The latest Exclusive Thought Leadership and Op-Ed Articles written by experts across Further Education, Work Based Learning, Skills, Employability & Apprenticeships
Jobs secured on merit, not mates: Using …
May 24, 2019 / Featured Article
“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” It’s an old saying and, sadly, one that sometimes still rings true. That logic may have stacked up years ago in the...
We ask Liz Sproat: What is Google's visi…
May 23, 2019 / Featured Article
What do you see to be the future of education from a Google perspective? I think now is absolutely the best time to be in education. There is such tremendous opportunity...
Education is the fundamental foundation …
May 23, 2019 / Featured Article
Why education is key to setting up a successful business. “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Wise words from Nelson Mandela and a message...
Robots will never replace teachers: But …
May 22, 2019 / Featured Article
The digital learning experience – are we on the right track? Education has to adapt to the increasing presence of technology in our classrooms and lecture halls, but, says Hema Tank...
Translating an apprenticeship standard i…
May 21, 2019 / Featured Article
With such a rapid expansion in the number of apprenticeship standards (over 450 approved to date), I thought I would share my experience of supporting the curriculum design and content...
To close skills gaps, unlock prosperity …
May 20, 2019 / Featured Article
The pace of change in today’s workplaces is unprecedented. Rapid advances in technology, multiple generations working together for longer, and even changes to how, where and when we engage with work...
What can #AI do for education? Greater p…
May 18, 2019 / Featured Article
It’s pretty hard to escape the buzz around AI. From healthcare, to self-driving cars and even to art, the technology promises to transform our social and working lives. There’s been some optimism...
More than just a competition: Creating a…
May 17, 2019 / Featured Article
In less than four months, Team UK will stand on the podium at the Opening Ceremony of WorldSkills Kazan 2019 in front of a global audience of apprentices, education professionals...
#MentalHealth for Leaders: Establishing …
May 16, 2019 / Featured Article
It's confirmed! 'Alastair Campbell: Depression and Me' airs at 9pm on @BBCTwo on Tuesday 21st May, part of BBC's Mental Health Season https://t.co/yk0Pt0o5kj @campbellclaret pic.twitter.com/jF1wCayMdy — BBC Factual (@BBCFactualPR) May 8...
#MentalHealthAwareness: Challenging the …
May 16, 2019 / Featured Article
IT’s ESTIMATED by MIND and other charities in the UK that one in four people will experience a mental health problem in any given year. 3.3% of people in the...
Time For Training Providers To Raise The…
May 15, 2019 / Featured Article
Getting to Grips with Sales in the Education Market. The Adult education market is facing a perfect storm of change. Training providers and colleges used to hold the purse-strings for apprenticeships, but...
Health and wellbeing: Increasingly impor…
May 14, 2019 / Featured Article
DEVELOPING A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE As a college, do you want to offer healthy lifestyle options to your learners and staff? Health and wellbeing are increasingly important factors affecting retention and achievement –...
Moving away from PhD #Apprenticeships me…
May 14, 2019 / Featured Article
Plans for PHD-level apprenticeships might not be going ahead because the Institute (previously IfA) has raised concerns the programmes might not be in the “spirit” of the programme. In April the...
#Apprenticeships as currency as part of …
May 13, 2019 / Featured Article
Challenges for the next stage of Apprenticeship reform? Over the next 10 years there's going to be a need to update standards at an ever-increasing rate. At the moment we have standards...
Business leaders must take a stand again…
May 13, 2019 / Featured Article
Stress is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. It is common for employees to experience some form of work-related stress at one point or another. However...
#EdTech - Learning and Technology, Side …
May 12, 2019 / Featured Article
The way we communicate has changed drastically over the last ten years. Gone are the days of looking for 10p for the phone box… Now, in a time when technology has become...
How to complain properly and still raise…
May 11, 2019 / Featured Article
The English don’t know how to complain and it’s bad for business. Americans are much better at it. Something goes wrong, they say so and get it fixed. That’s not the English...
4 Skills That Will Help England Remain G…
May 10, 2019 / Featured Article
The future of the United Kingdom's place in the European Union (EU) remains uncertain after the deadline for reaching a deal for the departure was moved to Oct. 31, 2019...
7 public speaking secrets your students …
May 09, 2019 / Featured Article
How to develop public speaking confidence in the classroom. “There is no single set formula to giving a great talk.” Chris Anderson, Head of TED. However, what TED talks do have...
The Increasing Importance of Demonstrati…
May 09, 2019 / Featured Article
This April saw the launch of the first ever Times Higher Education (THE) University Impact Rankings – the only global performance table that assesses the impact of higher education institutions...
