Latest news from FE Week

Missing records thwart evaluation of covid tuition fund

Researchers could not judge whether catch-up tuition worked in colleges after more than 500 institutions that took the funding failed to log which students received it.

An independent impact evaluation of the 2021-22 year of the 16-19 tuition fund, published last week, found that so many schools and colleges omitted information from their data returns that no reliable comparison group could be built for FE and sixth form colleges.

The 16-19 tuition fund allocated £420 million over four academic years, with £102 million committed in 2021-22.

The data gaps forced researchers from Ipsos UK and the Education Policy Institute to abandon plans to draw “meaningful policy inferences” on the fund’s impact on students’ attainment.

The Department for Education said it has since introduced “clearer” reporting requirements and better validation for providers.

Researchers were only able to produce an impact estimate for school sixth forms, covering around a third of students who benefited from the fund in 2021-22.

Those students scored an average of 1.49 points less in their 16-19 qualifications than matched students who did not, equivalent to about 15 per cent of an A Level grade.

But researchers warned that the finding could not be relied on because school sixth forms are more selective than colleges and 85 per cent of tuition recipients in the sample already held grade 4s in GCSE English and maths. They were not the primary group the policy set out to help.

The report said those students were “unlikely to be representative of the broader population that benefitted”, and that “no meaningful policy conclusions can be inferred”.

Comparison group collapsed

DfE launched the fund in the 2020-21 academic year as part of the government’s education recovery programme. It paid for small group tuition in English, maths and other subjects disrupted by the pandemic.

Eligibility was widened in 2022-23 after complaints from the sector that the criteria were too restrictive, before the fund closed at the end of 2023-24.

The evaluation covered 2021-22, when £102 million was allocated. Of 2,506 eligible institutions, 1,567 opted in, 63 per cent, down from 77 per cent the previous year.

Researchers set out to compare exam results for students who received tuition with similar students who did not, using the summer school census and the individualised learner record.

But a substantial proportion of the data was unreliable for every type of institution, because providers that had taken the funding did not record who received the tuition. Students placed in the comparison group may in fact have had it. School sixth forms accounted for the largest numbers.

“This reporting issue meant that many students included in our matched sample may have benefitted from the 16-19 tuition fund even though the data suggested they had not, making the analysis unreliable,” the report said.

It added: “We advise caution in interpretation of this analysis, […] no meaningful policy conclusions can be inferred.”

Once the affected providers were stripped out, only two FE colleges, seven sixth form colleges and three other providers that had not opted in remained. Researchers tried matching students repeatedly against that small pool, but the sample size was too small to use.

‘We have introduced clearer reporting requirements’

The evaluation recommended DfE collect monitoring data on the type, frequency and duration of tuition delivered for any future tuition or catch-up programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds.

It also advised officials to set minimum expectations for delivery, align eligibility criteria with intended outcomes and test different models of tuition within a sample of institutions before any wider rollout.

A separate process evaluation, published in 2023, relied on provider and student surveys and found more positive perceptions of the fund for the same 2021-22 academic year.

Nearly 9 in 10 (88 per cent) institutions agreed the fund had improved students’ educational attainment and 23 per cent of students said they achieved better results.

A DfE spokesperson said: “We accept the evaluation’s recommendation to strengthen data collection and monitoring requirements. We have introduced clearer reporting requirements alongside improved validation and support for providers, helping ensure more robust evaluation while retaining the flexibility needed to deliver support effectively.”

We need to stop selling courses and start building skills ecosystems

The skills sector talks a lot about responsiveness. But too often, we still start in the wrong place.

We start with the course. The qualification. The apprenticeship standard. The funding line. The recruitment target. The validation process. The internal department.

Employers do not think like that.

Most employers do not approach a college, university or training provider with a neat request for a specific product. They come with a workforce problem. They need to recruit. They need to retain staff. They need technicians, supervisors, managers, digital skills, green skills, compliance training, placements, apprentices, graduates or short upskilling for existing staff.

