York College
‘apprenticeships’
A private equity firm has reportedly paid a massive £700 million to buy out a major independent training provider. The sale of a majority stake in IT provider QA Training – from previous owners Bregal Investments, which bought the firm in 2007, to CVC Capital Partners – was announced today. The deal is reported to […]
News
Update 1 : At 17:45 the DfE responded by saying the data they published for May is not full the full month. A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The data published did not reflect the full vacancy figures for May, and was only for the first few days of the month. The updated data covering the […]
A Merseyside college hit with an Ofsted grade four in apprenticeships is claiming it will not cut down on staff, despite government rules removing it from the new apprenticeships’ register. St Helens College was given an overall ‘requires improvement’ judgement by the inspectorate in a report published today, but it was branded ‘inadequate’ for its […]
The principal of Weston College Group has been awarded a CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list. Dr Paul Phillips (pictured left), who joined Weston College in 2001, was made an OBE in 2011 and achieved an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted grade in 2014, has been recognised in the list published today. The keen wrestling fan, according […]
Two providers have been awarded the highest possible grade from Ofsted – and a university technical college has bounced back from inadequate to good in just eight months. As exclusively revealed by FE Week, Dudley College became the first general FE college to be rated outstanding in 14 months this week. In a report published […]
The highest standards can be found at large, specialist sixth-form centres, claims Bill Watkin This year has been an important one for specialist sixth form colleges: the first new A-levels and BTECs are in place, area reviews are at an end, the first academy conversions, and a growing sector as new sixth form specialists have […]
Opinion
The National Deaf Children’s Society is taking on deaf apprentices for the first time in an effort to open up more apprenticeship opportunities for those with impaired hearing, reports Samantha King It will be the first time the charity has run an apprenticeship programme of any kind, taking on three level three youth work apprentices […]
Bulletin
An independent expert in government statistics has called for an investigation after the Department for Education encouraged the use of “misleading” provider apprenticeship achievement rate data, rather than publish the revised figures. In February the DfE revised its figures for 2015/16, causing a fall of nearly five percentage points in recorded achievement rates, after it […]
Forgive the facepalm, but after a drubbing in the general election for being evasive, I had hoped our questions to the government would be given the professional courtesy of attempting an answer. Sadly the signs look appalling, after we received possibly the best example this week of a robot spewing out unrelated and misleading sound […]
