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16-18 Funding Conference ~ speakers confirmed
I can now confirm that in addition to myself and top National YPLA funding staff, we will be hearing from Rob Wye (the new Chief Executive of LSIS who until this month was number two at the YPLA), Malcolm Trobe (Policy Director at the Association of School and College Leaders) and Shane Chowen (Vice Principal for Further Education at the NUS). The website will be updated shortly to include a full programme. In the meantime secure your place at no risk (bookings can be cancelled before February at no cost) at: http://tinyurl.com/16-18-Summit

Publication of the Specification for Apprenticeships (SASE)
I heard today from a reliable source at the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) that the Specification for Apprenticeship Standards in England (SASE) will be published tomorrow (or today if you are reading this on Thursday 20th Jan). This has been sitting on a Minister's desk (presumably John Hayes) for a few weeks longer than had been expected. It is significant as many will want to know what it says about the proposed 230 hours of minimum training delivery and the 100 hours minimum offsite delivery. Then there is also the question of Functional Skills, for which the compulsory introduction has been delayed again until September 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/2agybb8).

I don't know what the SASE will say, but have been told to look out for unexpected tweeks (!). It is also not clear where it will be published, but as good a place to check as anywhere is on the NAS website here: http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/About-us/SASE.aspx

Unpublished funding information
At an AoC QCF event today I had the opportunity to ask some questions of National SFA and YPLA staff, to which I received some helpful answers (given to you in good faith as things may change).

~ The minimum guided learning hours (glh) to be able to claim Entitlement funding will rise in 2011/12 from 336 to 420
~ The new 19+ funding methodology for 2012/13 could have as many as 20 different rates (not 12 as had been suggested by the SFA recently). So they are still working on it...
~ If trying to shoe-horn 7000 QCF qualification of varying size into just 20 or fewer rates proves impossible the SFA have not ruled out funding rates being based on the number of credit planned for each enrolment
~ The SFA have not ruled out reducing the 2012/13 allocations for providers that are not collecting sufficient fees this year (2010/11)

I was also told by a BIS official that: It is unlikely an interim report on 14-19 vocational education from Professor Wolf will be published, and she is writing the final report alone.

Much of this I tweeted during the conference (including pictures of some of the more interesting slides), so follow me for future conference at www.twitter.com/nicklinford

National College Media and PR Conference
I have just advertised a unique one-off training conference, at which I have assembled six leading education journalists from the Guardian, TES, FT and BBC. Not one to miss if you are responsible for communications, media and/or PR. Find out more here: http://tinyurl.com/college-media-conference

Kind regards,

Nick

P.S. Look out for some new abbreviations coming to education soon. For example, the ILR will be called the SRLR and the LAD will be called the LARA. I'll leave you guessing until the next Lsect update as to what these might stand for....