The sector’s job is to translate those workforce problems into credible learning solutions. That means moving beyond course portfolios and building skills ecosystems.

A course portfolio is a list of provision. A skills ecosystem is a connected set of routes, relationships and support that links employers, learners, providers and place. It joins up technical education, apprenticeships, T Levels, placements, higher technical qualifications, CPD, apprenticeship units, adult learning and workforce development.

That matters because the skills challenge is wider than any single product.

Skills England’s 2026 annual skills report points towards a more evidence-led system aligned to priority sectors. The latest government employer skills survey, from 2024 reported 250,500 skill-shortage vacancies across the UK. It also showed employer training expenditure at £53 billion, down from £59 billion in 2022 and 18.5 per cent lower in real terms than in 2011.

So we have a problem. Employers need skills, but long-term investment in training has weakened. Providers cannot assume demand will turn into enrolments. The offer has to be relevant, flexible and easy to navigate.

This is where business engagement needs to change. It cannot be treated only as sales or recruitment. A strong business engagement function should be a source of intelligence. It should tell providers what employers are struggling with, which sectors are changing, where delivery models are not working and what skills are emerging.

That intelligence should shape the portfolio. It should influence what we grow, what we redesign and what we stop doing.

We also need to think in pathways. A young person might start with careers activity in school, progress into a T Level or level 3 technical route, move into an apprenticeship, and later return for higher technical learning or CPD. An adult in work might need a short unit first, then a larger qualification later. An employer might need placements now, apprentices next year and leadership development after that.

If we treat these as separate products, we make the system harder to use. If we connect them, we create progression.

This is particularly important for integrated FE and HE groups. LSBU Group, for example, brings together London South Bank University, South Bank Colleges and South Bank Academies. That creates the potential to connect early talent, technical education, apprenticeships, higher education, placements and professional learning.

But the wider lesson applies across the sector: structure alone is not enough. Integration only matters if it simplifies the journey for employers and strengthens progression for learners.

Quality is also central. Flexible provision must not become weaker provision. Apprenticeship units, short courses and modular learning can help employers respond quickly, especially in areas like AI, digital and green skills. But if they become disconnected fragments, they will add complexity rather than solve it.

Every part of the skills ecosystem needs proper quality design. Apprenticeships need strong initial assessment, employer commitment, progress reviews and assessment readiness. T Level placements need meaningful workplace learning, not just hours completed. CPD needs to be applicable in work. Higher technical provision needs employer recognition and clear progression value.

We also need better measures of impact. Starts and income matter, but they are not enough. We should be looking at retention, achievement, progression, employer satisfaction, repeat engagement, learner destinations, social mobility and local economic value.

The next phase of skills reform should not be about adding more disconnected provision. It should be about building coherent skills infrastructure.

That means asking different questions. Not only: can we run this course? But: what problem does it solve? Which employers helped shape it? Where does it lead? Can adults access it? Does the workplace support learning? What impact will it have?

The future will not be won by providers with the longest list of courses. It will be won by those that can connect learning to work, employers to talent, and local people to real opportunity.

What we’ve learned from six years delivering T Levels

With more than one million young people now classed as not in education, employment or training (NEET), the recent Milburn Review has reignited an important debate about how we prepare young people for work.

The discussion so far has focused on what young people need: more confidence, greater resilience, stronger employability skills and better exposure to the workplace.

As someone who’s been involved in delivering T Levels since the beginning, I can confidently say that T Levels offer my students that. The bigger question is how we make sure teachers feel ready and supported to deliver them.

Six years ago, Middlesbrough College was among the first providers in the country to introduce T Levels.

Today we deliver 17, spanning subjects from accounting and building services to health, digital software development and marketing. Delivering new qualifications from scratch is always daunting. We wanted students to get the very best quality teaching from day one. Reflecting on what’s worked well, I think learnings can be applied to the roll-out of any new qualification, including V Levels due to start next year.

