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Annual awareness campaign focuses on Alzheimer’s disease

By , Friday 02 September 2016

This month, Alzheimer’s disease is being highlighted with the fifth World Alzheimer’s Month, an international campaign to raise awareness and challenge stigma. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia – a progressive, degenerative brain syndrome that affects memory, thinking, behaviour and emotion. 46 million people globally are living with dementia – 500,000 of those are in the UK – and this number is expected to increase to 131.5 million by 2050. Other types of dementia include vascular dementia and mixed dementia, and the chief executive of Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) called dementia the ‘most significant’ health crisis of the 21st century. ADI figures show that someone in the world develops the disease every three seconds.

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Cuts to apprenticeship funding rates of up to 50% proposed

By Michael Lemin, Policy and Research Manager, Thursday 25 August 2016

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It has been revealed that proposed funding for 16-18 year-old apprentices will mean current rates to colleges and training providers being cut by around 30%, and providers in deprived areas of London will find that their funding rates may have been cut by over half in some cases. In my opinion, this is likely to cause further damage to the apprenticeship brand in London, which we know is a problem. Our recent research with Reed in Partnership found that people in the capital are 40% less likely than the English average to want their children to pursue an apprenticeship.

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GCSE results day 2016

By , Thursday 25 August 2016

Today, the nervous wait is over for those collecting their GCSE results. This year, GCSE results have fallen across the board. The proportion of learners gaining a C or above dropped by an unprecedented 2.1 percentage points (down to 66.9% for A*-C grades), including a sharp decline in those gaining a C or above in English.

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Apprenticeship Levy: an update

By David Grailey, Chief Executive, Tuesday 23 August 2016

David Grailey

Despite appeals from employer groups such as the Confederation of British Industry, the levy is still on course to start being collected in April 2017, with the introduction of the new provider funding system beginning a month after. This is so that ‘levy paying employers can use funds in their digital account to pay for training from the first month they declare levy payable through the PAYE system’. The biggest news – and of some relief to the approximately 98% of employers in the UK who will be non-levy payers under the new regime – is that these employers will pay 10% of the apprenticeship cost, with the government paying the remaining 90%.

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The ministerial merry-go-round

By Michael Lemin, Policy and Research Manager, Tuesday 23 August 2016

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It’s been a summer of huge change. The EU referendum result in June was the catalyst, resulting in a new Prime Minister, a major cabinet reshuffle and significant changes to government structure. Here’s a round-up of who’s who in the new cabinet. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is no more, and has been replaced by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. This means that responsibilities for skills and higher education now fall under the remit of the Department for Education, and we have come full circle, as many veterans of the sector will recognise. 

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