The latest Exclusive Thought Leadership and Op-Ed Articles written by experts across Further Education, Work Based Learning, Skills, Employability & Apprenticeships
The Trouble with Apprenticeships… Stop t…
Mar 25, 2019 / Featured Article
So this week sees more negative headlines regarding the apprenticeship reform programme. This time in the form of the announcement by the Public Accounts Commission of this afternoon's inquiry into the...
FE Funding, Social Mobility and Brexit: …
Mar 25, 2019 / SkillsWorld
This week Tom talks to Claire Fox, Director of Academy of Ideas, and regular commentator on our airwaves around a whole host of moral and political issue. Claire originally worked...
How important is health and safety train…
Mar 23, 2019 / Featured Article
A radical overhaul of the skills system across the UK is needed if businesses are to avoid the negative effects of Brexit. There is little doubt that the skills base in...
Apprenticeships vital for tackling futur…
Mar 22, 2019 / Featured Article
With Brexit creating uncertainty and bringing skills shortages to the forefront, employers are under quite a bit of pressure. As a result, apprenticeships are being seen as an invaluable investment...
2019: Time for FE and HE to work in harm…
Mar 21, 2019 / Featured Article
As colleges begin to plan for 2019/20 this offers a time of reflection. Both Further Education and Higher Education must have looked back on 2018 as a troubled time, with...
The Shameful Neglect of Adult Learners i…
Mar 20, 2019 / Featured Article
Launch of Independent Commission on Lifelong Learning. When it comes to education, for too long there has been an almost exclusive focus, in terms of political attention and public funding, on...
Three ways to optimise apprenticeships t…
Mar 20, 2019 / Featured Article
How can apprenticeships support the economy? The current apprenticeship system is not optimised to meet the needs of employers or the wider economy. Employers have come to view the apprenticeship system...
Why the Arguments against Management App…
Mar 19, 2019 / Featured Article
Read many articles in the FE press or talk to FE sector leaders and you will soon get the impression that management apprenticeships are a very bad thing: There’s has been...
Ten year plan for basic and intermediate…
Mar 19, 2019 / Featured Article
New research from Learning and Work Institute shows progress improving skills has slowed over the last decade: A renewed focus on basic and intermediate skills could boost our economy and improve social...
Hard facts employers should consider bef…
Mar 19, 2019 / Featured Article
Movement to Work works with businesses and organisations that have the imagination to give young people who need more support a chance in the workplace through placements and other job...
External Quality Assurance (EQA) starts …
Mar 18, 2019 / Featured Article
This is a critical and exciting time for the apprenticeship reforms. Now a few years in we are beginning to see momentum build as volumes of apprentices on standards begin to...
SEND and High Needs, Have Your Say: Impr…
Mar 18, 2019 / Featured Article
A potential measure of an advanced modern society may be viewed as to how well that society supports and encourages the most vulnerable of its citizens to improve the quality...
‘Crazy’ Quality Assurance System For #Ap…
Mar 18, 2019 / SkillsWorld
The chair of the Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon MP, has told the #SkillsWorld podcast that Ofqual should become the sole End-Point Quality Assurance (EQA) provider for England’s apprenticeship model...
Bridging The Gap Between Government Targ…
Mar 17, 2019 / Featured Article
The introduction of the Apprenticeship Levy and the government’s target of 3 million apprenticeship starts by 2020 has many colleges and training providers feeling the pressure. Additionally, research conducted by the...
How to successfully manage a career chan…
Mar 16, 2019 / Featured Article
The average person in the UK will work 3,515 days throughout their lifetime, recent studies have found. That makes your career one of the most important parts of your life...
Students lack access to quality careers …
Mar 15, 2019 / Featured Article
Over the years, there has been a trend in firms and other organisations towards targeting young people about careers at ever earlier stages. Striving to ensure that talent – irrespective of...
Play the Game! EQA of EPA Needs a Common…
Mar 15, 2019 / Featured Article
Think of the last time you played a board game. Monopoly? Risk? Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that when you played, there were a set of rules that everyone...
For Many In FE LinkedIn Is A Forgotten F…
Mar 14, 2019 / Featured Article
Does LinkedIn Matter To You? There is a simple answer to this question and it should be: yes. Yet for many people in FE, in training provider organisations and in learning...
Adult Education Budget Devolution Is The…
Mar 14, 2019 / Featured Article
Devolution of the Adult Education Budget (AEB), has been on the cards for a few years and until recently, it seemed to be moving towards us at the speed of...
#AI To Create 2.3 million Jobs By 2020: …
Mar 13, 2019 / Featured Article
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is slowly taking over our day-to-day lives - especially when it comes to the workplace and using tech to enhance and fast-track tasks. There are many sectors in...