In some ways, we learned on the job together with employers and awarding bodies. At Middlesbrough College, we made a deliberate decision to invest in training staff and provide support right from the outset. We looked carefully at what teachers needed, not just when T Levels launched, but throughout the implementation journey. As a result, our teachers became more confident, more connected and better supported.

And you can see the impact of this in the results of our students: our T Level pass rate rose from 73.4 per cent to 93.2 per cent last year and the proportion of students achieving merit or distinction increased from under half to nearly three-quarters of the cohort.

So how did we do it? We carved out time specifically for professional development, mentoring and training. We have made extensive use of the teaching resources and teacher Communities of Practice from Gatsby’s Technical Education Network (TEN).

The resources have been invaluable for me and my team, completely free and ready to use in the classroom. It’s been a gamechanger and has saved teachers roughly two hours a week in planning time, giving them more time to adapt resources and meet every learner’s needs.

The Communities of Practice have been a huge support to me and so many of my peers. They are subject-focused and allow us to learn from each other, and discuss different approaches in a safe space.

The impact of high-quality teaching resources and practitioner networks like TEN shouldn’t be underestimated and is felt directly by learners. As well as uplift in attainment, our T Level students have some of the highest attendance rates across our Level 3 provision.

They consistently tell us they value the relevance of their learning and the opportunity to apply it in real workplaces. Employers regularly comment on how workplace-ready many of them are by the end of their programme.

I see day in, day out, T Levels creating resilience and confidence in our students, qualities that are very much needed for the world we live in now.

Students can see clearer progression routes into higher education, apprenticeships and employment. Universities have a much stronger understanding of the qualification and employers are actively seeking out T Level students because of their industry experience.

For any new or experienced T Level teachers – and practitioners who will embark on the V Level journey next year – I’d encourage you to seek out high-quality resources, subject-specific professional development and opportunities to collaborate with peers around the country. It’s a key learning for us and we know from results it reaps high rewards.

T Levels are a valuable qualification, and we need to be consistently investing in the teachers who bring it to life. Because when teachers are set up to succeed, so are their students.

Personalisation is FE’s next evolution

For decades, in most classrooms the idea of an ‘average learner’ has shaped how teaching is planned and delivered. But in reality, no such learner exists. Every cohort of students contains individuals with different levels of prior knowledge, confidence, experience and support needs. Yet, as educators we have historically had limited tools to address this. Meaning we deliver the same content, in the same way and at the same pace to all learners.

This presents a challenge. Some learners risk being left behind because the pace is too fast, while others may become disengaged because they are not being sufficiently challenged. As educators, we have a responsibility to support both groups, designing educational experiences to deliver the best outcome for every learner.

The good news is that rapid advances in technology and AI mean our ability to address this challenge is becoming increasingly achievable, at scale. Personalised learning can create opportunities to provide learners with the right level of challenge and support at the right time.

Personalised learning in practice

Until recently, delivering a high level of personalisation was difficult. Outside one-to-one tutoring, educators simply haven’t been able to scale learning experiences to continuously adapt for each individual learner. However, advancements in AI and data are creating opportunities to change that and allow us to think differently about how we deliver education.

At Kaplan, we’re using the digital footprint of our learners to improve the quality of our education across our courses in real time.

AI helps us to see patterns in how learners progress and engage and, crucially, to act on this in a timely way to give learners maximum opportunity to reach their full potential. The technology means we can do this at scale, making a hands-on approach to learning – which everyone deserves – accessible to all.

Leveraging AI technology and data insights means we can deliver learning experiences that maintain ‘desirable difficulty’ for individual learners – a well-established concept in educational science referring to the productive zone of challenge where real learning happens, far enough beyond what a learner can already do to stretch them, but not so far that they disengage.

