Latest news from FE Week

Over 100 providers approved for LLE modular courses

The first colleges and universities to deliver short higher education courses through the lifelong learning entitlement have been revealed.

From January 2027, eligible adults will be able to access student loans to study “modules” instead of three-year-long qualifications, drawing down a maximum £39,160 of their lifelong learning entitlement (LLE).

The Department for Education (DfE) today confirmed the list of 130 providers registered with the Office for Students (OfS) that can deliver modules of courses in the government’s priority skills areas, such as economics, computing and engineering, at levels 4 to 6.

It comes as a recent interim report on the “modular acceleration programme” raised concerns around student understanding of the short courses and difficulty engaging employers.

The LLE will be available for modules in any subject from a higher technical qualifications (HTQ) and 10 approved subjects for level 4, 5 and 6 modules from full-level 6 “parent” qualifications.

These approved subject areas are computing, engineering, architecture, building and planning (excluding landscape gardening), physics and astronomy, mathematical sciences, nursing and midwifery, allied health, chemistry, economics and health and social care.

Eligible students will also be able to apply for maintenance support to help with living costs, with funding provided in smaller amounts linked to the size of the course being studied.

People who already hold a degree may still access the new funding if they have remaining entitlement available or want to retrain in the above priority subject areas.

DfE opened an expression of interest process between July and October 2025, confirming providers can follow two routes of funding approval based on their teaching excellence framework (TEF) status or Ofsted ratings.

See the table at the end of the story for the full list of providers.

Those with gold or silver TEF ratings and/or high Ofsted grades would be eligible for a “simpler and quicker” approval process.

Route two was reserved for providers with lower TEF and/or Ofsted ratings were required to submit more information that demonstrates evidence of high-quality outcomes and established course delivery.

Two colleges and one university received funding approval through the alternative entry mechanism to run the following computing, mathematical sciences and engineering courses.

Skills minister Jacqui Smith said the modules would open up new opportunities for adults balancing work and family commitments.

“Whether it’s fitting study around a job, retraining for a completely new career, juggling childcare, or getting qualifications later in life, the new lifelong learning entitlement will open up new opportunities for thousands more people,” she added.

The announcement comes after two government-backed precursors to the full LLE roll failed to deliver results demonstrating demand for short courses.

The first trial back in 2022-23 hit a “shocking” 5 per cent of its student enrolment target.

The second more recent trial, which cost £5 million, fared marginally better and reached a fifth of its recruitment goal.

Here’s the full list of delivery providers below:

£184m to beat population bulge in devolved areas

Post-16 capacity capital funding allocations of up to £22 million for 19 devolved areas have been revealed as a “demographic bulge” works through the education system.

An announcement confirmed that in February, eight combined authorities received a total of £87 million for projects to “provide additional capacity” for learning.

It added that this “spring”, a further £97 million will be paid to another 11 combined authorities and local authorities with devolution deals.

The funding seeks to address capacity constraints due to an expected 67,000 extra 16 and 17-year-olds in education by 2028.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “A demographic bulge is currently working its way through the education system. In previous years it has impacted mostly schools, but it is now moving through post-16 education.”

Allocation levels have been decided using a formula based on local authority population projections that are weighted using local building cost data.

The largest allocations, of £22 million and £20 million, will go to East Midlands Combined County Authority and West Midlands Combined Authority respectively.

According to an accompanying memorandum of understanding template, devolved areas have been asked to agree that funding will be for additional capacity at providers lacking existing suitable space.

It should also be spent in the “most efficient and sustainable way possible”.

Any unspent funds must be immediately repaid to the government if requested.

Capital capacity cash

The national funding allocations mark a shift in control of post-16 capital funding from central government to mayors and local leaders, following the one-off award of £20 million to Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Leeds City Council last year.

The £184 million in post-16 capacity funding for devolved areas is part of a total of £570 million for further education providers in England in the 2025-30 period.

A further £99 million in capital will be handed to 13 devolved areas for construction skills capacity.

Although it is unclear how construction skills capacity funding will be allocated to all 13 areas, combined authorities such as South Yorkshire recently confirmed it will receive about £12 million.

Last month, the Greater London Authority also confirmed it has up to £20 million available, with half set aside to help meet the objectives of the construction technical excellence college programme and half for “project-based capital” to meet employers’ specific training needs.

For providers in non-devolved areas, £287 million will be awarded by the DfE through a national bidding round that closed last month.

This will be split into £191 million for post-16 capacity and £96 million for construction skills capacity.

According to DfE guidance, providers in non-devolved areas receiving construction skills capacity funding must be either a construction technical excellence college or committed to working with one as a “spoke”.

The previous government’s capital capacity funding was released between 2021 and 2023.

Around £230 million was shared between 89 colleges and sixth forms with the aim of creating additional capacity by September 2024.

Congrats

Court action preceded Tees Valley’s skills delay

A mayoral authority has indefinitely paused a £21 million adult education procurement after a training provider hit it with legal action.

Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) began a fresh tender for adult skills funding in January – with contracts set to begin this August and run for three years.

