York College
‘ofsted’
The autumn budget brought with it a commitment from the government to invest £40 million in new further education centres of excellence for maths. FE Week looks at where these new maths hubs might be built. Plans to spend money to address the government’s forced GCSE resits policy were widely welcomed last week, including the […]
News
Two colleges have seen their grades go up to ‘good’ this week – but three previously uninspected providers haven’t fared so well, including one rated ‘inadequate’. KT Associates, an independent training provider, received the lowest possible grade across the board in a report published on December 1 and based on an inspection in October. Safeguarding […]
England’s colleges are showing signs of turning a significant corner in their Ofsted performance. Seven have managed to dig themselves out of failing grades in the early part 2017/18 – where none managed the same feat during that period last year. Frustratingly however, this success will not be recognised in the education watchdog’s imminent annual […]
Three weeks ago we reported that by the end of the last academic year, college performance had dipped to its lowest level, as measured by Ofsted. The proportion of the nation’s 188 colleges graded ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ languished on 69 per cent, over 10 percentage points below other provider types. How quickly things have changed: […]
Opinion
The crude imposition of Prevent in colleges has created a with-us-or-against-us mentality, running roughshod over the British value of tolerance, argues Rania Hafez At the beginning of the academic year as my second-year students were streaming in, I noticed one of the lads sporting a slightly bushier beard, and found myself wondering whether it was […]
Two thirds of apprenticeships are merely “converting” existing employees and could be certifying existing skills, rather than focusing on expanding expertise, a new report has warned. Researchers recommend that Ofsted inspections should check that these existing employees being converted into apprentices are actually learning new skills. ‘Better apprenticeships’, by social mobility foundation the Sutton Trust, […]
The FE commissioner has new powers to trigger formal intervention, under tougher plans to enter colleges before they hit rock bottom. According to a new intervention policy, published by the Department for Education this morning, Richard Atkins will now be able to take formal action at a college that isn’t yet failing, but where a […]
It was ‘good’ news all round for FE this week as all inspected providers either maintained or improved their ratings to a grade two. Two colleges, which previously hit the headlines for management issues, were celebrating after boosting from ‘requires improvement’ to ‘good’. Its welcome news coming after FE Week revealed earlier this month that […]
The Construction Industry Training Board has held onto its ‘outstanding’ rating from Ofsted, in a report due to be officially published tomorrow. The report, which looked only at its apprenticeship provision that is all run through subcontractors, returned grade ones across the board. CITB was also rated grade one-overall in a report published January 2013. […]