And AI is embedded into our learner ecosystem through our TutorBot, a study partner that provides the support of a teaching assistant around the clock. Learners can use the TutorBot to test and develop their understanding, posing questions that encourage active thinking rather than simply supplying answers. Over time it builds a picture of the individual learner – their confidence, their persistence, the way they approach problems – and helps us to adjust the level of challenge accordingly.

None of this removes the need for great educators. Technology enables teachers and trainers to be even more effective by providing better insight into learner needs and allowing interventions to happen sooner and with greater precision.

This means that personalised learning has a real, meaningful impact on students. Our TutorBot data shows a clear behavioural split between learners who use it as a thinking partner and those who attempt to cognitively offload their learning. That distinction is detectable early in a programme, long before assessment scores reveal anything, which means we can deliver human interventions at the point it is most likely to help, rather than waiting until a learner shows signs of struggle in assessments.

Looking forwards

As educators, we have always owed it to our learners to provide the best possible educational experience. The fundamental foundations of effective teaching and learning haven’t changed, but the tools available to support it have.

As a sector, we should be challenging ourselves, not because providers who don’t adapt are failing their learners, but because those who do will give them something genuinely better.

Young people aren’t work-ready because nobody owns the handover

There is a recurring failure in British education that almost nobody owns.

A school leader says: “We think they already know.”

A college lecturer counters: “We assume school covered it.”

An employer adds: “We assumed university would have sorted that out.”

This is not the failure of any single institution. It is a pattern of fractured handovers that leaves young people academically qualified yet critically unprepared for work.

In an economy grappling with stagnant productivity, this represents an inefficiency the UK can no longer afford to ignore.

Over nine months, we conducted primary research across secondary schools, FE colleges, local authority services and employers in the South East Midlands.

Our conclusion: the readiness gap is not located in any one stage of education. It lives between stages, in the assumptions each institution makes about the one that came before.

What “ready” actually means

Ready does not mean qualified. A young person can secure strong GCSEs, complete a level 3 qualification and still be unable to write a professional email, articulate their own strengths to an employer, or recover from a setback without adult intervention.

In 35 interviews with educators, careers professionals and employers, 80 per cent identified the transition between educational stages as the primary point of failure.

The pattern is strikingly consistent. In one multi-school practitioner meeting, a PSHE lead observed that students are taught to write a formal letter but almost nothing about crafting a professional email.

In the same room, a careers lead from a different school raised an identical concern – students cannot distinguish between messaging a friend and emailing an employer.

The same issue surfaced unprompted, without prior coordination, across every school represented. This is not an isolated anecdote. It is a structural feature of a curriculum that teaches skills in isolation, without the connective tissue of real-world application.

A significant misconception compounds this. Digital fluency is routinely mistaken for professional readiness.

Practitioners described students who navigate complex technology with ease but struggle to adapt their communication for professional contexts. The issue is not a lack of ability. It is a lack of explicit instruction.

The transition nobody owns

Secondary schools build extensive scaffolding around younger students, structured tutor time, mandatory enrichment, close pastoral oversight, and then, almost overnight at the transition into sixth form or college, expect full independence. Eighty-five per cent of schools in our research recognised this pattern in their own setting.

The same pattern repeats at every handover. Colleges receive students assuming a level of self-management that secondary education was never responsible for teaching.

Employers receive graduates assuming further or higher education covered workplace readiness.

At every seam in the system, an assumption is made that the previous stage covered the basics. At every seam, it turns out it did not.

What works and what other systems do differently

The research also found a hopeful counter-pattern. Where institutions take deliberate ownership of the readiness gap, progress follows quickly. One school introduced a structured enrichment and leadership programme after identifying a clear link between extracurricular participation and positive long-term outcomes. Engagement rose by 65 per cent, particularly among students who had previously remained on the margins of school life.

The lesson is significant: content does not create competence. Context does.

Other systems have built stronger bridges. In Switzerland, two-thirds of young people follow a vocational pathway not as a fallback but as a respected mainstream route. Students spend substantial time in real workplaces while still in education. Readiness is not treated as a separate subject, it is built through consistent exposure to the realities of working life.