But on April 15 officials took the unusual step of “temporarily” pausing the procurement without explanation.

The north-east authority’s procurement team told providers involved in the bidding stage of the process that a new timeline would be provided “in due course”.

FE Week has now learned that Learning Curve Group and two of the company’s subsidiaries filed a legal claim against the combined authority at the Technology and Construction Court, which handles public procurement disputes, on April 13 – two days before the delay announcement.

A spokesperson for TVCA said the authority was unable to comment due to the live procurement process. They did not respond when asked for a second time whether the procurement process was delayed due to the legal action.

Learning Curve Group, which is understood to have submitted a stage-one bid for a Tees Valley adult education contract, also said it would be inappropriate to comment.

The action comes a year after Learning Curve, based in County Durham, reached a secret financial settlement with the Department for Education following a legal dispute over losing out on a national adult education budget contract in 2023.

Negotiations

Tees Valley’s £21 million tender will cover at least three years from 2026-27, with an option to extend for a further year.

According to documents published by TVCA, the procurement process is being conducted through a “competitive flexible procedure” in three stages.

Stage one focuses on whether providers meet compliance requirements, while stage two will assess the quality of detailed tender submissions.

Stage three will involve face-to-face negotiations over costs and delivery plans.

The stage two clarification deadline, which came shortly after providers’ tenders were submitted, was planned for March 20. But on March 30 the combined authority said the submission deadline was “extended” until April 9.

After pausing the whole procurement on April 15, an update was issued on April 29 where the authority said a new deadline would be communicated to bidders “in due course”. Contract winners were due to be announced on June 10.

Grant funding returns

The combined authority last procured its adult skills contracts in 2021, for a period of three years with an extension up to July 2025.

Winners of the 2021 procurement included Learning Curve, Realise Learning & Employment Limited, Think Employment and Back 2 Work Complete Training.

Tees Valley, run by Conservative mayor Ben Houchen, is thought to be the only combined authority to have forced FE colleges and local authorities to bid for adult education funding alongside independent training providers, rather than offering them grants.

TVCA further extended the contracts won under the previous procurement for a one-year “call off” period in 2025-26, hoping to receive a more flexible multi-year “single pot” budget from the government, known as an integrated settlement.

However, the government refused to agree to single pot funding due to an ongoing “best-value notice” placed on the authority over governance concerns.

The notice, which remains in place, relates to an investigation into concerns about “corruption, wrongdoing and illegality” around its management of a large brownfield site.

TVCA has now decided to revert to the standard adult skills fund (ASF) allocations process of grant funding colleges and local authorities, while only running a tender for independent training providers.

For the next academic year, TVCA has a £30.5 million ASF budget and £2.7 million in free courses for jobs funding.

The £7 million-per-year in contracts for independent training providers would account for about one third of the combined authority’s adult skills funding.

Prosperity fund axe puts apprenticeship hubs in danger

Fears are growing for apprenticeship ‘hubs’ after ministers slashed a key post-Brexit funding stream, triggering warnings of closures and lost brokerage support for small businesses and young people.

The government scrapped the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF) in March, a programme created by the Conservatives following the loss of about £1.5 billion per year in European Union social and regional development funding.

In a joint open letter to work and pensions secretary Pat McFadden this week, several sector bodies warned the cuts would threaten England’s network of ‘apprenticeship hubs’, partially funded by the UKSPF, that aim to boost recruitment, particularly among SMEs.

They wrote: “Without mitigating action, the loss of this funding stream will result in local brokerage services being scaled back or closed entirely, a loss of service that cannot easily be reversed because of the contacts and trusted relationships they have built up.”

The signatories – including Engineering UK, Logistics UK, Edge Foundation and Skills Federation – call for a “sustainable funding stream” for the estimated 27 apprenticeship hubs that exist across England.

The hubs most at threat are those outside mayoral areas that stand to be left out of a £140 million apprenticeship brokerage pilot to be funded through the government’s apprenticeship budget.

This appears to be the first time that apprenticeship levy funds have been used to fund initiatives outside of training and incentives.

Double whammy cold spots

The UKSPF’s partial replacement, the Local Growth Fund, could help keep apprenticeship hubs open but will only be targeted at 11 mayoral strategic authorities in the North and Midlands which have the “highest productivity catch-up and agglomeration potential”.

This excludes local authorities, often rural counties and smaller cities, facing “unprecedented risk” to their apprenticeship hubs and employment support.

English cold spots lacking both Local Growth Fund and apprenticeship brokerage pilot funding include counties in south west and central England, county councils in the West Midlands, and Cumbria and Lancashire in the North West.

Several areas have voiced concerns about the impact this will have on flexible employment support offered by councils, small charities and training providers.

Although details have been limited since its announcement five months ago, the government’s apprenticeship brokerage pilot is expected to offer help and opportunities to potential apprentices, including candidates who missed out on their first-choice applications.

This is similar to the offer provided by some of the apprenticeship hubs currently under threat.

