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Get behind Team UK, says FE Week

FE Week is calling on the sector to get behind Team UK as 28 of the country’s most talented young professionals set off for WorldSkills Shanghai 2026.

Next week, the competitors will line up alongside nearly 1,400 rivals from 80 countries after months of intensive training.

They will put their skills to the test over four days in front of an anticipated half a million spectators, with gold, silver and bronze medals at stake.

The competitors bonded at a bootcamp last month ahead of their journey east to China.

Aircraft maintenance competitor Elyot Harmston told FE Week he was feeling “a lot of excitement” mixed with some nerves.

“Mostly it’s excitement for getting there and getting started. I think we’ve trained as much as we can,” he said.

Web technologies competitor Finn Gallagher said it felt “surreal” that the competition was so close.

“This is two years of work,” he said. “It’s a culmination of everything we’ve done, but it’s really exciting. There’s so much at stake, but I feel prepared.”

Once they have beaten the jet lag and taken in the sights of Shanghai, the team will need to get their heads in the game and familiarise themselves with the workshops where they will spend four intense days competing against the world’s best.

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Sector sends its support

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, is travelling to Shanghai to cheer on the team.

“I wish them the very best of luck, and I hope that they recognise just how special it is to be representing their country on the world stage,” he said.

“Being selected for the WorldSkills UK squad doesn’t come easy; it takes dedication, determination and talent, and every member of Team UK should already feel hugely proud of their success.”

Ben Rowland, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said it was fantastic to hear about Team UK’s training at its annual conference earlier this year.

“Their selection is a tremendous achievement, and they will travel with the admiration and support of the entire skills sector,” he said.

“Everyone at AELP wishes them every success in Shanghai.”

Find out more about Team UK here

Colleges and training providers have also sent personal messages to the competitors.

Eric Masuku, an engineering lecturer at Bath College, had a special message for additive manufacturing competitor Oliver Coombs.

“It has been a pleasure and pride of mine to see you on this journey from the online selection more than two years ago to now,” he said.

“You have embraced every challenge in your stride and have developed admirable technical skills and resilience. Enjoy the competition in Shanghai, make new friends and give it your best shot. We are all rooting for you.”

David Gardner, principal of Tyne Coast College, said beauty therapy competitor Neve Dunn’s selection was recognition of the dedication and professionalism she had demonstrated throughout her studies.

“As Neve prepares to compete against some of the world’s most talented young beauty professionals, she will be showcasing the very best of UK vocational education on a global stage,” Gardner said.

“Her journey to WorldSkills has been an inspiration to fellow students and staff across South Tyneside College, and we are excited to follow her progress as she represents both Team UK and the North East in Shanghai.”

In Wales, Coleg Gwent skills competition manager Richard Wheeler, who is also a training manager in car painting, sent warm wishes to all 28 competitors.

He said: “I’d like to wish all of Team UK the very best of luck as they head to Shanghai to compete at WorldSkills. Reaching this level is a fantastic achievement, and I hope every competitor can enjoy the experience and perform to the very best of their ability.

“A special good luck to our own Logan Cook, who will be competing in 3D Digital Game Art. We’re incredibly proud of Logan and wish him every success as he takes to the world stage. Go well, Logan, and go well Team UK!”

Eight members of this year’s team hail from Northern Ireland, five of whom studied at Southern Regional College: car painter Oisin McKerr, chemical laboratory technician Ruth Douglas, electrician Jonathan Gough, and industry 4.0 duo Caolan McCartan and Patrick Sheerin.

The college’s principal and chief executive, Lee Campbell, said each had demonstrated “resilience, discipline and a real commitment to continually improving their skills” to earn their place on Team UK.

He added: “Their success also provides real inspiration for other students across the college, showing just how far skills, ambition and hard work can take you.

“We are incredibly excited to see them put their skills to the test against the world’s best in Shanghai and we will be behind them every step of the way.”

Autobody repair competitor Joe Wilton began his apprenticeship at Riverpark Training in 2021.

His tutor, Colin Hagan, said Wilton had always been a positive-minded person who wanted to “shape his own destiny”.

“We wish him the highest success at WorldSkills Shanghai and know that he is an excellent ambassador for the UK in China,” he said. “He is a positive, highly skilled and very determined competitor who has listened and challenged his peers on many occasions to get what works for him.”

