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‘ofsted’

College refuses to explain spending millions on mysterious subcontractor

A college has refused to explain why it has given £16.5 million over the last three years to a subcontracting partner that employs fewer than 10 people. Brooklands College relies on SCL Security Ltd, a private provider run by Andrew Merritt, to deliver hundreds of level-three IT apprenticeships every year, for mostly 16-to-18-year-olds. The company […]

News

Contradictory claims over UTC learner numbers from Baker Dearing Trust

The organisation behind the university technical college programme has claimed the number of 14-year-olds studying at the institutions is on the up – even though its own figures show the opposite. A spokesperson for the Baker Dearing Trust told FE Week that year 10 recruitment at the 14-to-19 technical institutions “has grown 40 per cent […]

News

Questions surround DfE’s ability to ban poor HE apprenticeship providers

Banning ‘insufficient’ new providers from recruiting apprentices may not be as simple as once thought, as confusion appears to surround the case of a private university.  BPP University, part of the global BPP Professional Education Group, was warned it was making poor progress in an early monitoring visit report of its apprenticeship provision from Ofsted […]

News

Quality of apprenticeship policy suffers from ‘insufficient progress’

Two years ago FE Week exposed thousands of apprentices on standards without any approved end-point-assessment organisations. At the time, a former director of the DfE described the situation as “diabolical”. The chief executive of the ESFA, responsible for recruiting the end-point assessment organisations, was given a ticking off by the education select committee and then […]

Opinion

ESFA WON’T ban new apprenticeship providers with poor AEB provision found in monitoring visits

The government will not ban new apprenticeship providers from recruiting adult learners if they’re making ‘insufficient progress’ in that theme alone in Ofsted monitoring visits, after FE Week highlighted the grey area last month. Updated policy guidance was published this afternoon by the Education and Skills Funding Agency which has finally brought some clarification to […]

News

DfE plans National Colleges evaluation to avoid repeating mistakes with Institutes of Technology

The government is going to evaluate its troubled National Colleges policy to identify what has gone wrong with the scheme and help avoid the same mistakes in the rollout of Institutes of Technology. A tender from the Department for Education went live on Monday asking for a research company to take on the in-depth evaluation […]

News

DfE reopens £15m strategic college improvement fund before finalising first round

Colleges are being invited to bid for cash in a new round of the strategic college improvement fund – but it’s unclear how much is left in the £15 million pot. A pilot for the SCIF was run last year in which 14 struggling colleges shared £2 million (the winners of which can be found […]

News

Ofsted watch: A trio of ‘inadequate’ providers

It’s been a bad week for the FE and skills sector, with a trio of reports returning ‘inadequate’ grades and a major private university found to be making ‘insufficient progress’ in its apprenticeships. Elsewhere, two providers have seen their ratings go up from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’, while seven monitoring visit reports have been published. […]

News

Employers start to leave reviews on ESFA’s new Trip Advisor-style feature

The government has launched its Trip Advisor-style review tool to let employers rate apprenticeship providers, and Ofsted intends to use the data to inform inspections. The tool, called “what employers are saying”, allows employers who have registered apprentices on the apprenticeship service to feed back on specific aspects of their programmes. Employers rate training providers on […]

News