DfE’s £20m spike cash helps buy 9,000 student places With student numbers climbing sharply, colleges in northern England are using emergency cash to buy new buildings and convert classrooms to workshops
FE is no longer Cinderella, it’s the government’s Fairy Godmother The post-16 white paper shows that even fairy dust can’t hide the lack of a clear purpose behind yet another wave of reform
We’ll end qualification confusion and build confidence in FE For too long, young people have faced a maze of qualifications with no clear direction. Our new V Levels will bring order to the chaos, bridging the gap between A Levels and T Levels
Weston freed of ‘traumatic’ NTI – but finance probe continues College out of intervention after strengthening governance procedures
More than half of Turing trips turned down The government also underspent its budget despite a one-third cut
We need the same rigour of teaching in colleges as in schools Schools soared up the international league tables under Gove and Gibb. Colleges, by contrast, remain the poor relation. It’s time to bring evidence and rigour to FE through a ‘skills standards’ revolution
Government promises details of 6,500-teacher manifesto pledge DfE will publish a full delivery plan by December
Reform plots a political tsunami, but skills policy is lost at sea Farage’s turquoise tide: The insurgent party’s supporters want to fix ‘broken Britain’, insisting that trades and industrial automation are the key
One minister, two beasts: Can Jacqui Smith fix the skills system? Jacqui Smith’s unprecedented brief spanning the DfE and DWP signals ambition for a joined-up skills system. But without wider government buy-in, her impact risks being symbolic