#Apprenticeships – Spring data sets, r…
May 08, 2019 / Featured Article
A plethora of Apprenticeship information – but is the way ahead any clearer? This past few weeks there has been a raft of Apprenticeship publications. The regular Spring Apprenticeship Data set the...
Five key takeaways from inaugural Appren…
May 07, 2019 / Featured Article
Last week, SDN delivered its first Apprenticeship Breakthrough Conference to a sold-out audience in Birmingham. The conference purposely steered away from analysing the pros and cons of apprenticeship policy – instead...
5 Ways to Demonstrate Your College’s P…
May 07, 2019 / Featured Article
One of the most common areas of discussion I am having with senior management in the Further Education sector right now is that of “demonstrating positive intent and impact”. This is...
We Need to Talk About Phonics #FullyFunc…
May 05, 2019 / Featured Article
The 2018 Functional skills reforms have brought about a number of changes to the curriculum. One which has caused some debate is the introduction of phonics in the English Functional...
Building a framework of partnerships bet…
May 04, 2019 / Featured Article
Collaboration between businesses and universities is common and encouraged in Russia. What seems to be unique about Russia is that universities here tend to be open to partnering with industry...
Where do you sit in the debate, are you …
May 03, 2019 / Featured Article
A new time for ‘The Levellers’? The group of radicals during the English civil war known as The Levellers, were firmly of the view that man’s relationship with God was a...
Differentiating for apprentices at diffe…
May 02, 2019 / Featured Article
The impact of End point assessment on the role of trainers One of the things around the Ofsted inspection is that we don't inspect endpoint assessment, in the same way that...
The importance of #apprenticeships in th…
May 02, 2019 / Featured Article
How apprenticeships can save the world The 2018 World Economic Forum in Davos played out the same way it has previously. World leaders, business executives and charity figures, including Sir David Attenborough...
The future of quality in #apprenticeship…
May 01, 2019 / Featured Article
Before I talk about the future, I'll talk about where we are now. Ofsted isn't everything, however we all understand it so let me use it as a benchmark. We've got about...
How to make the #apprenticeship levy fit…
May 01, 2019 / Featured Article
With the second anniversary of the apprenticeship levy fast becoming a distant memory, it is fair to say the Government’s flagship apprenticeship service has not worked out entirely as expected. The...
If you don’t think about the #Futureof…
Apr 30, 2019 / Featured Article
The world of work is changing; we are in the midst of a revolution fuelled by technological advancement, the change in the labour market and the demand for new skills...
DRUG PREVENTION: Does My Student Know Mo…
Apr 29, 2019 / Featured Article
The answer must surely be YES. Young people do not want "grown-ups" to know they are using drugs and / or alcohol at dangerous levels. Or if they are found out, or...
Comparative Governance – The United Ki…
Apr 27, 2019 / Featured Article
I had the privilege recently of speaking at the Association of Colleges’ Governance Summit in London. ACCT Chair Connie Hornbeck and President and CEO J. Noah Brown are across the pond...
Skills Commission Inquiry heads to Linco…
Apr 26, 2019 / Featured Article
The Skills Commission Inquiry, co-chaired by former Skills Minister John Hayes MP and Barry Sheerman MP, has been jointly launched by Policy Connect and the Learning and Work Institute. The inquiry...
From Silicon Valley To The Classroom: #E…
Apr 25, 2019 / Featured Article
American internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn, once said that Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location. Having recently spent some time at a large technology event in San...
Good leaders in FE drive improvements in…
Apr 24, 2019 / Featured Article
Leading skills: Exploring leadership in Further Education colleges A recent review by the Behavioural Insights Team for the Government found compelling evidence that effective public services leaders are associated with improved...
From Apprentice to Leader: Developing th…
Apr 23, 2019 / Featured Article
This year’s National Apprenticeships Week happened against a bleak backdrop for those in the engineering community.Only in December, figures from the Department for Education showed that there had been a...
DON'T LET DOWN THE YOUNGER GENERATION - …
Apr 19, 2019 / Featured Article
ON THE day the Prime Minister called a general election in 2017 350,000 citizens registered to vote – half on-line. Yet almost two years on it’s estimated that five million people...
Taking Teaching Further To Encourage Col…
Apr 18, 2019 / Featured Article
As part of a package of support for FE teaching, this government made a manifesto commitment to create a new national programme to attract experienced industry professionals to work in...
Gaining insights into young people who a…
Apr 17, 2019 / Featured Article
Are pupils who were eligible for free school meals more likely to be Not in Employment, Education, and Training (NEET)? What about pupils who didn’t get five GCSEs? And how do NEET...
#Apprenticeship gateway to end-point ass…
Apr 16, 2019 / Featured Article
I have heard organisations and people saying that the gateway to end-point assessment (EPA) has become a tick box exercise. I have also heard others talking about setting up a whole...
