York College
‘ofsted’
The first inadequate-overall Ofsted rating has been handed out to a loans-only provider, which complained it had been unaware it was subject to inspection, causing its Skills Funding Agency contract to be pulled. The Beauty Academy was handed the lowest possible rating overall and in three headline fields in a report published today (March 30), […]
News
A college facing “financial crisis”, which posted a 2015/16 group deficit of over £15 million, has come in for fierce ministerial criticism for poor oversight of doomed apprenticeship provider First4Skills. The Liverpool-based company went bust earlier this month, affecting around 200 staff and around 6,500 learners, after the Skills Funding Agency pulled its contract. That was […]
The FE Week Annual Apprenticeship Conference – now in its third year – shone a spotlight on the importance of quality being maintained and hopefully improved as the system is transformed. Held just days before the launch of the apprenticeship levy – and shortly after the announcement of the controversial Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers […]
Supplements
The government will make a major u-turn over the much-derided condition of funding rule, FE Week can reveal. From August 2015 all 16 to 18-year-old students with a GCSE grade D have had to study and resit the GCSE as part of the condition of funding, rather than a functional skills qualification at level two. But once this policy […]
Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving Malcolm Goodwin has been appointed the new principal of Capel Manor College in Enfield, London. Mr Goodwin has worked at the college since 2013, first joining as an assistant principal before becoming vice-principal and deputy over the course of four years. He will succeed current principal […]
Movers and Shakers
A London borough council is unhappy over a planned merger between a local college and a group whose headquarters is 300 miles away from the capital. Lewisham Southwark College and Newcastle-based NCG have opened a consultation on a proposed merger, 18 months after a potential partnership was first mooted. The link-up was the college’s preferred […]
Fierce criticism has flooded in from MPs concerned at the large number of colleges that have missed out on the new register of apprenticeship training providers. The list of providers that will be eligible to deliver apprenticeships from May was published on March 14 by the Skills Funding Agency – however, a large number of […]
There has been no modelling done by the Skills Funding Agency to predict how many providers will eventually end up on the new register of apprenticeship training providers, its boss has admitted. Peter Lauener’s stunning revelation will be of concern to many in the sector, not least the new Ofsted boss Amanda Spielman, who admits […]
A university technical college in Middlesex received a grade three in its first ever Ofsted inspection, spelling even more problems for the 14 to 19 institutions, in a week that saw a sixth form college rated ‘outstanding’. Inspectors cited “historically low attendance” at Heathrow Aviation Engineering UTC as well as “poor” student attitudes towards being […]