David Hughes (@AoCDavidH), Chief Executive of AoC speaks ahead of the debate about the role of colleges in a skills-led recovery. On Tuesday 20 October an adjournment debate in Westminster Hall on The role of colleges in a skills-led recovery from COVID-19 will take place at 4:30pm – 5:30pm. Raised by Peter Aldous, Conservative Member of Parliament for Waveney and Vice Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Further Education and Lifelong Learning, the debate will happen on the second day of Colleges Week 2020. As colleges engage with MPs locally throughout the week, we will showcase nationally the strong engagement and support from MPs from all parties. It comes at an important time given the Prime Minister’s recent speech on the importance of colleges in the rebuild and retraining agenda.

From this autumn, DfE expect FE providers to resume delivery so that students of all ages can benefit from their education and training in full. DfE have just updated the guidance for FE providers, combining previous operational and autumn terms guidance. The guidance sets out what FE providers need to know for the autumn term so that students of all ages can benefit from their education and training in full.  The guidance includes updates on:

There has been a lot of coverage on the U-Turn from Ofqual and Gavin Williamson on the A-Level, AS and GCSE grades. We mentioned Vocational Technical Qualifications in our sector response article. Gavin O’Meara, CEO of FE News had a chance to ask Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, some questions to clarify the plans on Vocational-Technical Qualifications such as BTEC’s, so we thought it would be helpful to have a stand-alone article for this topic alone. 

Today is #ResultsDay with both #ALevel and #VocationalResults being released today, the Joint Council for Qualifications (@JCQcic) has published the 2020 national results for A and AS Levels. 2020 has been a slightly unusual year, due to the Coronavirus pandemic, this year there were no exams to allocate grades and Gavin Williamson committed to a 'triple lock' for students in light of this. So what has this all meant to students picking up their results (via social distancing) today? 

The @JCQcic will publish A level results for England, Wales and Northern Ireland tomorrow morning. The approach to awarding grades this year is the fairest possible way of enabling students to take the next step with their education or careers.