FE Week - 8 June 2015

Don’t cut allocations to meet savings target, pleads sector (p2) – according to Treasury announcements, both the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills are facing a £450m cut this financial year, with FE and Skills earmarked for specific savings.

A BIS spokesperson stated that they’d be "asking the SFA for advice on how savings can best be achieved in line with ministers’ priorities around Apprenticeships and priority FE participation funding…and whilst safeguarding the resilience of the sector."

Deputy Chief Executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, James Kewin, stated that "Colleges have already received their funding allocations for 2015/16 and have budgeted accordingly. To impose a cut to student funding at this late stage would be extremely reckless."

The Minister has since confirmed that there won’t be additional cuts to the 16-18 budget agreed for 2015/16, however there seems to be no such commitment for the 19+ budget.

DfE resit policy leads to GCSE campus chaos (p3) – Colleges are facing extreme pressure in accommodating the increasing numbers of GCSE examinations that are to be taken this year as part of the English and maths ‘condition of funding’, which requires learners to ‘resit’ their GCSE in the subjects if they haven’t achieved an A-C grade.

Colleges have seen gridlock as a large volume of students turn up for exams, with one even using its Principals office as an exam venue. This has come amid calls that the resit policy isn’t helping those who’re resitting their exam multiple times, and in the face of continuing funding cuts, the GCSEs themselves will be increasingly challenging to deliver.

Colleges have asked Awarding Organisations to reschedule the exams next year to ensure that they have separate GCSE English and maths exam days.

TES - 12 June 2015

Adult learning proves a privileged pastime (p44) - the Adult education body NIACE has found that the number of adults participating in learning has risen for the first time in 5 years.

In time for Adult Learners' Week, figures showed that 41% of adults have taken part in some sort of learning over the last 3 years, up from 38% in 2014.

More troubling however, is NIACE analysis showing that the rise in learning has been driven by the top 3 socio-economic classes, with fewer unemployed people (arguably those who need the most support) taking part in learning. NIACE’s figures show an increasing tendency for out-of-work people to be squeezed out of education (up to 41% from 32% last year).

FE Week - 15 June 2015

Apprentice recruitment halted over funding delay (p4) – Apprenticeship providers are facing an ‘agonising wait’ whilst they wait to see if they will receive funding for Apprenticeship and Traineeship programmes they’ve already started delivering.

The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) has delayed the publication of ’growth requests’ from providers who’ve over delivered on their contracted delivery. The uncertainty has meant that some providers have turned away extra learners, and a few are considering laying off staff to save costs.

The delay follows the treasury’s announcement that it wishes to save ‘£450m each from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education — although Skills Minister Nick Boles told MPs that the £900m of cuts would "not all fall on the sector."

An SFA spokesperson stated that they’d wait until the announcement of the government’s budget (on 8 July) before announcing the growth requests to ‘ensure that in-year funding is considered in line with government’s wider financial position’.

Understandably, this has raised concerns about the impact on the government’s 3m Apprenticeships target in this Parliament.

Nick Boles faces education grilling from MPs (feweek.co.uk) – The Skills Minister Nick Boles has re-iterated his ambition to make misuse of the term ‘Apprenticeships’ illegal, as part of the government’s forthcoming enterprise bill.

The Minister faced questions from MPs in this week’s education questions, where he set out the above, in addition, he clarified that the funding allocations announced in March for 16 to 19 year olds in the 2015/16 academic year would be unaffected by the announcement last week of a £450m cut from the DfE budget.