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11 April 2026

Tag: ESFA

Training providers are facing uncertain times

Small training providers like the Friends Centre in Brighton are struggling under the current AEB uncertainty, writes Helen Osborne The recent partial invitation to tender for the Adult Education Budget has been going on a long time, and the announcement has been put back again. There are plenty of unintended consequences which seem not to […]

Horror show for degree apprenticeships

There’s no sign that the non-levy allocations farrago will be solved any time soon – and now higher education leaders are issuing dire warnings about the future of degree-level apprenticeships. The FE sector reacted in horror after the Education and Skills Funding Agency announced in April that it would pause the procurement process for providers […]

ESFA is jeapordising degree apprenticeships

The ESFA’s approach to the allocation of apprenticeship funding for non-levy employers undermines the apprenticeship reforms and specifically, degree apprenticeships, says Adrian Anderson The apprenticeship reforms put the employer in the driving seat. Employers develop apprenticeship standards that define the knowledge, skills and behaviours required for an occupation, and they decide which to use to […]

Exclusive: Providers finally successful in apprentice register applications

Hundreds of providers including a college from the nation’s second largest city, which largely missed out last time, have made it onto the register of apprenticeship training providers at the second time of asking. FE Week understands providers have been finding out this morning if they’ve been successful or not, in the second round of […]

Devastating impact of non-levy allocations ‘horror show’

The allocations horror show has claimed its first victim, as a subcontractor with 18 years’ experience has announced it will be forced to close within months after it was dropped by its lead provider. Other subcontractors are meanwhile warning of “chaos” and mass redundancies due to the massive cuts the government has made in its […]

RoATP provider now selling for tens of thousands

A company with no apparent track record or trading history is being put up for sale because it managed to win a place on the new register of approved training providers, FE Week has learned. What’s more, multiple companies that do change hands may even be allowed to remain on the register, according to a […]

ESFA pause will destroy good specialist providers

It was announced during the Easter break that the government’s decision over funding allocations for apprenticeship provision for non-levy-paying employers had been paused, to allow time a careful review. Noel Dunne explains why he thinks this was a bad move. As the director of an award-winning training provider in charge of four subcontracts with different […]

What secret grade did you get?

This week we expose the ESFA’s top secret four-level grading system that gets applied to every one of just over 1,000 post-16 providers that they fund. We learned that funding agency staff use what’s called a ‘profile and assessment tool’ to assign every prime provider one of four ‘intervention status categories’. On the face of […]

Government secretly grading all colleges and training providers

UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that there were inaccuracies in the full PAT list previously published, which FE Week downloaded from the DFE website. Whilst we investigate we have removed the link to this data. We apologise for any inconvenience caused. The data was sent to the DfE in advance of publishing […]