English and maths pass rates only tell half the story

Following another fall in post-16 English and maths pass rates, it is understandable that the spotlight is falling on GCSE resits.

This summer, just 15.3 per cent of post-16 maths entries and 19.8 per cent of English language entries achieved grade 4 or above. More worryingly, only around one in ten maths entries from 18- and 19-year-olds achieved the grade 4 gateway.

I do not believe the problem lies solely with GCSE resits. I remain a strong supporter of them. GCSEs are important, widely recognised qualifications. For many learners, another year of focused teaching, often in a different environment, can secure the grade required and open new opportunities.

I also do not believe that we should lower our expectations, as we should continue to encourage as many learners as possible to get to achieve a grade 4 or above. But we need to be clearer about our purpose: is it simply to increase grade 4 achievement, or to develop the literacy and numeracy that young people need for further study, employment and adult life?

The two are connected, but they are not the same.

A GCSE grade is an important measure of attainment, but it cannot capture every aspect of a learner’s development. As director of English and maths at SGS College, I see the learners’ stories behind the national figures.

One 18 year old learner, who has sat GCSE maths in each of the past three years, has finished within three marks of grade 4 while increasing his raw mark every time.

This summer, he achieved 148 marks. That would have secured grade 4 in every other sitting he has taken – but the boundary moved again and he received another grade 3.

The current approach means that he might feel like he’s failed. Yet he has not failed to progress and develop his numeracy skills. His improving marks demonstrate that. His performance shows that he is working at the level associated with grade 4, but headline reporting records only another unsuccessful resit. That cannot be the fullest or most accurate account of his achievement.

His experience shows why pass rates alone cannot tell us everything. Grade boundaries maintain standards, but the resulting binary outcome can conceal substantial progress immediately below the threshold.

Recognising that progress does not mean accepting a grade 3 as the final destination. It means acknowledging how far a learner has travelled while continuing to support them towards level 2.

That is why ‘value added’ should be regarded as just as important as grade 4 to 9 achievement when reporting on FE English and maths. It would not capture this learner’s progress because his grade remained unchanged, but it would recognise thousands of others who have substantially improved their literacy, numeracy and qualification outcome.

Headline pass rates tell us who crossed the threshold. They do not tell us where learners started, how far they travelled or how English and maths affected their confidence, engagement and ability to apply those skills elsewhere.

FE colleges work with young people who arrive with gaps in knowledge, low confidence and deeply established negative experiences of these subjects. We cannot resolve in 36 weeks gaps that may have developed over more than a decade. But colleges can, and do, move learners forward significantly.

A stronger focus on ‘value added’ would provide a more accurate account of that impact while retaining grade 4 as an important national ambition. This is not a choice between attainment and progress. We should report both. And we should celebrate learners that have made significant progress in their literacy and numeracy skills, rather than branding them as failures year on year.

The government’s proposed level 1 stepping-stone qualification has the potential to support that approach. It will offer learners with lower starting points a better route towards grade 4 and an opportunity to celebrate their successes in developing their literacy and numeracy skills. That has to be a good thing, particularly if the qualification then leads toward further skills development rather than becoming a lower-status destination.

A grade 4 matters and should be celebrated and aspired to. But recognising developing literacy and numeracy skills alongside a headline achievement rate would not lower the bar. It would give us a more complete and honest account of how FE colleges develop literacy and numeracy, move learners forward and transform future opportunities.

Ian Bauckham to step down as Oak National Academy chair

Ian Bauckham will step down as chair of curriculum provider Oak National Academy next month, the organisation has announced.

The Department for Education has appointed Tom Campbell, chief executive of E-ACT multi-academy trust, as new chair of the arms-length body from 9 October.

Bauckham, also the chief regulator at Ofqual, has been chair of Oak since September 2022, when it became a non-departmental body in the Department for Education. He is standing down because he has reached the end of his term.

Campbell will continue as CEO of E-ACT, which has 38 schools across England. He previously worked as chief education officer at Greenwood Academies Trust.

Schools minister Georgia Gould said Campbell’s experience “makes him well placed to lead Oak as they harness the best of technology to support teachers and help children succeed”.

