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10 April 2026

Tag: DfE

Cost of Digital Apprenticeship Service revealed

The government expects to spend at least £12.5m on delivering its new Digital Apprenticeship Service, FE Week can reveal. The budget will cover both costs to the Skills Funding Agency and suppliers of services such as web development and user research, according to the Department for Education. A DfE spokesperson told FE Week: “The cost of building […]

DfE bailing out colleges

The government has announced new rules which will allow it to repeatedly bail out failing colleges that go bust, reneging on a previous commitment. The new Technical and Further Education Bill announced on Thursday last week includes provisions to apply a ‘special administration regime’ to insolvent colleges and sixth forms in order to put the […]

Apprenticeship funding ‘u-turn’ – but how far does it really go?

Despite the very public “U-turn” the government made on proposed apprenticeship cuts on Tuesday, funding is still due to be cut from key frameworks by up to 50 per cent, exclusive analysis by FE Week has shown. In August, this newspaper discovered that cuts proposed by the Department for Education would cause framework funding rates […]

Court date set for AoC judicial review over new sixth form

The court start date has been set for the Association of College’s first judicial review against the government in more than a decade. The AoC revealed a month ago that it was going to take legal action over the Department for Education’s controversial decision to fund a new sixth form at Abbs Cross Academy and […]

Insolvency regime plans in new Technical and Further Education Bill

A new Technical and Further Education Bill published today has set out proposals for a new insolvency regime for FE colleges. The legislation also includes a proposal to extend the role of new vocational training policing body, the Institute for Apprenticeships, to cover technical education. The plan, it confirmed, is now is to call it the Institute […]

Four changes in the apprenticeship announcements you need to know

This morning FE Week was the first to report that the Department for Education had released documents confirming the level of funding for apprenticeships from May 1, 2017. Click here. The three week consultation on the provisional proposals began on the August 12 and had 892 responses, but the government had feedback via other means including […]

Four new FE Commissioner reports published by DfE

A college has been slammed for its “dysfunctional” leadership, in one of four new FE commissioner reports to have been published by the Department for Education. The damning report into Mid Cheshire College, dated April 2016, came after it was rated inadequate by Ofsted in January – but before the resignation of then-principal Richard Hollywood […]

Let’s make end-point assessment part of the solution, not the problem

While end-point assessments currently raise more questions than they answer, if well implemented, they could help build confidence in the apprenticeship system, says Terry Fennell Last month the DfE approved the 135th apprenticeship standard for mainstream delivery and by the end of 2016, over 3,000 apprentices will have started on one of these new programmes. […]