apprenticeships | FE Week

Chancellor announces £80m to support small businesses with apprentices

There will be an extra £80 million released to help small businesses recruit apprentices, the chancellor has announced in his spring statement to Parliament. But it isn’t strictly new funding, a Treasury official later admitted. “We are committed as a government to delivering three million apprenticeship starts by 2020 with the support of business through […]

95% of apprenticeships agreed at full cap price, despite negotiation ‘experiment’

The government should drop its “experiment” with negotiated apprenticeship prices, after it emerged that almost every single one is currently being agreed at full cost, the boss of the Association and Learning Providers has said. Mark Dawe wants “fixed pricing” for all apprenticeships, both for the new employer-designed standards and for the older frameworks. Every […]

More part-time apprenticeships are needed – here’s why

Apprenticeships as they stand are low-paid and inflexible, and that prices out people with care needs and children. This must change, warns Dr Carole Easton As the government struggles to reach its target of three million apprenticeship starts, and while employers figure out how to make the most of the new levy, the needs of […]

Barnfield College could lose its apprenticeships provision

Barnfield College has been rated grade four by Ofsted for apprenticeships, which means it will lose the right to offer them under updated government rules. An inspection report out this morning rated it ‘requires improvement’ in all other headline fields, except for adult learning programmes and provision for people with high needs, where it was ‘good’. […]

DfE ‘plain sloppy’ at policing apprenticeship minimum wage adverts

Providers on the government’s apprenticeship search site are not being effectively policed to ensure they advertise legal wages – and the shadow skills minister has accused it of being “plain sloppy”. The apprenticeship national minimum wage is rising from £3.50 to £3.70 per hour in April, but FE Week has discovered that this detail is […]

How Greater Manchester plans to boost BAME apprenticeships

The city-region is front and centre in the government’s new plan to boost BAME participation in skills, writes Cllr Sean Anstee Greater Manchester has a long and proud history of striving for fairness, equality and inclusion – and in the past month we’ve been reminded of the important role that various great Mancunians played in […]

Change is coming – but can the apprenticeship market handle it?

Employers are paying too much for their apprenticeships, according to the Department for Education. Officials “expected” employers would negotiate prices below the relevant upper limit they set before April last year, and the Institute for Apprenticeships since then. But instead many employers pay top whack as, apparently, “they do not feel able to negotiate with […]

Anger as apprenticeship providers asked to log off-the-job training

Providers will be asked to log apprentices’ off-the-job training hours to prove that the deeply unpopular minimum funding requirement is being met, the government has revealed. A new data field for individual learner records (ILR) – which is to be updated monthly – is supposed to “help” providers “demonstrate compliance” with the requirement for at […]

Qualifications in apprenticeship standards: IfA rule changes aren’t enough

The sector cheered when the IfA said it would allow qualifications in standards once again, but not all is as it seems, according to Anthony Elgey, who has been involved in several trailblazers in the mineral products industry It seems the sector’s celebrations over this week’s Institute for Apprenticeships announcement, that qualifications would be permitted […]