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‘apprenticeships’

Tough budget choices

Government budgets are of course finite — but our front page exposes questionable priorities over how it is being handed out. How can it be right that apprenticeship providers could be short-changed, while the well-documented UTC fiasco is going to be propped up by even more handouts? Lord Baker’s UTC project is in trouble and […]

Opinion

Take stock over expansion plans

National Apprenticeship Week rightly celebrates tens of thousands of individual successes from young beginners to older workers acquiring new skills — and of the trainers and employers who inspire them. I’m proud the last Labour government set up the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) and introduced National Apprenticeship Week in 2008, alongside pushing the programme from […]

Opinion

No guarantees on apprenticeship budget, Boles says

The government “can’t make any guarantees” it will be able to fund all apprenticeship growth requests, Skills Minister Nick Boles (pictured above) has said. His remarks, at the Education and Training Foundation Leadership Summit on at Westminster Kingsway College on March 9, came a month after many training providers were left short-changed following the Skills […]

News

Institute gets first boss as UKCES reveals closure plans

The first appointment to the new Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA) has been made in the same week that the fate of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES) was revealed. Rachel Sandby-Thomas, currently director general for skills, deregulation and local growth at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), was named as the […]

News

Skills to pay the bills

Kirstie Donnelly explains why she thinks the teaching of soft skills need to be incorporated more into apprenticeships and wider vocational training. Soft skills get little respect but can make or break your career, according to American leadership coach Peggy Klaus in her book ‘The Hard Truth about Soft Skills’, and it’s a mantra we […]

Opinion

Demand-led funding needed to hit apprenticeship target

John Hyde calls for as demand-led apprenticeship funding allocation system. The Government’s target for 3m apprenticeship starts in this parliament was well trumpeted throughout the election campaign. One would have assumed the civil servants concerned with apprenticeships would have planned how to implement this election promise by securing funding from the Treasury to meet this […]

Opinion

More focus needed on basic skills

Harvey Young explains why, in his view, the Government is wrong to obsess over apprenticeships and should look to improving basic skills to improve national productivity. The BIS Select Committee’s report on the Government’s productivity plan raised several concerns about the lack of focus on a variety of policy areas, including apprenticeships, but what has […]

Opinion

Agency director to lead levy team at BIS

Skills Funding Agency (SFA) director Keith Smith (pictured) has moved to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to take a lead role in levy implementation. Mr Smith will be on secondment to BIS for the next year, from his SFA post overseeing funding and programmes, while working as director of levy implementation until […]

News

Movers and Shakers: Edition 167

After nine years of service at Bath College, principal Matt Atkinson has announced he will be leaving this summer. Mr Atkinson joined from Andover College, where he was acting principal, in 2007. He said leading the college has been the significant highlight of his career in the FE sector. “The experiences I have had here […]

Movers and Shakers