We must address the problem of a levy po…
Mar 13, 2019 / Featured Article
Introduced in 2017, the apprenticeship levy was widely seen as a positive step towards increasing investment in skills development and training by businesses across the UK. Not only this, but the...
DfE’s new Teacher Recruitment and Retent…
Mar 12, 2019 / Featured Article
The Department for Education has launched a strategy for recruiting and retaining school teachers in state-funded schools, which is based around four key priorities: School cultures, Early careers, Flexible careers...
Smarter Learning: How artificial intelli…
Mar 12, 2019 / Featured Article
You know you are in the digital age when you have to intervene between two robots arguing in your home, as happened to me recently when my Google Home Hub...
Energy, Enthusiasm, Willingness to Learn…
Mar 11, 2019 / SkillsWorld
This week for Skills World, listen to Tom reporting from the frontline of skills delivery as he talks to award winning independent apprenticeship training provider, LDN Apprenticeships. Founder and CEO, Simon Bozzoli, explains why...
AN ‘EASTERN’ STRATEGY TO #NUDGE LEARNERS…
Mar 11, 2019 / Featured Article
4 quick questions: Why, if the laid path goes all around a square of grass, is it likely there’ll be an unofficial path cutting one or more corners? Why are you advised...
Building The Essential Skills of Creativ…
Mar 09, 2019 / Featured Article
Having the skills required for a career can be hard when leaving school and university. Often specific skills aren’t taught in traditional education. Being able to gain skills that are...
CAREER GUIDANCE FOR ALL, NOT FOR THE PRI…
Mar 08, 2019 / Featured Article
National Careers Week - Equal Access to Career Guidance It’s National Careers Week: a nationwide campaign that promotes good careers guidance in schools, colleges and universities, ensuring that all students in...
Aligning the National Curriculum to care…
Mar 08, 2019 / Featured Article
With both National Apprenticeship Week and National Careers Week putting careers in the spotlight, it’s a great time to reflect on exactly what is being done to help the next...
Why schools should focus on a child’s ac…
Mar 08, 2019 / Featured Article
“I also agree with him about the importance of embedding careers deep into the curriculum”. That is how Secretary of State Damian Hinds responded to a question in the House...
#Apprenticeships can be key to navigatin…
Mar 07, 2019 / Featured Article
Apprenticeships remain a popular way in to work for many young people. Official figures from the Department of Education show 119,500 took up apprenticeships in the first three quarters of...
Apprentices #BlazeATrail, but the govern…
Mar 07, 2019 / Featured Article
There is definitely an air of pyromania in the National Apprenticeship Service’s latest campaigns to promote apprenticeships. After exhorting young people to ‘#FireIt Up’, they are now encouraged during National Apprenticeship...
Making A Career In Cleaning Up The Earth…
Mar 06, 2019 / Featured Article
School and college students care passionately about the environment. Less than a month ago, thousands of young people walked out of lessons to protest about the failure of politicians to...
20% Off The Job Training: Let’s celebrat…
Mar 05, 2019 / Featured Article
For anyone outside the skills sector, trying to work out what is going on with apprenticeships as we celebrate another National Apprenticeship Week must be quite baffling. On the one hand...
Getting on the new (tougher) #RoATP – 5 …
Mar 05, 2019 / Featured Article
The new Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers has now been launched and providers currently on the Register will be invited to reapply before the year is out. So, what do you...
Let’s flex the Apprenticeship Levy to he…
Mar 04, 2019 / Featured Article
New research shows that £3bn of Apprenticeship Levy funds are going unused, and suggests that if the rules were changed this surplus cash could be put to good use helping...
Employers Want A More Flexible Levy: Tom…
Mar 04, 2019 / SkillsWorld
Tom Bewick: [00:00:23] Hello and welcome to Skills World the podcast. I'm absolutely delighted today to be joined by Kirstie Donnelly who's the group managing director of City & Guilds. Kirstie...
#NAW19 What You Need to Know About #Appr…
Mar 02, 2019 / Featured Article
Ahead of National Apprenticeship Week 2019, HR director at findcourses.co.uk, Liza Andersin, has given her insight into everything you need to know about apprenticeships with a detailed explanation on how...
4 Reasons Why You Should Adopt Blended T…
Mar 01, 2019 / Featured Article
Every student is different. In recognizing that, educators not only accentuate the differences that exist between students of various ages or intellectual abilities, but also the fact that two persons...
What Works? Improving social mobility th…
Feb 28, 2019 / Featured Article
As the Office for Students announces today (28 Feb) a new ‘What Works’ centre to help universities analyse evidence on the impact of different approaches to widening access and improving outcomes...
Continuous learning: The very core of th…
Feb 27, 2019 / Featured Article
On-demand learning may not yet be a matter of instinct for everyone, but the time when it must be is upon us. Continuous on-demand learning is the only way we’ll be...
