York College
‘apprenticeships’
Responding to Lady Alison Wolf’s report — Heading for the precipice: can further and higher education funding policies be sustained? — Anne Constantine says skills policy is on a roller-coaster ride and calls for the government to resource FE colleges properly to deliver higher level technical skills. Alison Wolf is a highly respected academic and […]
Opinion
Sector leaders backed “radical change” and stressed that they do not want to “defend the status quo” in a joint letter to Business Secretary Sajid Javid (pictured below right). The letter, seen by FE Week, was sent by Kirstie Donnelly (pictured below left), UK managing director of City & Guilds, on behalf of a host […]
News
New Business, Innovation and Skills Select Committee chair Iain Wright (pictured) has called for “real controls and mitigating actions” on success rates cheating amid claims it was widespread within the FE sector. In an exclusive interview with FE Week, the MP for Hartlepool, who ousted former committee chair and fellow Labour politician Adrian Bailey in an MPs’ […]
The government paid a “one-off settlement” to write off the pension liabilities of a cash-strapped sixth form college as part of a deal to secure new owners and remove it from the public sector, FE Week can exclusively reveal. The Education Funding Agency (EFA) paid Hampshire County Council the undisclosed figure, believed to run into […]
Former FE funding boss Sir David Melville (pictured above) has become the latest high-profile voice to express serious concerns about the government’s handling of the sector. The current chair of Pearson Education Ltd and governor of Manchester Metropolitan University, who was chief executive of the FE Funding Council from 1997 to 2001, told FE Week of […]
The government has defended Trailblazer apprenticeships after official figures indicated there had been just 300 starts on the new employer–designed programmes in nine months. It is the first time uptake data on Trailblazers, listed in the latest Statistical First Release (SFR), has been released and it further showed the programme appeared to have stalled with […]
Funding may well be key to getting anywhere near the government’s 3m apprenticeship starts target for the period of the new Parliament, but ensuring quality teaching is behind the figures will also help achieve the goal. While money is clearly essential, understanding the pedagogy underpinning apprenticeships is highly important if we are to improve both […]
The prevention of extremism is a wide-ranging concern that reaches into vocational education and training issue, a Selina Stewart explains. The statutory duty to prevent extremism will soon come in to effect. However, as independent learning providers (ILPs) will know, Ofsted has been inspecting for compliance with the Prevent duty for several months. Ofsted expects […]
Jonathan Wells makes the case for the end of preferential government treatment for GCSEs over Functional Skills Functional Skills (FS) are not the ‘easy option’, they are much more rigorous than GCSEs when it comes to application of skills, pass marks are significantly higher and the focus is on the application of basic skills in […]