Where this leaves us

Schools are expected to deliver far more than academic attainment within increasingly constrained curriculum time. Colleges inherit students with vastly different levels of preparation.

Employers grapple with skills gaps they did not create. Meanwhile, young people are asked to demonstrate confidence, communication and professional judgement without a consistent opportunity to develop them.

Across nine months of research, one conclusion emerged repeatedly: readiness has no clear owner. The answer is not another framework or curriculum add-on. It is a coherent, shared approach that treats personal and professional readiness as a developmental journey with sustained exposure to employers, real-world experience and meaningful responsibility built into the system, not offered as an optional extra.

The question is no longer whether the readiness gap exists. The real question is who will take responsibility for closing it.

Technical reform needs stability as much as ambition

It is no surprise that Andy Burnham has made reforms to technical education one of his first announcements as prime minister. His record as mayor of Greater Manchester, and everything he’s said over the last few weeks, pointed in that direction.

While the announcement came earlier than we might have anticipated, it’s clear that the PM wanted to respond to recent reports of the plights of young people who are left behind, notably the interim report from Alan Milburn, Young People and Work, and the Public First inquiry into White Working Class Educational Outcomes.

Both reports give a similar diagnosis of issues that are often related. Disadvantage is baked in early, and the system has consistently failed to mitigate it.

Education can feel irrelevant to young people, leaving them disengaged, and often resulting in high rates of absence. Schools and colleges lack the resources needed to respond to students’ diverse and growing needs. And the economy is changing fast, so that even when young people do get qualifications, they too often struggle to find roles in a labour-market where entry-level jobs are increasingly automated.

The two reports recognise that strengthened vocational education is an important part of responding to these challenges.

At AQA, we can see at first hand the importance of credible national qualifications: we are best known for GCSEs and A Levels, which remain profoundly important to us. But we are also expanding our technical and vocational offer, bringing assessment expertise, a dynamic approach and a moral purpose rooted in our charitable status.

TQUK, an important part of the AQA Group, is helping us to develop new 16-19 vocational qualifications, including V Levels.

And we also see that the current system is not working for many communities. We have bases across the country, particularly in the north of England. Our training provider, Realise, helps people prepare for careers in bus driving, early years and gas engineering, from adult skills centres in areas such as Bradford and Blackpool.

That means we are plugged into communities that have some of the worst educational outcomes in the country.

So we recognise the urgency driving Burnham’s announcement on 14-16 technical education. But schools and colleges have been left uncertain about what the changes mean for them. They are already planning for 2027 and 2028, and now they do not know what they are expected to do or what qualifications will be available.

For decades, vocational qualifications have suffered from constant policy churn, so the government must take the opportunity now to end this cycle.

We suggest three priorities for the government as it finalises its policy thinking – notwithstanding the need to make sure that schools and colleges are resourced to deliver an expanded offer.

First, set out how the new plans align with existing reforms to both vocational and general qualifications. The Department for Education should be open to some quick replanning, to make pathways coherent and to give providers space to think.

There is a very limited window to do this before the government’s ability to introduce reforms in this parliament becomes impossible, and so it needs to work quickly to ensure that opportunities are not missed.

Second, challenge awarding organisations to produce new, high-quality Key Stage 4 technical qualifications. That will give local areas a good choice of 14-16 options to help engage young people and give them a range of positive choices at 16 and beyond.

Finally, give local areas the flexibility to shape provision in ways that work where they are. Work experience, employer partnerships and the role of colleges will all look quite different in different parts of the country.

It is tempting to come up with reasons why meeting the PM’s ambition is going to be difficult. But communities and young people across the country deserve better than that.

We’ve taught technical education from 14 since 2017 – the curriculum was the easy part

The government’s plan to expand technical education from age 14 is welcome recognition that young people don’t all learn in the same way. We’ve been doing it since 2017.