Campbell will oversee Oak’s work to update curriculum content based on the government’s response to the curriculum and assessment review, after the body received £22.8 million in funding from the Department for Education for 2026-27.

Oak will also develop “high-quality” AI tools for teachers and a fully reviewed reception curriculum with this funding.

Bauckham said it had been a “privilege” to “play a part in an organisation that has achieved so much in such a short time.”

“A high-quality, well-sequenced curriculum is proven to be one of the most important tools we have to tackle the disadvantage gap,” Bauckham added.

A judicial review over the decision to turn the arms-length body into a government quango restarted in September.

The review was launched by the British Education Suppliers Association, the Publishers Association and the Society of Authors, who argued that it would pose an “existential risk” to their sector.

Too much CPD in FE is simply performative

For many lecturers in FE, the phrase ‘CPD’ (career professional development) triggers a familiar mental script. Images of packed rooms, PowerPoints on the latest Ofsted developments and a sign in sheet making its way across the desks. All too often, continued professional development is treated by institutions as a mechanical, top-down delivery tool, a means to ensure that national policy mandates or inspection framework knowledge is visibly demonstrated, regardless of whether any real learning happened.

Yet, as a long-standing lecturer and doctoral researcher in FE, I have often wondered about the hidden costs of this compliance driven approach. What happens to teacher identity when professional development is reduced to a performance? Why do activities which are meant to develop growth end up feeling like a tick box exercise? This tension is exacerbated by a historical lack of sector specific research, meaning FE CPD is frequently dictated by models that do not fit our landscape.

This is a critical moment to be asking these questions. The government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper explicitly promises to raise standards in teaching and learning and deliver high-quality teaching across a prestigious further education system. It is an admirable goal, but policymakers and college leaders must face a difficult truth; we cannot mandate this high-quality teaching through low-quality, top-down compliance systems. If the sector is to successfully deliver on these ambitious national reforms, the way we support and develop our teaching workforce must fundamentally change. Under the current system, the very mechanism meant to drive quality is instead driving exhaustion.

To understand the disconnect, we must move past simple evaluation models that ask lecturers to rate a training session or add a comment. A positive survey response does not guarantee authentic engagement; it may simply reflect someone who is ‘playing the game’. Instead, we need to look closer at how lecturers internally navigate these experiences.

When top-down professional development focuses too heavily on institutional compliance, friction occurs. Lecturers may be in the room, but are they really engaged? Often, they perform the script of the ‘good employee’ by attending and taking part on a surface level but internally feel like they are involved in something which is a waste of valuable time.

As anyone in FE knows, time is a rare and precious commodity not to be wasted. This performance often forces a divide between the institutional compliance managers expect, and the authentic, fast-moving industry knowledge that vocational teachers need to keep ‘in motion’ to prevent their expertise from expiring. When professional development becomes synonymous with surveillance, it risks stripping lecturers of their professional judgement and genuine agency as industry professionals.

If FE leaders want to move away from passive compliance, the conversation around CPD needs to be reframed. We need to stop evaluating professional development by numbers on a register or superficial survey scores and comments. Instead, leaders need to understand the ‘symbolic filters’ through which lecturers view these initiatives.

True, professional growth cannot be mandated or monitored through an external script; it occurs when institutions respect the expertise of their staff and create spaces where bottom-up, self-sought professional learning is genuinely valued alongside institutional and policy requirements.

By designing CPD strategies that align with lecturers’ authentic realities rather than imposing rigid top-down structures, leaders can build a culture where professional development is not just attended but deeply valued. Only then can we hope to realise the true potential of the white paper’s reforms and build a teaching culture rooted in genuine excellence rather than performance.”

Hidden NEETs need help, not another college blame game

Last week’s publication of the Children’s Commissioner’s report, Hidden NEETs: The attendance of 16 and 17-year-olds in further education colleges in England, has shone a welcome spotlight on an issue that has received too little attention in education policy: post-16 attendance.

The report estimates that around 42,000 16 and 17-year-olds enrolled in further education are attending less than half of their expected sessions, effectively making them “hidden NEETs” (not in education, employment or training) who do not appear in official figures despite being largely disengaged from learning. It also suggests that more than half of college students would meet the school definition of persistent absence, with attendance of below 90 per cent.

