Lord Baker | Schools Week

MPs question £3m spent on UTC membership body

An influential cross-party group of MPs has raised concerns over the value for money offered by the membership body for university technical colleges, after its cost to the public purse reached £3 million. The costs smack of a far too close, special relationship with too little scrutiny from government and too much entitlement from the […]

Energy Coast becomes only second ever ‘outstanding’ UTC

A university technical college in Cumbria that outsourced its teaching is celebrating after becoming only the second of its kind to be rated ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted. Energy Coast UTC, which opened in 2014, was rated ‘outstanding’ by the watchdog in an inspection report published today by the school. The UTC, which had been ‘requires improvement’, […]

UTC support charity paid £7k for Lord Baker’s personal secretary

The Baker Dearing Educational Trust spent nearly £7,000 funding a personal secretary for UTC architect Lord Baker, while raising more than £270,000 in licence fees paid by the institutions. Accounts published last month, for the 2017-18 year, also show that Baker Dearing, which supports the UTC programme, relies heavily on donations from a range of […]

DfE took no action against schools that ignored new careers duty

The Baker clause has been labelled a “law without teeth” after it emerged the government did not take any action against schools for non-compliance in the first year of its existence. The Department for Education also admitted it only wrote to half of the trusts it originally claimed to have contacted in relation to non-compliance. […]

Year 10 numbers dip at UTCs despite claims to the contrary

The organisation behind the university technical college programme has claimed the number of 14-year-olds studying at the institutions is on the up – although its own figures show a different picture. A spokesperson for the Baker Dearing Educational Trust told our sister title, FE Week, that year 10 recruitment at the 14 to 19 institutions […]

Baker clause update: DfE gears up to start ‘direct intervention’ in schools

Schools could face “direct intervention” from the Department for Education from September if they have failed to allow further education providers to promote vocational education to their pupils. The move is a part of a crackdown on non-compliance with the controversial ‘Baker clause’, an amendment to the 2017 Technical and Further Education Act, which came […]

DfE takes action to force schools to follow the ‘Baker Clause’

The Department for Education has begun to intervene in schools which fail in their legal duty to allow training organisations the chance to speak to pupils about technical qualifications and apprenticeships. Lord Kenneth Baker (pictured), the former education secretary behind the so-called “Baker Clause” obliging schools to introduce pupils to technical education, told Schools Week […]