York College
‘apprenticeships’
Dame Asha Khemka issues an impassioned plea for FE and the benefits it can bring as the countdown to voting day nears its end. There has been something quite worrying about the discourse in this General Election campaign. Aside from the usual political point-scoring, we’ve seen something more sinister — an undercurrent of fear. Fear […]
Opinion
It’s more than five years since Ruth Sparkes first applied her FE and skills marketing knowledge to the sector’s use of Twitter — so what has changed since then? I wrote my first article on colleges and Twitter in 2009, so I’m guessing that by now every college and independent learning provider (ILP) must be […]
A Conservative-led government would use a £200m fund from bank fines issued in the wake of the Libor scandal to create 50,000 apprenticeships and traineeships specifically for unemployed 22 to 24-year-olds, David Cameron will announce today. The Prime Minister is expected to say that the money from the fines, which were issued to those banks […]
News
I read a blog the other day that talked about how there was so much political consensus around in our sector at the moment and how this was a ‘job done’ for the sector’s PR and lobbying efforts. The evidence for this was a skills hustings event where representatives from the Conservatives, Labour and the […]
Vocational education charity the Edge Foundation is the new lead sponsor for the Skills Show, it has been announced. Show organisers Find a Future revealed today that the three-year lead sponsorship deal with City & Guilds, in place for the first Skills Show event, was ending. The pricetag of the Edge Foundation’s one-year sponsorship of the […]
While the major political parties’ focus on FE and skills is to be welcomed, they need to look beyond qualifications reform says Tim Oates. When you recognise that banging your head against a brick wall actually hurts, the most sensible course of action is to stop doing it. Strange then, that while all the major […]
More than a third of the workforce at NCG’s 1,200-worker Intraining division were today facing redundancy following one of the biggest job loss announcements to have hit the sector. The loss of a major Department for Work and Pensions training contract and “uncertainty” over the renewal of European Social Fund (ESF) programmes, along with fewer […]
Lynne Sedgmore called for a review of the drive for more UTCs in light of the second UTC closure, and here she considers what problems might be affecting the programme. The news of the failure of another UTC, this time in the Black Country, may tempt some FE observers to indulge in schadenfreude. It would […]
An employer provider’s status as an apprenticeship Trailblazer was today in the balance after Ofsted found it had “no significant strengths” and issued it with grade four ratings across the board. Priory Central Services, which runs the national medical chain that includes London’s Priory rehabilitation centre famously attended by an array of celebrities, offers healthcare […]