These findings should concern policymakers. Strong attendance is closely linked to attainment, progression and future employment prospects. If significant numbers of young people are enrolled in education but missing huge chunks of learning, there is a clear risk that they will leave education without the qualifications, skills and confidence needed to succeed and potentially find themselves NEET.

The “hidden NEETs” data is particularly timely given that the final report of Alan Milburn’s review into young NEETs is expected imminently. As government considers how to reduce NEET numbers, the Children’s Commissioner’s analysis is a reminder that participation cannot simply be measured through enrolment data. We need a much more nuanced understanding of whether young people are genuinely engaging in education and training.

However, it is vital that this debate does not lead to colleges being unfairly blamed for attendance challenges – after all, attendance problems do not suddenly emerge at age 16. Further education colleges frequently enrol students who have not met the entry requirements for school sixth forms, alongside many young people with SEND, mental health needs, disrupted educational experiences or a history of poor attendance. In many cases, colleges are working with precisely those students who are most at risk of disengagement. Colleges are therefore often dealing with the consequences of longstanding barriers rather than creating them or failing to deal with emerging issues.

The report itself identifies a range of factors affecting attendance, including mental health difficulties, poverty, transport costs, caring responsibilities, paid work, difficult transitions and previous negative experiences of education. These are complex challenges which cannot be resolved simply through even tighter monitoring or accountability measures.

Beyond participation and attainment, post-16 attendance raises important safeguarding concerns, too. In the school sector, there are clear processes for identifying children who have disengaged from education completely. Having attempted to report post-16 students as ‘missing education’ to local authorities when I worked as a sixth form leader, I know that post-16 arrangements are much less robust, if not non-existent!

In practice, this means some vulnerable students can fall through the gaps while still being counted as participating. Better attendance data would therefore improve not only participation monitoring but also the visibility of young people who may require additional safeguarding and welfare support.

So, the problem is complex, but complexity should not be an excuse for inaction.

Better attendance data could help identify early signs of disengagement and allow support to be targeted more effectively. The key point is that data should be used primarily to help young people remain engaged rather than simply to create additional accountability pressures for providers.

There is also an important practical consideration. While ASCL supports efforts to improve post-16 attendance monitoring, this is inherently more complex than in schools.

Students follow a wide variety of programmes with different timetables, guided learning hours, work placements and study patterns. Attendance systems vary between providers because the nature of post-16 education is far more flexible than compulsory schooling. That is why our ASCL FE Advisory Group is working with the Department for Education on proposals in this area to help them to carefully design meaningful measures and ensure data is accurate and useful, without burdening the schools and colleges providing it with additional workload.

Any discussion about attendance must also acknowledge the financial reality facing colleges. The further education sector is being asked to support growing numbers of students with increasingly complex needs while operating under significant funding pressures. Analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that funding per student aged 16 to 18 in further education remains around 8% lower in real terms than it was in 2010-11.

This is why the debate about attendance cannot be separated from the wider challenge of participation. As ASCL has previously argued, England needs a coherent 14-24 participation strategy that brings together education, employment, health and support services. The rising number of NEETs is being driven by a combination of factors; attendance is one indicator of these wider problems, not the sole cause of them.

The Children’s Commissioner has brought much-needed attention to an issue that has remained largely invisible. The report should prompt support and action, not finger-pointing at colleges who are often supporting some of the most vulnerable and disengaged young people in the education system, despite sustained funding pressures.

If we are serious about tackling the hidden NEETs challenge, we need better data, stronger support services and a genuinely joined-up approach to participation from age 14 onwards. None of these will come without significantly increased, targeted funding. Only then will we address the causes of disengagement rather than simply measuring its consequences.

Ofsted, stop treating young apprentices like school pupils

The government has instigated a welcomed, fresh approach on how Ofsted will make its judgements across the post-16 sector as part of Andy Burnham’s technical education and devolution reforms. With the final report of Alan Milburn’s NEET review also on the horizon, it is important to have the right enablers in place to maximise the impact of the proposed changes.

I have just written to the skills minister with FIN’s recommendations to support Burnham’s reforms.

Starting with Ofsted, the current requirement for inspectors to judge FE colleges on how well their provision is meeting local, regional and national skills needs, which was introduced in 2022, should be extended to all types of education and training providers to be more meaningful. It is particularly important that young people, employers and mayors as commissioners should know which local providers are delivering strongly or exceptionally in this respect.

