Windsor Learning Partnership
‘ofqual’
Take-up of the government’s flagship free digital skills qualifications, which will replace all low-level IT courses studied annually by over 100,000 people from next month, flopped in their first year. Announced five years ago and finally launched last August as a free “entitlement” alongside English and math courses, just 270 people had achieved an Essential […]
News
More than one-third of organisations signed up to deliver apprenticeship assessments are yet to award any certificates, FE Week can reveal. A freedom of information request shows that 125 companies on the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s 324-strong end-point assessment organisation (EPAO) register have not recorded any assessments. Smaller EPAOs which spoke to FE Week […]
Gavin Williamson has put forward his own policy adviser to be the next chief regulator of Ofqual, prompting warnings over the body’s supposed independence. The Department for Education announced last week that Dr Jo Saxton, who founded and ran the Turner Schools academy trust before moving to her current job, was the education secretary’s preferred […]
Roger Taylor, the former chair of Ofqual, who oversaw the grades fiasco last summer, has spent much of his life thinking about transparency and data. Here he says no algorithm would ever have worked ̶ and why BTECs were not the main focus “An unsolvable problem.” That is how Roger Taylor, former chair of […]
Profiles
The education secretary has defended plans to hand new powers to the government’s apprenticeships quango, saying it will “strike the right balance” with Ofqual’s responsibilities. Gavin Williamson, today speaking to the education select committee, called proposals to hand the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education sign-off on approving and regulating technical qualifications a “tidying up […]
The government is looking at a “similar set of measures” for the 2022 exams as those proposed for this summer’s series before formal tests were cancelled, Gavin Williamson has said. The education secretary told the education select committee this morning that they “very much hope and intend” for exams and vocational and technical qualifications to […]
A former academy trust boss and policy adviser to Gavin Williamson has been put forward to be the new chief regulator of Ofqual. The government has named Dr Jo Saxton as its preferred candidate for the role, following approval by the prime minister. Simon Lebus has been in post in the top job on an […]
Labour will seek amendments to the Skills Bill so that metro mayors have a bigger role in local skills improvement plans, the House of Lords has heard. The party will also seek to remove proposed new powers for the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education, warning that the plans would “undermine the independent status” of […]
Government plans to remove funding for the majority of BTECs will hit the most disadvantaged young students the hardest, numerous sector-representative groups have warned. In a joint statement published today for a campaign called #ProtectStudentChoice, 11 organisations urge ministers to rethink plans outlined in the level 3 qualifications review. They express concern that removing funding […]