At South Devon College, those nine years have shown that a strong academic curriculum can sit alongside technical education without limiting anyone’s future choices. They have also shown that the curriculum is only one part of a much bigger job.

South Devon High School opened in September 2017 with 51 year 10 pupils. We could see young people locally who wanted a different key stage 4 experience without giving up the core curriculum, and nobody was offering them one.

The school now has 228 pupils across 11 pathways, including engineering, health and social care, automotive, hospitality, and games and digital development. All of them study English, maths and science throughout.

The approach is finally getting national attention, and the apprenticeship measures announced alongside it will help too, particularly the bursary for families who stood to lose more in benefits than the apprenticeship itself paid.

My concern is that the year 10 reforms will look far simpler on paper than they prove in practice, and schools have until 2028 to get them right.

Behind the visible curriculum

My advice to a school preparing for that deadline is not to underestimate the infrastructure behind the visible curriculum.

The workshop or qualification is only the front end. Behind it sit staffing, equipment, quality assurance, employer engagement, safeguarding, careers guidance and progression planning.

And transport, which nobody ever budgets for properly and which in a county like ours quietly decides who can take part at all.

We learned that the hard way. Pastoral care for 14 to 16-year-olds doesn’t sit easily alongside the more adult atmosphere of a further education college, and it took us a good two years to get that balance right.

You can’t simply adapt an existing college programme for younger learners and expect it to succeed. Behaviour systems, parental communication and transition arrangements all need designing around that age group, and so does the curriculum, which has to be rigorous and properly sequenced rather than assumed to be easier because it’s practical.

Employer engagement takes years to build and constant attention to maintain. It’s not simply a matter of finding businesses willing to offer a placement.

Employers need support to understand safeguarding, the curriculum, the age group and what’s expected of them, and they need it again whenever their own capacity changes.

Our strengths in South Devon are health and care, engineering, marine, construction, tourism and hospitality, and a great many of those businesses are small or medium-sized.

We can’t rely on one large employer offering opportunities at scale, so we work with dozens of organisations that each contribute something different. The answer can’t be to limit a young person’s ambition to whichever employers happen to be within five miles of their school.

This is where colleges can help.

Many of us already hold established relationships through apprenticeships, adult learning, technical education and workforce development, and schools shouldn’t have to recreate those networks from scratch when partnership offers something more sustainable.

Avoid a workforce scramble

Recruiting professionals with current industry expertise has never been straightforward, particularly in coastal and rural areas where geography, housing and transport all affect it.

You can’t expect someone to leave industry on Friday and become a fully formed teacher on Monday. If every school begins recruiting from the same limited pool, we’ll redistribute existing expertise rather than increase it, so curriculum reform needs a workforce plan alongside it.

The concerns raised about funding and capacity are legitimate, because this requires specialist facilities, equipment, consumable materials and sustained employer coordination.

The greater risk is fragmentation. If thousands of schools are separately expected to recruit the same specialists, buy the same equipment and approach the same employers, we’ll spend a great deal while producing uneven provision from one town to the next.

Parity of esteem is earned through quality, not announced.

After nine years of this, my advice is to give the partnerships, the people and the infrastructure as much attention as the curriculum itself. Those are what will decide whether young people get the opportunities this policy promises them.

EAL hit with record £150k apprenticeship assessment fine

Ofqual has fined engineering awarding body EAL £150,000 for serious and repeated failures that left apprentices assessed against the wrong standards, in some cases covering skills with workplace safety implications.

The assessment regulator confirmed to FE Week it is the largest financial penalty it has imposed in connection with apprenticeship end-point assessment, three times the sum imposed on the last assessor it fined.

More than 1,400 learners were caught up in EAL’s failings, according to the financial penalty notice published today.

EAL, registered as Excellence, Achievement & Learning Limited, admitted ten separate breaches of Ofqual’s conditions spanning assessment delivery, results management, data controls, oversight of third parties and handling appeals.