Furthermore, now that the mayors have joint ownership over the local skills improvement plans (lsips), inspectors should seek evidence that a provider is being responsive to lsip objectives. Links with employers and the critical role training providers make in brokering opportunities for apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year olds should be highly valued and carry more weight. Overall, the balance in judgement should change when Ofsted reconsiders its expectations for this age group.

Next, Ofsted should not be treating 16 and 17 year old apprentices as children when they have chosen to enter the world of work. For an apprentice in a full-time job, with a limited agreed number of off-the-job hours and a funding stream to match the mandatory provision only, this means not having to be taught the wider curriculum such as healthy living, eating, sexual health or any participation and development training. Participation in this additional and non-funded learning along with voluntary work or similar initiatives should instead be optional.

On career guidance, we strongly recommend that signposting to public information, further training and freely accessible websites should be sufficient on the part of the training provider and the provider should not be judged beyond that. The young people themselves, holding down full time jobs and studying for an apprenticeship completion, should be given the freedom to decide whether to take up this advice.

FIN knows from working directly with apprentices that many of them feel it’s wrong for them to be forced to attend the wider curriculum sessions while in full-time work, whereas it might be appropriate for their peers in full-time study. We hear examples of where young apprentices and work-based learners call out inspectors’ questioning on this as unwelcome interference when they want to be seen and treated as adults.

This is not about lowering standards or short-changing apprentices; this is about ensuring that an inspectorate recognises the vocational route chosen and adapts its expectations accordingly to maximise positive outcomes for young people.

For enablers to reduce the number of young people in danger of becoming NEET, the government and the strategic authorities should adopt the mantra of “encourage, equip and empower”.

In this context the prime minister’s announcements could go a long way to making it easier for us to encourage young people to consider vocational options, providing the correct form of signposting is in place. Regional adaptations of the MBacc (if that is the direction of travel) should also equip them to progress.

To empower young people to embark on a meaningful career, more apprenticeships and work placements are key. It is encouraging that the government has introduced positive new incentives for employers to take on young apprentices, but the programme budget should not be inappropriately capped if demand among young people and employers for apprenticeships grows and the levy is raising almost £4.4 billion every year.

Under a previous Labour government, we saw fantastic opportunities identified by the Tomlinson and Leitch reviews not taken forward. This administration cannot afford to preside over the same type of blockage again. We are ready to give full support to the latest proposals.

You can’t understand FE from Whitehall alone

I’d like to start this piece by saying that the people within the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions are good people. This is not a hit job but the genuine opinion of someone who has worked on both sides, I’ve been the regulator and the regulated.

But I am concerned about the lack of experience members of staff in both departments have of working within the FE sector. DfE have recognised this and in previous years have worked with colleges and universities to provide two-day immersion visits to its staff. Is two days enough time for civil servants, who have never worked in the sector, to understand the challenges the sector faces?

As everyone reading this will be aware, the government has defunded leadership and management apprenticeships. I know of a provider that had a relatively minimal cap on one of the standards being defunded (less than ten apprentices).

This provider received their cap letter on March 17 and had enrolled a number of apprentices of March 30 that took them over their cap by one. which DfE kindly reminded the provider of. The provider tried to have these learners removed from impacting the cap but were ultimately unsuccessful. And when you look at the provider’s argument, it shows a lack of understanding from the departments of what goes into enrolling an apprenticeship.

The provider argued that the entire process of enrolling these apprentices started in October 2025 when their business engagement team engaged with the employer. After a couple of months with various meetings and correspondence, the employer agreed to use the provider to develop members of their staff.

Then the enrolment was passed from the business engagement team to the onboarding team as well as the team who would be delivering the apprenticeship. Skills scan meetings were booked in (which is not as easy as it seems – if you know, you know) and the onboarding team were working on getting packs ready for the apprentices to start.

Skills scans completed. Start date agreed. Packs complete and sent out in early March. Then comes the provider’s (and I mean every provider) hold-your-breath moment; waiting for the learner and employer to sign the packs as soon as possible to get this show on the road. It took two weeks for all the documents to be signed, which delayed the start date to March 30.

