From education to employment

City & Guilds £26M Investment Boosts DfE’S Lifetime Skills guarantee | FE Soundbite Edition 730

Danielle and Finley

Welcome to FE Soundbite Edition 730, January 27th 2024: City & Guilds £26M Investment Boosts DfE’S Lifetime Skills guarantee.

This is the weekly e-newsletter and e-journal brought to you by FE News: ISSN 2732-4095. We know life is busy, so here is a snapshot of the latest announcements and epic thought leadership articles, from sector influencers and cool thinkers across FE and Skills this week on FE News.

Our top three leadership pieces this week

Firstly, we have ‘Learning from the Past – Further Education Curriculum Development’ by Olly Newton, Executive Director, Edge Foundation. In this article, Olly discusses Edge’s latest ‘Learning from the Past’ paper written with Professor Prue Huddleston and Professor Lorna Unwin about the curriculum in FE colleges.

Next, we have ‘The IB ensures students have the right skills to overcome AI challenges’ by Leanne Gibbons, Assistant Principal: Head of Sixth Form, Impington International College. In this article, Leanne discusses how AI is changing the workplace but as educators, we have a responsibility to ensure that students have the skills and competencies required to adapt to a changing world.

Finally, Exploring How Language Serves as a Barrier to Achieving Sustainability Goals, by Raquel Noboa, founder and CEO of Fifty Shades Greener, which explores the urgent need for demystifying sustainability by simplifying language and breaking down standards, goals, and targets in a manner accessible to everyone.

This week, we have also had some other epic exclusives:

What’s New in the World of FE?

On Monday, The Federation of Awarding bodies announced that Co-Chairs, Kirstie Donnelly MBE and Alan Woods OBE will be standing down from the Board of Directors in Spring 2024 and that the Board have elected Charlotte Bosworth as the next Chair of FAB.

‘City & Guilds Training’, the training arm of City & Guilds, has secured further funding from the Department for Education to deliver a new wave of Skills Bootcamps over the next two years across England.   The circa £26m investment in City & Guilds Training has been made as part of the Government’s Lifetime Skills Guarantee and Plan for Jobs to help fill skills gaps and improve job outcomes for learners.  

This week QA launched a new apprenticeship programme to train the next generation of digital product managers. It joins QA’s programmes in areas including data, cyber, AI and software development which have successfully trained more than 30,000 apprentices.

A new report by London Economics on behalf of the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) has found that sixth-form colleges will require an additional £710 of funding per student in 2025 to keep pace with rising costs and ensure that every young person receives the education and support they need.

FE Voices this week

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this week’s soundbite. Now that you’re all caught up on what’s going on in the FE Sector this week, we hope you have a restful weekend!

Finley Vile, Platform Growth Manager, FE News

Danielle Watters, Digital Project Manager, FE News


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