York College
‘apprenticeships’
The Department for Education’s top civil servant has admitted “hard choices” will need to be made in the face of an imminent apprenticeship budget overspend. Jonathan Slater, the department’s permanent secretary, was one of a number high-profile government officials quizzed by the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon on the affordability of the apprenticeship programme. Asked […]
News
The Royal Air Force introduced apprenticeships within 18 months of its formation. One hundred years on, it has more than 3,000: Cath Murray meets the man who looks after them all Shortly after taking over as head of apprentice training for the Royal Air Force in 2017, Air Vice-Marshal Warren James bumped into his former […]
Profiles
Sir Gerry Berragan sets out his institute’s programme for the new financial year The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is two years old next month and has developed considerably in that time. We have reduced the time it takes to approve new apprenticeship standards, effectively doubling our approval rate, and learner and employer engagement […]
Opinion
The number of HMRC investigations into the underpayment of the apprenticeship levy at big employers has more than doubled in a year, according to an accountancy group. Figures obtained by UHY Hacker Young from the tax office show that 84 investigations were carried out in 2018-19, compared to 33 in 2017-18. As a result, HMRC […]
England’s largest college group this week announced plans to slash up to 300 jobs across its two training providers to “strengthen” its “already robust provision”, but FE Week has since learnt the truth behind the move. The redundancies consultation at Intraining and Rathbone Training, part of NCG, comes off the back of a slamming Ofsted […]
National Education Service? Labour would do better to develop a new national education entitlement for those aged 18 to 74, says Tom Bewick Twenty years ago, the Labour government published a seminal green paper, The Learning Age. It was responsible for a lifelong learning strategy that many in the sector still talk about. Two central […]
It’s been a week of mainly highs for FE as one provider was rated ‘outstanding’ in its first ever inspection, while another was found making ‘significant progress’ across the board in an early monitoring visit. The week wasn’t without its lows, however, as several providers scored ‘insufficient progress’ ratings in their own monitoring reports. White […]
The government should move away from its “unhelpful” mantra of “employers in the driving seat” in UK skills policy because this is “more rhetoric than reality”, new research has suggested. The phrase was coined with regard to further education in the latter years of the Coalition government – 2010-2015. However, the study has found that […]
This week the Association of Employment and Learning Providers called on the government to stop subsidising all level 6 and 7 apprenticeships. Their proposal is radical because big employers have lapped up the opportunity to develop and have subsidised many expensive professional level apprenticeships to replace existing training schemes. Take the level six accountancy / […]