All of this information was laid out to civil servants. But they wouldn’t even let the provider redistribute some of the cap to this standard, which lead to one apprentice having to be taken off the programme.

All this leads me back to my original question. Do they have the experience to understand the work that goes on behind the scenes in the FE sector?

What I’ve discussed is small fish, a few apprentices on a standard. I imagine there are larger providers out there whose business engagement and onboarding teams were in the middle of having conversations with employers and onboarding apprentices when the rug was swept from under their feet.

DfE and DWP need to stop being so rigid and understand the complexities of FE, especially when they are the ones that make this so complex! The only thing that will help with this is experience of working at an FE provider. They could develop an internal apprenticeship for this, but even if it got the go ahead, I doubt I’d see the approval from Skills England within my lifetime.

Education questions – September live blog

Sixth-form fraudster banned from running schools

A former college finance boss who stole £200,000 from a sixth form and falsified a DBS check to cover up a previous police investigation has been banned from running schools.

Olakunle May Emiola Oluwadare, also known as May Dare, was jailed after defrauding the Big Creative Academy between 2018 and 2021 while working as chief financial officer.

The 16-to-19 free school in east London focuses on preparing pupils for careers in the creative industries – and more than half are eligible for free school meals.

The stolen cash could have paid for two teachers, mental health support for vulnerable students and hardship funds, Snaresbrook Crown Court heard.

The 65-year-old was jailed for 32 months in April 2025 after pleading guilty to fraud by abuse of position, fraud by false representation, and concealing, disguising, converting, transferring or removing criminal property.

The Department for Education has now banned him from any role running schools. The order does not extend to further education because a plan to introduce banning powers in FE, detailed in last year’s white paper, is yet to be put in legislation.

However, the government told FE Week that the nature of the offences means that Oluwadare would be disqualified from being a charity trustee under charity law and therefore could not become a governor or trustee of an FE college.

In sentencing remarks obtained from the courts, Judge Alex Gordon said Oluwadare committed the fraud in a role in which “you were expected to safeguard, at least not to act against the financial interest of the academy”.

In late 2021, the school was contacted by a whistleblower about Oluwadare’s previous employment. The letter included a cutting from an article published by FE Week in 2017.

In the story, FE Week reported that Oluwadare had been appointed as finance director of Epping Forest College despite having left his previous post at Hackney Community College amid an investigation into financial irregularities.

No charges were brought against him, Judge Gordon said, but the article’s disclosure “sent alarm bells ringing” for Big Creative Academy’s leaders, who investigated his DBS checks and financial dealings with the school.

The investigation “established that there were many, many payments that you had made in your role as head of finance that were wholly unaccounted for”, Judge Gordon said.

These included payments to two bank accounts, and some logged to the London Borough of Havering. False invoices were also generated.

The order also revealed that some of the funds were transferred to a nominated account in Nigeria, “so in other words, money laundering”, Judge Gordon added.

“And then a Lloyd’s account, under the name of K Oluwadare, demonstrated that it had received a turnover [of] £70,000 in under a year. And the account, as I have indicated, transferred funds from that account again to the account in Nigeria.”

Judge Gordon told Oluwadare the “upshot” of the investigations was that about £200,000 had been “stolen by you”.

“You sought to cover your tracks, so you falsely entered payments in journals. You wrongly coded amounts. You used incorrect account numbers and you falsified invoices.

“This was plainly a well thought out deception which had been going on for quite some time, and it involves a lot of money being taken from an institution which caters for the education of vulnerable young people.”

‘Personal loss as well as financial loss’

In sentencing Oluwadare, Judge Gordon said he had to consider the level of impact his offending had on the school and its principal, Sacha Corcoran, “so not just the financial loss but the personal loss”.

He had read a statement from the principal, who he said “has been left distraught that a trusted member of her senior team would steal from the academy and young people”.

The court heard around half of pupils relied on hardship bursaries for travel and lunch, while more than 60 per cent received free school meals. Twenty per cent had special educational needs and may require support with mental health.

“All of these much-needed types of support obviously costs a good deal of money, and the amount of money that you have stolen, she estimates, would have paid for the salary of two teachers for three years, counselling and mental health support for the students,” said Judge Gordon.