Let’s support young people in their ques…
Feb 26, 2019 / Featured Article
It’s easy to make assumptions about why young people do what they do or behave as they do and it’s rare to hear first-hand views from teenagers. A new piece of...
It’s time for FE Leaders to pick up the …
Feb 25, 2019 / Featured Article
I can’t consciously recall the moment I knew I was able to love, romantically, both men and women. It was undoubtedly in my mid-teens – which, as I’m now 66, means...
Protections need to be put in place to s…
Feb 22, 2019 / Featured Article
I’m disturbed to hear of a dishonest and exploitative practice affecting further education right now. Independent schools and universities who rely on international students to fill their classrooms and lecture halls...
The case for increased college funding i…
Feb 22, 2019 / Featured Article
An uncomfortable juxtaposition We are all very familiar with the sector’s case for more funding. On the one side, there is disparity compared with what schools receive per pupil. On the other...
#FireItUp Don’t Shoot It Down: Don’t Sto…
Feb 21, 2019 / Featured Article
In the early 2000’s I spent a few years working for Volkswagen. It was probably the most enlightening period of my career. I learned a lot about the importance of continual improvement...
Thinking That Political Correctness is t…
Feb 20, 2019 / Featured Article
I’ve worked with hundreds of different people in all kinds of businesses and it’s interesting how often the phrase ‘political correctness’ comes up when we talk about Equality, Diversity &...
"Traditional" Schools Must Emb…
Feb 19, 2019 / Featured Article
UTC Students Experience The Benefits Of Project-based Learning Since the start of 2019, barely a day has passed without employers, business organisations, politicians, and other luminaries highlighting the increased risk to...
#EdTech facilitates greater accessibilit…
Feb 18, 2019 / Featured Article
In late July 2018, UK education secretary Damian Hinds, gave his first major speech on the issue of social mobility to the Resolution Foundation. The minister spoke of ‘encouraging progress’ but...
Apprenticeship External Quality Assuranc…
Feb 15, 2019 / Featured Article
The recent news that apprenticeship external quality assurance bodies, known as EQAs, are charging significantly different variable rates for their services is a mess. Some are charging nothing while others’ fees...
Re-train; re-skill; re-imagine FE
Feb 14, 2019 / Featured Article
This year marks the 140th anniversary of the City & Guilds Group. At this historic milestone, Managing Director Kirstie Donnelly looks forward to the future landscape of training and development. We...
An EDI ‘Brand’ Not Backed Up With Action…
Feb 13, 2019 / Featured Article
Creating an Equality, Diversity & Inclusion brand is something that many organisations choose to do, as a way of promoting intentions and goals around Equality, Diversity & Inclusion good practice...
New Technologies Are Not A Silver Bullet…
Feb 12, 2019 / Featured Article
"Technology will never replace great teachers, but technology in the hands of great teachers is transformational” - George Couros These days it is widely recognised that digital skills and pedagogy are...
Ensuring a competitive workforce: Levera…
Feb 12, 2019 / Featured Article
Bridging the skills gap I was fortunate enough to join David Willett of the Open University (OU) on a radio day recently where we discussed the skills gap that exists in...
Blame, FE College Insolvency Regime, Rep…
Feb 11, 2019 / Featured Article
Sometimes Things Go Wrong. It’s How You Then Handle Things That Determines Your Reputation and That of The Sector. FE is yet again living in “interesting times”. And when that happens...
COULD A GENERATION OF TEACHERS BE LOCKED…
Feb 08, 2019 / Featured Article
In 1914 90 per cent of British householders rented their homes from private landlords. Today two-thirds own them. Home ownership grew from the 1930s and expanded rapidly after the war...
#APPRENTICESHIPS: It's A Question Of Qua…
Feb 07, 2019 / Featured Article
The figures below are the results of Ofsted inspection activity in-year. It’s important to note these grades are for apprenticeship provision. This means they are not specific to any one type...
Limiting Good Practice to the 9 Protecte…
Feb 06, 2019 / Featured Article
As far as Diversity & Inclusion mistakes go, this one is very straightforward. It’s a mistake that a lot of organisations make, but it’s also one that’s very easy to put...
How Can People Working In FE Remain Moti…
Feb 05, 2019 / Featured Article
Well, what do you think? Can people working in FE colleges and similar organisations remain motivated? There is lots of evidence suggesting that more than half the people in the UK...
Don’t let plain English fool you: Making…
Feb 01, 2019 / Featured Article
If you really want to be understood, write so as to confuse. Sounds like nonsense, but believe me, there’s something in it. Thing is, if someone says to you: We need to...
Apprenticeship dropouts are as important…
Jan 31, 2019 / Featured Article
The Christmas break is famously when many first year university students drop out of their courses – this month there will be plenty of young people in the UK reconsidering...
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