The most serious concerned 41 apprentices on an engineering qualification who were assessed against an incorrect version of the assessment plan. Knowledge, skills and behaviours (KSBs) that should have been tested were left out and results were issued before anyone noticed. EAL later concluded the omitted KSBs related to matters with potential workplace safety implications.

EAL’s attempt to fix the problem broke the rules as well. It allowed affected apprentices to demonstrate the missing KSBs through extra multiple-choice tests or professional discussions, which the assessment plan did not permit. Ofqual recorded that as a further breach.

Eight apprentices had their certificates revoked for not complying with EAL’s remedial measures, a decision EAL took before it recognised the remedy was itself another breach.

An EAL spokesperson said the organisation “respects Ofqual’s decision, which relates to specific areas of historic non-compliance”, and acknowledged the details of the case.

They added: “Throughout the process we have engaged constructively, cooperated with Ofqual and have taken significant steps to further strengthen our governance, assurance and compliance systems. We will fully deliver the agreed undertakings.”

EAL said it delivered qualifications and assessments to more than 75,000 learners a year and its priority was maintaining confidence in their quality, validity and reliability. It declined to comment further.

Ofqual’s notice said breaches were repeated and occurred over a sustained period.

Assessment material errors

A second set of incidents involved incorrect results caused by errors in assessment materials, which Ofqual traced to system migration problems that introduced errors in the display of images and symbols. EAL’s quality assurance processes did not detect them and the errors surfaced only after results reached learners.

Those assessments were sat by 1,375 apprentices. All were still on programme when results were corrected, so their progression was unaffected.

Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, said EAL’s failures were “serious, repeated and preventable”.

Ofqual will recover its legal costs on top of the penalty of £10,000.

EAL has also given the regulator a formal undertaking, a binding commitment to carry out a set of actions to bring itself back into compliance. It must report to Ofqual monthly and provide a statement of assurance by January 31, 2027, signed by the chair of its governing body, confirming whether the actions have been completed and whether they have worked.

Ofqual has not published the list of actions EAL has committed to.

Lax appeals

Ofqual’s audit found EAL failed to follow its own appeals procedure in two cases covering 13 apprentices.

EAL’s policy barred anyone involved in an earlier stage of an appeal from taking part in later stages.

In one case, the same investigators used at stage one of an appeal also supplied information at stage two, which Ofqual found breached the requirement that appeal decisions be taken by people with no personal interest in the outcome.

EAL argued the integrity of the process was not compromised. Ofqual said it found no evidence of a conflict of interest or any adverse effect.

Early warnings

The regulator listed its March 2025 direction to EAL, over incorrect results on an end-point assessment, among the aggravating factors behind the fine.

Ofqual told FE Week that the case was a separate incident. In that case, EAL failed apprentices on a multiple-choice test, rejected their employer’s appeal, then issued replacement pass results based on non-compliant assessments.

Ofqual opened its audit three months later, in June 2025, after concerns emerged from ‘event notifications’ EAL had filed, which are formal reports awarding organisations must send the regulator when something goes wrong.

The audit reported in October 2025 with no assurance on results correction, no assurance on assessment plan controls and limited assurance on appeals. A statement of allegations followed in January 2026 and EAL responded the next month.

In mitigation, Ofqual accepted EAL reported many of the incidents itself, cooperated throughout, found no evidence of deliberate conduct or concealment, and noted the company has spent around £570,000 over two years on compliance and operational improvements. It was EAL’s first monetary penalty.

EAL settled on July 22, agreeing to admit the breaches. Ofqual said the settlement meant a lower penalty than it would have imposed in a contested case.

Previous penalties

Qualifications for Industry was fined £50,000 plus £15,846 in costs in 2024 for breaching special conditions capping learner registrations. Owner Richard McClelland refused to pay and the firm went dormant, having accused the regulator of forcing it out of the market.