“And she says that various activities, such as trips, access to hardship funds, paying for guest speakers and work transport, were all impacted because the school was told by you that the budget could not afford it.

“In reality, had you not stolen the money these things could have been provided, and so that is a very real impact that your offending has had on the children at that school.”

Judge Gordon also said the emotional impact on Corcoran “will be felt for many years”.

He explained that she had told the court she had experienced “many sleepless nights questioning what I could have done differently. Questioning the judgment and the trust I gave to Mr Oluwadare. And the question [of whether] I could have done anything different nearly caused me to walk away from the job that I love.

“Trust and integrity are part of our core values. I and the staff are still in shock that anyone could come to this organisation with this clear intent to steal, and it will take us all a long time to get over it.”

‘Serious detrimental effect’

Gordon said the fraud had a “serious detrimental effect” on both the school and Corcoran, which increased the potential maximum sentence.

In mitigation, the judge considered Oluwadare’s age – 63 at the time of the sentencing – and that he had never been convicted of a crime before.

Oluwadare also “co-operated with the investigation thoroughly”, admitting the offending in interviews and repaying the money.

Judge Gordon said it was “obvious” he was “deeply ashamed” of his behaviour.

“You have [brought] shame on yourself and shame on your family.”

The judge also accepted that “to an extent you committed this offence because you were concerned about your brother”, and that some of the money was used to pay for an operation.

But he also noted that Oluwadare was “pretty well off, quite frankly”.

Oluwadare had joined Big Creative Academy in 2018, initially earning £50,000 a year for three days’ work per week, the court heard. By 2020, he was full-time, and his salary rose to £90,000.

“One would have thought you might have been able to assist him without having stolen from the school. Plenty of other people manage to help their friends and family without recourse to theft,” the judge said.

Gordon also took account of the “significant delay that has taken place in this case”, with the investigation starting in 2021 and the sentencing not happening until 2025.

The judge said the mitigating factors justified “a significant reduction in your case from the starting point of six years”.

Sentencing him to 32 months in prison, Gordon said he would serve up to half of his sentence before being released on licence.

Questions over recruitment

FE Week’s previous reporting had raised questions about how Oluwadare was able to get a job at Big Creative Academy in the first place.

In a statement, the school said he was appointed “through a credible recruitment agency specialising in senior leadership appointments.

“The agency conducted pre-employment checks, including obtaining a current DBS that was in date, with no concerns listed on it.

“Reference checks were completed and provided to the academy by his previous employer New City College (formerly Hackney Community College), and again no concerns were listed.”

Contacted by FE Week about the reference, New City College said it had stated that Oluwadare had been dismissed for gross misconduct in a reference requested in 2021.

But Big Creative Academy said the original reference provided upon his employment in 2018 “made no reference to any concerns relating to conduct.

“Only during our investigation and as part of our evidence gathering, we went back to the New City College and asked for a further reference and information relating to the case that was on the DBS.

“The second reference dated 24 August, 2021, gave details on his dismissal and allegations of financial irregularities that were not in the first reference.”

Fake DBS

Big Creative Academy said it requested a renewal of Oluwadare’s DBS in 2021, in line with its policies.

“Coincidentally it was around the same time as we received a whistleblowing disclosure,” the trust said.

The school said Oluwadare provided his renewed DBS by email, but Corcoran requested sight of the original paper document.

The school found information pertaining to a previous police case “had been deliberately removed from the emailed DBS. This was an attempt to mislead the academy and withhold information.”

The paper DBS “detailed a previous police investigation relating to financial irregularities at another college”. Oluwadare was suspended while the matter was investigated and later dismissed for gross misconduct.

Information about the previous investigation also led the principal and board to commission a “forensic audit of academy finances”, Big Creative Academy said.

Certain matters were referred to the police, and “this resulted in a police investigation, an arrest, and criminal charges.

“The academy was committed to pursue this case to the legal conclusion and ensure May Dare was held accountable for his fraudulent actions.

“Given the previous investigation at another college, the academy felt compelled to ensure justice was served.

“The academy also worked with the Department for Education to ensure that he would not be able to work in the sector again completing the section 128 barring process.

“The police did an excellent job in recovering all the funds stolen and securing a conviction, with the support of the academy senior team, board, external auditors, sponsors, and Department for Education.”