trains civil servants has been slammed by Ofsted for putting science graduates on apprenticeships that are a rebadge of its old commercial management courses – with no thought for if they need the training. The Business Portfolio (UK) Limited (TBP), which teaches 32 apprentices employed at the government-owned National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), […]
A training provider has been heavily criticised for not knowing accurately enough who their apprentices are, in an Ofsted monitoring report which rated it ‘insufficient’ across the board. Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust was today accused of failing to understand what constitutes a “high quality apprenticeship programme”. Ofsted found that managers are “unable to provide […]
