York College
‘apprenticeships’
The election period officially begins today — and last week saw the leaders of the two largest parties being put on the spot by Jeremy Paxman and a studio audience on Channel 4’s Battle for Number 10. Opinion was divided over who came out on top — but whoever it was, there were plenty of questions […]
News
Concerns that two official internet search engines for apprenticeships were causing confusion among potential applicants are expected to be resolved when the old website is taken down in just over a month. The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has kept the old National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) vacancy matching website running while its replacement, which went live […]
Government proposals to extend loans to level two and also include learners from the age of 19 were put on hold this week as part of the official response to a two-month consultation launched in June. David Hughes assesses the response and also the future for FE loans. The Government’s response to its consultation on […]
Opinion
Continued cuts to the adult skills budget risk wiping out adult education and training in England within five years, the Association of Colleges (AoC) has warned after research showed 190,000 course places could be lost in 2015/16 alone. The AoC has published research based on data from its 336 member colleges which points to a […]
A wide-ranging government consultation on the future of FE that launched today has prompted sector calls for a rethink on funding cuts. Business Secretary Vince Cable (pictured above) unveiled the 90-page consultation paper, entitled A dual mandate for adult vocational education, saying the issues it raised “imply important changes for how we think about further […]
Potential investors got a sneak peak of what’s going to be on offer at this year’s Skills Show at an awareness raising event today in Central London. Ross Maloney (pictured), chief executive of Skills Show organisers Find a Future opened the event at Oxo Wharf, looking back at the success of the show, which was […]
Stewart Segal looks at the traineeship programme in light of a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) one-year review. There has always been a range of programmes designed to help young unemployed or under-employed young people into work. The names of the programmes will be familiar to many — E2E, Programme-Led Apprenticeships, Access to […]
You would be hard-pressed to find a better way of convincing teenagers to choose vocational learning over university than inviting OBE recipient Rod Bennion to tell them his life story. The grammar school boy decided academia wasn’t for him after passing his A-levels and was instead taken on as an articled quantity surveyor trainee, the […]
Profiles
Ofqual hopes to ensure English apprenticeships will continue to be recognised in Europe after the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) has been scrapped, the regulator has told FE Week. Its assurances come after Angus Gray, head of the European Social Fund division at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), told the House of Lords […]