The Chartered Institute of Legal Executives faced a £50,000 penalty in 2019 after delivery failures hit all 73 apprentices sitting the level 3 paralegal end-point assessment. The final fine was £1,000 once CILEx satisfied Ofqual it had fixed the problems.

EAL is owned by the engineering and manufacturing skills charity Enginuity, recognised by Ofqual since 2010. It reported turnover of £14 million and pre-tax profit of £3.3 million in 2023-24, and holds generation two T Level contracts with WJEC Eduqas for building services engineering and onsite construction.

First college hit with Ofsted safeguarding ‘not met’ judgment faces intervention

TEC Partnership has become the first college to fail safeguarding under Ofsted’s new inspection framework – triggering government intervention.

The college group’s report, published today following an inspection in May, found that leaders had failed to establish an effective safeguarding culture and had not acted quickly enough to protect some learners from harm.

Inspectors criticised leaders’ oversight and record-keeping of learners’ attendance, including for the group’s 14 to 16 academy at its Grimsby campus, particularly where there were known safeguarding concerns and for those with “complex home lives”.

TEC Partnership leaders “do not ensure learners’ safety and wellbeing by supporting them to return to the academy”, they do not liaise sufficiently well with parents, and nor do they accurately fulfil their statutory duties for reporting on 14 to 16-year-old learners to stakeholders such as the local authority.

Inspectors found that qualified safeguarding staff were in place but that leaders had failed to create a culture in which all staff were sufficiently vigilant about risks affecting vulnerable learners.

A “few” learners also do not have a “sufficiently well-developed knowledge of the risks posed by radicalisation and extremism”, Ofsted added.

Department for Education policy states that it will place a college into intervention where safeguarding is judged ‘not met’.

A TEC Partnership spokesperson confirmed that the college has engaged in discussions with the FE Commissioner following Ofsted’s findings.

The spokesperson said: “Our outcome for safeguarding was not as expected due to a specific issue identified within a small area of our wider offer – specifically within our 14 to 16 provision and a small cohort of 16 to 18 learners at one of our sites.

“We have addressed the specific issue raised by the inspectors. Importantly, no learners were ever at risk, as the matter was strictly procedural. Immediate remedial actions have been taken to ensure all processes, without exception, meet the rigorous standards expected across every part of our provision.

“Our commitment to maintaining a safe, supportive, and high-quality environment for all our learners remains absolute. The core delivery, governance, and day-to-day safeguarding across our provision continue to operate with full integrity and rigour.”

The DfE was approached for comment.

‘We can improve’

TEC Partnership is a large college group that operates mainly across East Riding of Yorkshire and Hull, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire.

It teaches more than 9,500 students across campuses in Grimsby, Scarborough, Beverley, Bridlington, Hull and Skegness.

The college received nine ‘expected standard’ judgments, including for local skills needs and inclusion, as well as six ‘needs attention’ ratings, including for leadership and governance, young learner achievement and participation, apprenticeship achievement and provision for learners with high needs.

Ofsted praised the quality of teaching, learning, and support provided to adult and younger learners, highlighting their knowledge and skills development as well as high rates of positive destinations.

The report was also positive about the group’s apprenticeship curriculum that responds effectively to local and regional needs.

Inspectors noted that learners and apprentices learn in a “generally inclusive college” where most are supported to overcome their barriers to learning.

Ofsted acknowledged that the college group has appointed campus principals to “ensure local leadership, oversight and accountability”. However, their actions have not led to consistent or sustained improvement in relation to achievement, retention or attendance, according to the report.

A TEC Partnership spokesperson said: “Our recent Ofsted inspection highlighted numerous strengths across our organisation. Inspectors commended the strong relevance of our curriculum, our direct contribution to meeting local and regional skills needs, and the high level of support provided to our learners and apprentices.

“The report also praised our ongoing investment in industry-standard facilities and recognised the significant progress made since our last inspection, including effective improvements to support staff.

“The report also identified areas where we can improve further. We welcome this feedback and are already implementing targeted actions to address these priorities across our organisation.”