Peter Kyle – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Peter Kyle on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, how many officials in his Department are working on the review of post-16 education and training institutions.

Nick Boles

The Department for Education (DfE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), along with respective funding agencies, have re-prioritised staffing resources to support the review of post-16 education and training.

There are seven reviews in the first wave of area reviews which have either launched since September or will launch in the next few weeks. Each review will take 3-4 months to complete and will be supported by resource from the DfE, BIS, Education Funding Agency and Skills Funding Agency.

The area reviews of post 16 education and training are being undertaken in waves and can be triggered by either the local area requesting a review or the FE Commissioner or Sixth Form College Commissioner identifying the need for a review because one or more colleges in an area are at risk of failing. The first wave is underway now and details of the following reviews have been announced and can be found on the gov.uk website :

Birmingham and Solihull

Greater Manchester

Sheffield City Region

Tees Valley

Sussex Coast

Solent

West Yorkshire

The second wave will start in January 2016 and we aim to announce details in November 2015. We are currently looking at the geographies and phasing for other areas and will aim to issue further information on this before the end of the year but in doing this we recognise that the position should remain fluid to take account of the views of local partners and also cases of failure.

We expect all reviews to be completed by March 2017.