York College
‘apprenticeships’
Ofsted’s latest inspection of Aspire Achieve Advance – which holds the largest ESFA apprenticeship allocation – is “incomplete” following intervention from the Education and Skills Funding Agency. The inspectorate had at first confirmed on June 20 that it had inspected the provider, which is commonly known as 3aaa, in May and that nothing was amiss. […]
News
The entire senior executive team at Learndirect Apprenticeships Ltd (LDA) along with 18 other senior employees have today quit to work for PeoplePlus Group, the firm that had only recently had a purchase offer rejected. The unexpected mass exodus of 22 key staff has been met with a furious response from the Learndirect Group, calling […]
It’s been a week of contrasting fortunes for university technical colleges, as one is rated ‘good’ and another ‘inadequate’ in their first ever inspections. Elsewhere a genuinely new apprenticeship provider has been making ‘significant progress’ in one of the areas under review, in one of four monitoring visit reports published this week. UTC Oxfordshire received […]
The Institute for Apprenticeships’ apprentice panel will have 21 new members when it next meets on July 4. A week ago, the former skills minister Robert Halfon said the IfA should “get its act together”, following revelations that the panel hadn’t met in nearly 10 months. “The voice of the apprentice is central to the […]
“Big is not always beautiful,” Ofsted’s main man for FE has warned, admitting he is considering the effect of mega-colleges formed through mergers on quality. Paul Joyce’s admission comes just a week after the nation’s largest college group NCG saw its rating slip to ‘requires improvement’. “We are looking at our survey programme as to […]
A second register for apprenticeship training providers is being created for the public sector, and the Association of Colleges is furious that its members must pay to reap the benefits. The apprenticeship dynamic purchasing system has been launched by ESPO, which describes itself as a public sector-owned “professional buying organisation”. Providers must register before they […]
A sharp fall in the number of 16-year-olds taking up level two apprenticeships is being blamed for a startling rise in people of that age who are not in education, employment or training. Provisional ‘participation’ figures for the year ending 2017 released by the Department for Education this morning show that the proportion of 16-year-olds […]
Media bosses have criticised the “red tape” that surrounds the government’s apprenticeships register, seemingly preventing providers from training journalists. In a letter to skills minister Anne Milton, the Society of Editors raised “serious concerns” over access to apprenticeship levy funds for media outlets. The problem specifically relates to the way the register of apprenticeship training […]
The Department for Education should have left more time to make sure T-levels go to plan, according to its top civil servant. Jonathan Slater was questioned by the Public Accounts Committee today about his ministerial direction, published in May, in which he asked to defer the start date from 2020 to 2021. He was overruled […]
