FE News and sister site FE Careers, the largest job advertising site in Further Education, Skills, and Welfare to Work sectors, had more than one million page views in October 2010.
As uncertainty surrounds FE in the face of severe budget cuts across the UK economy, FE News is also pleased to announce the CEOs of all three funding agencies in the sector have joined the site as regular columnists.
The Skills Funding Agency’s Geoff Russell, National Apprenticeship Service’s Simon Waugh, and Peter Lauener, of the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA), will write monthly columns to give readers a clearer picture of where the sector stands in these times of austerity. Other columnists include Skills Minister John Hayes, LSIS CEO David Collins, and IfL CEO Toni Fazaeli, as well as the CEOs from the AoC and ALP.
FE Careers, which works in partnership with the Association of Learning Providers (ALP), the 157 Group of Colleges, and the Independent Verifiers and Assessors, recorded 700,409 job seeker user sessions this October. For the past half a year, the specialist job site had more than 600,000 job seeker user sessions each month, and over 1000 jobs advertised at any one point. FE Careers is now the biggest specialist job advertising site in the sector and is particularly popular with NVQ Assessors, Tutors, Trainers, Advisors, and Managers.
Explaining the significance of reaching the one million milestones, FE Careers and FE News CEO Gavin O’Meara said: “We are delighted that we have had over one million page views in one month. This is a massive achievement for us and shows the prominence of our sites in the FE, Skills, and Welfare to Work sectors. It is also fantastic news that all of the funding agency chiefs, together with FE Minister John Hayes, are all now writing regularly on FE News.”
“One of the factors that have increased the volume of traffic is the use of video on FE News and FE Careers. The country and our sector are going through a massive period of change at the moment. We have video-interviewed a lot of key players from across the sector to give regular updates about changes in funding, what the spending review means to the sector and how people can plan for the future.
“The video interviews are really engaging; it is as if our audience has a private meeting with an expert from the sector. We have been using video on FE News for nearly three years now, but it has really grown in popularity and its value to our audience in the past 6-9 months.”
Jason Rainbow, the editor of FE News, said: “The surge in reader traffic is an outstanding achievement for such a niche site. I believe this is a testament to the uncertainty we’re all feeling in the sector at the moment. Readers are able to learn the very latest about how plans to reduce the UK’s deficit will affect the sector from exclusive columns by those in charge of FE’s funding purse.”
Activity on FE News and FE Careers could potentially increase even further with their coverage of several major events coming up in November, updates on funding allocations, the EuroSkills competition in December, and London’s 2011 World Skills Competition.
www.FEnews.co.uk
www.FEcareers.co.uk
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