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‘ofsted’

Corbyn speaking at AoC annual conference

Jeremy Corbyn will address this year’s Association of Colleges annual conference. The annual event at at the ICC in Birmingham is one of the key events in the FE calendar, and takes place this year from November 14 to 15, and the resurgent Labour leader is one of the headline speakers. Other highlights announced include […]

News

Adult education budget procurement has been a disaster

The ESFA has ridden rough-shod over the work of many vital third sector providers. Tim Ward wants answers Imagine the outcry if, at the beginning of the year, the ESFA had come out with a policy that would move money from one area to another without any reference to local stakeholders. What if it took […]

Opinion

Damning evidence mounts against DfE over Learndirect

The Department for Education did not launch a funding audit of Learndirect at the end of March, even though Ofsted sent damning evidence that apprentices were not receiving enough training, FE Week can reveal. An experienced independent apprenticeship funding auditor confirmed Ofsted’s evidence should have raised significant concerns at the department. FE Week understands that […]

News

Ofsted exposes rule breach over unemployed apprentices

An ‘inadequate’ community learning provider has been caught breaching government funding rules, after Ofsted found most of its construction apprentices were unemployed. North Liverpool Regeneration Company Ltd, which trained around 129 learners last year with an Education and Skills Funding Agency apprenticeships allocation of more than £600,000, was given a grade four across the board […]

News

DfE given legal ultimatum over botched adult education budget tender

Private providers have given the government until the end of this week to find a solution to the “tragedy” of the botched adult education budget tender – or else they’ll launch legal action. The fallout from the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s contentious AEB procurement process has stoked “immense anger and frustration” across the sector […]

News

Ofsted watch: Major retailer ‘requires improvement’

A major retailer has failed to improve its in-house apprenticeship provision beyond a grade three, in a less than positive week for the sector. Halfords, which delivers training to its own apprentices in retail, management and warehousing, was rated as ‘requires improvement’ across the board in a report published September 13 and based on an […]

News

MP blasts stalled merger as a ‘hostile takeover’

An MP is demanding urgent action from both the education secretary and the FE commissioner over fears that their local college might be forced into a “hostile takeover”. A merger suggested in the area reviews between Barnfield College and Central Bedfordshire College seemed to have fallen by the wayside after “regrettable” comments by the latter’s […]

News

ESFA row-back on plans to increase apprenticeship performance threshold

The government has today scrapped plans to increase by three percentage points the apprenticeship minimum standard achievement threshold. The minimum standard is an important performance measure as the Education and Skills Funding Agency “monitors delivery against that minimum standard, which could trigger intervention to support improvement”. The ESFA: “calculate how many of the apprenticeships or […]

News

Sixth form colleges’ cash crisis exposed

Two sixth-form colleges have such severe financial problems that their very futures are threatened, after shocking reports were published this month. Advisers for the sixth-form college commissioner Peter Mucklow visited St Mary’s Sixth Form College, in Blackburn, and Brooke House Sixth Form College, in London, in March after both were hit with financial notices to […]

News