Are Term-time workers entitled to National Minimum Wage for 52 weeks? FE Soundbite 694 (13th May 2023). 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.

Are Term Time Workers entitled to National Minimum Wage for 52 weeks?

Irwin Mitchell's Glenn Hayes looks at the issue of paying staff on term-time only contracts through the lens of the Lloyd v Elmhurst School case. If you are a Senior Leader in FE or Skills (70% of our audience at FE News are)... so it is a good chance that this employment law article will be very interesting to you: Are Term-time workers entitled to National Minimum Wage for 52 weeks?

Exclusive Thought Leadership articles from this week

We have some really cool range of exclusive articles for you this week.

AELP's Simon Ashworth wrote a really popular piece: Reforming Post-16 Education.

Have you checked out Neil Bentley-Gockmann's reflection piece? Neil is leaving WorldSkillsUK this week and he was really kind to write: Adding ‘world’ into WorldSkills UK – establishing an international focus for standards.

Skills Gaps

Danny King wrote a cool article... on a topic that is very interesting to me... How Micro-Credentials Can Conquer the Skills Gap. Talking about Skills Gaps: Sheila Flavell wrote: Why the skills gap is pointing organisations towards apprenticeships and turning higher education on its head.

Andy Le Grice, from ITGL wrote a really helpful article: Securing Education: How Resource-Strapped Colleges Can Fight Back Against Cyber-Attacks.

Dennis Sherwood is a man on a mission to continually improve the exam process for learners. His latest article is: Exam assessments can be reliable. And this is how to do it.

Have you checked out FE News on the Go? .. cool Generative AI

So I am announcing yet another FE News first (I know, I said 2023 would be a year of innovation and trying new things at FE News as it is our 20th anniversary)... so we are experimenting, so this week we have rolled out FE News on the Go.

So all of our new exclusive thought leadership articles will now have a podcast at the end of the article, in case you are too busy to check out the latest news, or if text to speech is helpful for you. We are experimenting, this is created using some cool Generative AI. Personally I love it, so I hope you find it helpful as well.

If you are strapped for time, just roll to the bottom of the page of the exclusive article of your choice and there you will see the podcast version of the article, you can then listen to the exclusive articles of your choice when you are in the gym, cutting onions or walking the dog.

You may or may not know, but I am dyslexic and there are times when I find listening, rather than reading, really helpful, so I would highly recommend giving it a try. You may love it as well.

The podcasts are generated by AI, so give it a chance, it is still learning. We have many different voices to choose from, we have stuck with one voice for now, so we may mix this up in the future... but I hope you like it.

Launching FE Reels next week with our friends at Cognassist:

Neurodiversity: Empowering Learning and Employment

Talking about cool experimental ways of working. I am so excited to announce a new broadcast format we are launching with our friends at Cognassist, next Thursday 18th May we are launching FE Reels. The season is called Neurodiversity: Empowering Learning and Employment.
On Thursday we have Reel number 1: Neurodiversity and Hidden Needs. This is a 10 week season of really short reals, that are short and to the point helpful reels, with a grand finale on the 27th July with a live Q&A (in long form) with Lou, so you can ask her for advice on how to support your learners or a diverse team if you are an employer.

Keeping it Reel

Not many people realise, but 80% of the team at FE News are Neurodiverse and in the build up to the first FE Reels season, we worked closely with Lou and Cognassist on exploring support for all of the team. My word it was powerful and amazing to explore what all of the team needs to work even more collaboratively and productively together.

So not only is this another new experimental broadcast format, but we are also living it as well (or keeping it Reel), we experimented in supporting our own neurodiversity at work and in education (as half the FE News team are Apprentices)... so we wanted to go a bit further and also 'live it' with the new format of FE Reels with 'chunking the information' and building upon the foundations of the episodes during the season.

So I would highly recommend checking out the season to help your learners and your team. It was great fun working with Lou and this has been several months in the making and planning!

Lou is absolutely brilliant, and for me, her description of the new season is spot on: "This is an ace new format of delivering small morsels of powerful information to listeners."

So don't miss FE Reels next Thursday... site wide on FE News.