Windsor Learning Partnership
‘apprenticeships’
It’s just over a year since the minimum duration rule was applied, meaning most apprenticeships would have to last at least a year. Phil Hatton looks at whether the rule offers the quality assurance it was hoped for. I was one of the two authors of the first NVQ back in 1987, which really changed […]
Opinion
Guidance on apprenticeships needs a “no-holds-barred” review, NUS president Toni Pearce has claimed despite official figures indicating application numbers rocketed more than 30 per cent last year. She spoke out with statistics from the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) showing that 1.4 million applications were made online last year — an increase of 32 per cent […]
News
With the government looking at a “radical” overhaul of the way apprenticeships are funded, Neil Carberry looks at the key considerations for any such changes. Apprenticeships are a remarkable link between our economy’s pre-industrial past and its globalised future. In the Middle Ages they were a contract between master craftsmen and workers. Apprentices learned the […]
The annual schoolgates spectacle that is GCSE results day usually brings with it much media interview talk of A-level plans and uni hopes, but Andy Gannon picked up on a rare, but welcome namedrop for vocational education this year. Those of us who work in FE know the value of vocational pathways through education. We […]
England’s apprenticeship boss, David Way, has announced that he is to step down at the end of the month. The executive director of the Skills Funding Agency’s apprenticeship division will be leaving after 38 years in the employment and skills sector. Mr Way, a married father-of-two, has overseen an expansion in the number of apprenticeships […]
Apprenticeship stories in the wider media of late have made hay about young people turning their backs on university and instead considering vocational learning. However, as Lynne Sedgmore explains, such promotion of an ‘FE versus higher education’ divide could be doing more harm than good. There has been a sudden spate of stories recently about […]
A former Association of Colleges president has become City College Coventry’s new governors’ chair after a disastrous Ofsted report resulted in the Skills Funding Agency calling for “fundamental changes”. Maggie Galliers, who was the association president for 2011/12, was unanimously voted into the post and joins new interim principal John Hogg in a revamped leadership […]
The number of apprenticeships lasting less than a year has fallen “dramatically” after they were outlawed over fears about the quality of short-term programmes. They fell from 43 per cent (224,000) of the total number of apprenticeship starts in 2011/12, to just 8 per cent (28,000) for the first nine months of the academic year. The figures […]
The number of young people out of work has risen despite the overall unemployment rate remaining the same in the last quarter, government figures have revealed. The number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds went up 15,000 between April and July, from 958,000 to 973,000. However, the figure is considerably down on the same period last […]