#Apprenticeships - Are Employers Really …
Apr 15, 2019 / Featured Article
It was really encouraging to listen to skills minister Anne Milton’s latest interview with FE News when she called for the Institute (IfATE) to be more responsive and open. This coincided...
Teacher gender split in top UK universit…
Apr 13, 2019 / Featured Article
There is an ongoing debate on the gender pay gap and women’s access to senior roles - but how well are female professors represented in the teaching profession in higher...
The increasing importance of ‘super’…
Apr 12, 2019 / Featured Article
Developing strong links with employers is a key priority for most FE colleges. Not only do our students need exposure to the real world of work, but businesses up and down...
Teaching adaptability in schools is a gr…
Apr 11, 2019 / Featured Article
At the end of March a new report showed that while 60% of employers say being adaptable has become more important in the last decade, simultaneously over 60% of educators...
How teaching robotics can tackle the lac…
Apr 10, 2019 / Featured Article
The UK’s economy is at risk due to the shortage in STEM skills - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - where there is a gap in professionals to take over...
How Apprenticeships Can Evolve to Suppor…
Apr 09, 2019 / Featured Article
I was recently at the 2019 Innovative Apprenticeship Network conference [INAP] in Germany. It’s a conference held every two years to review some of the leading research into Apprenticeships. As ever it...
Two-thirds of Young Swiss Enrol on Appre…
Apr 08, 2019 / SkillsWorld
Tom Bewick: Hello and welcome to #SkillsWorld the Podcast. I'm back in Germany again this week where I'm attending the International Conference on Innovative Apprenticeship. In the previous episode, we talked...
The Future of FE Funding – Are We Fund…
Apr 05, 2019 / Featured Article
While we all wait on tenterhooks for the somewhat delayed delivery of the Augar Review of Post-18 Education and Funding, it might be an opportune time to take a look...
The #Apprenticeship Levy – if rationin…
Apr 04, 2019 / Featured Article
There has been recent scrutiny about the forecasted overspend of the levy. UVAC has been predicting this for some time and now the Institute (IfATE) and the National Audit Office have...
In defence of the BTEC
Apr 03, 2019 / Featured Article
It doesn’t seem so long ago that the Edge Foundation was writing about ‘the rise of the BTEC’ and how this qualification was gaining currency amongst universities on a par...
It seems good ideas never die, they just…
Apr 02, 2019 / Featured Article
Throughout its existence, the Learning and Skills Council’s (LSC) Provider Financial Assurance inspected financial management and governance at FE colleges in parallel with Ofsted inspections. A similar approach operated for larger...
March of the Robots, Dual Apprenticeship…
Apr 01, 2019 / SkillsWorld
Tom Bewick: Hello and welcome to skill as well the podcast I'm on location this week in Germany where I'm attending the International Network on Innovative Apprenticeships (INAP) and I'm...
The Seven Year Itch – The State of the…
Apr 01, 2019 / Featured Article
The Challenge Having spent the last seven years working outside of the UK with international skills systems and policy, I found on my return that the UK cultural sector skills landscape...
The Drive For Quality In #Apprenticeship…
Mar 29, 2019 / Featured Article
Ensuring quality is an essential component of creating a truly world class apprenticeship system. The process of the reforms to apprenticeships were intended to embed quality at every level of delivery. High...
How the public sector can make the most …
Mar 28, 2019 / Featured Article
Lizzy Grayson, Category Manager of HR Services at YPO, discusses the different ways the public sector is currently making the most of apprenticeship training: The role of apprenticeship training has always...
How to retire happily from FE – and do…
Mar 27, 2019 / Featured Article
So I’m crossing the road in Brighton yesterday and there’s Frank on the other side. ‘Hello,’ he says, ‘Are you alright, then?’ Not ‘How are you?’ or even, ‘Are you missing that...
The Digital Future of Further Education …
Mar 26, 2019 / Featured Article
FE (further education) has never been more important or more relevant, an intuitive, digital future can help ensure its ongoing success. Most of us will know someone who has been through...
The role of the trainer assessor for app…
Mar 26, 2019 / Featured Article
If you currently deliver apprenticeship training as a trainer / assessor, your role is likely to be going through considerable change. In the new world of apprenticeship standards, trainer / assessors...
The Trouble with Apprenticeships… Stop…
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 News are always keen to engage with experts who would like to contribute solution led, peer-to-peer thought leadership content, sharing best practice, innovation and emerging technology within education, training and employment.
Feature articles need to be 650 - 2000 words and be exclusive to FE News. We also need the Name, Job title and Organisation of the author and have an accompanying image, usually a head shot of the author 750px by 570px. Contact editor @ fenews.co.uk for more details on how you can get involved.
