Blog posts for author:Lindsay Plumpton

Per Page

NCFE Million Makers challenge

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Wednesday 05 August 2015

Lindsay Plumpton

NCFE’s aspiring leaders are participating in the Million Makers challenge after a successful pitch to a Dragons’ Den panel, who commended the team for their “passion, enthusiasm, expertise and determination.” The competition, run by the Prince’s Trust and supported by Capita, is an “entrepreneurial fundraising challenge” where teams must make £10,000 from £1,500 in seed funding, with all proceeds going to charity. The scheme, set up in 2008, has raised over £5 million for charity to date.

Read More

Tagged:

Hard facts back up soft skills

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Monday 02 February 2015

Lindsay Plumpton

A new campaign by employers is backing ‘soft skills’ as a key factor for success in the workplace. Research has shown that transferable skills such as problem solving, initiative, and team work have a clear economic value worth a huge £88bn to the UK economy. Business giants such as McDonald's, Barclays and the CBI are supporting the campaign to promote the value of these skills, underlining how essential they are in terms of young people progressing into work from education.

Read More

Tagged:

Literacy and numeracy remains top priority

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Monday 02 February 2015

Lindsay Plumpton

It’s encouraging to see literacy and numeracy high on the political agenda throughout the pre-election campaigns. This month, the Liberal Democrats have committed to eliminating child illiteracy in England by 2025 if they remain in power following May's general election. It’s a positive step in raising the bar of achievement. If young people have a strong foundation in English and maths, they can then build on this to further their skills in their areas of interest. A core understanding of numbers and an ability to communicate effectively is absolutely vital for a pupil to progress from school into further education, an apprenticeship or a job.

Read More

Tagged:

Improving Functional Skills qualifications

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Tuesday 27 January 2015

Lindsay Plumpton

Today, Ofqual released their report following the thematic review of Functional Skills qualifications. The report sets out Ofqual’s conclusion that ‘aspects’ of the qualifications need to be improved. The “improvements that each awarding organisation has been asked to make are specific to that awarding organisation and its qualifications.” Overall, there are 4 key areas in which awarding organisations are now looking to make changes:

Read More

Tagged:

Call for career advice on apprenticeships

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Wednesday 10 December 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

As we approach 2015’s General Election, ‘Apprenticeships’ is the hot topic that binds all 3 of the big political parties. However, Ofsted FE and Skills Director Lorna Fitzjohn has recently spoken out about young people not being well advised on the benefits of apprenticeships when at school, resulting in the number of apprenticeship starts among young people ‘flatlining’.  She claims that careers advice in schools mainly focuses on A-Levels as the preferred option for teenagers due to a lack of understanding in schools about work-based training.

Read More

Tagged:

Supporting your staff into the online space

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Friday 05 December 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

Earlier this year, the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG), made a number of ambitious recommendations to then Skills Minister Matthew Hancock and the sector more broadly regarding the effective use of digital technology in learning, teaching and assessment in Further Education and Skills. At NCFE, we support new technology within education and believe that digital methods can provide a more flexible, learner-centric approach to education, helping us to fit learning to individual needs. What’s more, it can support and empower staff to further strengthen their teaching.

Read More

Tagged:

Changes to Apprenticeship grading

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Wednesday 12 November 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

Skills Minister Nick Boles has revealed that new apprenticeship frameworks will no longer have to be graded using pass, merit and distinction. Instead, it will be assessed whether apprenticeships should be graded on a ‘case by case basis’ as a compromise position. The change in direction follows concerns raised by the sector regarding apprenticeship reform. However, it will only be a small number of cases where apprenticeships will be exempt from grading and there will need to be good justification to warrant this exemption.

Read More

Tagged:

Apprenticeships vs university

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Wednesday 15 October 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

A recent survey carried out by NCFE has outlined that the high cost of further education has prevented almost half of UK adults gaining advanced qualifications. This comes as figures show that the average graduate debt is now £53,000 after tuition fees rose in September 2012. With an average of 250 people applying for each corporate job, and with 20% of graduates unemployed in their first 6 months after completing their university course, there is an increasing demand for vocational courses and Apprenticeships.

Read More

Tagged:

Increase in apprenticeship numbers remains cross party consensus

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Thursday 02 October 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

The past fortnight has seen the 2 major political parties hold their final annual conference before the General Election in May 2015. At each event, the parties set out their policy plans and goals if they were to lead a majority government post General Election. These plans were articulated through a range of keynote speeches by significant Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet leads, as well as through fringe events, where key decision makers and corporate interests could discuss particular policy matters in a more intimate setting.

Read More

Tagged:

GCSE results – what’s the scores on the doors?

By Lindsay Plumpton, Communications Leader, Tuesday 26 August 2014

Lindsay Plumpton

This year saw a transition for GCSE Level qualifications, with a focus on end point examination, (removing the earlier ‘January series’ re-sit & modular examinations). Last week, thousands of teens received their all-important results and overall, the 2014 results show a 98.5% pass rate, down 0.3 percentage points (but with a rise in students receiving A*s). While some subjects, such as ICT, Computing and Business Studies recorded significant growth, the number of English entries dropped by more than 215,000. Among 15-year-olds, the number of maths entries dropped by 76 per cent, from 170,357 down to 39,292.

Read More

Tagged:

Subscribe

Get notified when a new post is published.


Authors

Categories