Brokerages ‘already exist’

According to the Edge Foundation, the hubs offer brokerage support such as promoting the apprenticeship training route to young people and SMEs, connecting employers with training providers, and helping with recruitment and bureaucracy.

The letter’s authors urged McFadden to match the ambition of his apprenticeship brokerage pilot with support for the “many pockets of great practice” that already exist.

Norfolk County Council argued that its hub, Apprenticeships Norfolk, had helped grow apprenticeships year on year, including by 18 per cent in 2021-22, which was more than double the 8 per cent national rate.

Apprenticeships Norfolk also runs a levy transfer scheme that has moved over £4.5 million in just over two financial years to around 220 businesses, supporting 440 apprentices, and provides financial incentives for hiring.

A variety of hubs with various brand names have sprung up across England since the late 2010s, set up by local enterprise partnerships, local authorities and training provider networks using a combination of funding that often included UKSPF and EU development funding.

While some are run by combined authorities such as in the North East, Liverpool City Region and West Midlands, others are run by councils and training provider networks such as the Western Training Provider Network.

Local employment services hit

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, which is responsible for UKSPF, did not assess the impact of it being scrapped, arguing it was always a “time-limited” programme.

Jude Day, employability programme manager at the Sussex Community Development Association, said the cuts had resulted in its employment-focused staff body being halved to 13 this year, with further potential redundancies to come.

The association works with people “furthest from the job market” across East Sussex, helping them into work, volunteering, education and training programmes.

Day said that at its peak it employed about 40 people via DWP, EU and UKSPF programmes.

She told FE Week it takes years to build employment advisors’ knowledge of local businesses and how to work with economically inactive and unemployed people.

“These skills are being lost at the very time it is getting harder to find work, use AI appropriately, to attend interviews and secure the job,” she added.

Lancashire Combined County Authority, which had a £22 million UKSPF allocation last year, has warned the loss of funding creates “unprecedented risk” for local authorities, training providers and local charities.

A report by the authority noted that £3.5 million is spent on local people and skills projects, and that national programmes offering employment support fail to offer the “breadth or the locality” of UKSPF-funded provision.

It added that the “long-term sustainability” of local voluntary and social enterprise organisations may make continued delivery of skills projects “unviable”.

UKSPF history

Covering an initial three years, the UKSPF was devised by the Conservative government under Boris Johnson, who pledged in his 2019 manifesto that post-Brexit funding would “at a minimum” match the size of EU funding, which was distributed in seven-year cycles.

However, its delivery was plagued by delays, tight spending timelines and complex rules.

It was replaced with the £225 million-per-year Local Growth Fund which was worth 75 per cent less than the UKSPF in 2024-25 and, as the government confirmed in the autumn budget, will only go to 11 devolved mayoral strategic authorities in the North and Midlands.

It meant that as of April this year, more than 150 local authorities have lost annual allocations of between £327,000 and £61 million, depending on their size and deprivation levels.

A government spokesperson said: “Our growth and skills L=levy reforms, backed by £1 billion additional investment, will support 50,000 more young people into apprenticeships over the next three years, giving them a vital route into skilled work.

“This funding includes £140 million to explore how mayoral strategic authorities can best use their expert local knowledge and expertise to connect more young people with local apprenticeship opportunities.

“We are taking significant steps to transform how local growth is funded, which is an important part of our long-term goal. This is alongside making local government finance more sustainable and allowing funding to be targeted where it is needed most.”

Colleges delivered AoC recommendation-busting pay deals

College teachers received pay rises averaging 4.1 per cent last year – far higher than the Association of Colleges’ pay recommendation.

Analysis of new 2024-25 FE workforce data shows full-time equivalent general FE college teachers were paid a median of £37,600 – up from £36,100 the year before.

The AoC made a 2.5 per cent non-binding pay recommendation to college bosses.

Pay rises were even higher among support staff (5.4 per cent) and admin staff (5.3 per cent) within FE colleges. In contrast, college leaders received a 2.1 per cent boost to their median pay.

However, teacher pay did not meet the college membership body’s 6.5 per cent recommendation the year before, with the median teacher salary rising 5.9 per cent in 2023-24.

Sixth form college teachers remained the highest earners with a median salary of £49,700 last year following a 5.5 per cent rise.

FE college teachers continued to out-earn teachers at independent training providers, who received £32,000 in median pay in 2024-25, up 2.6 per cent from the previous year.

Colleges’ pay rises last year likely stem from the Department for Education’s £50 million “one-off grant” to support the 2024-25 salary increase.

University and College Union general secretary Jo Grady said: “Due to the University and College Union applying years of sustained industrial pressure to college bosses, staff have seen a small improvement to their pay.

“Unfortunately, it is nowhere near enough, and colleges will continue shedding staff to secondary schools while the pay gap continues to widen.

“We need a new deal for further education, increased government funding and real-terms pay rises.”

AoC’s chief executive David Hughes said he was “pleased but unsurprised” that colleges were prioritising staff investment.

“Despite this good news, pay still isn’t where we need it to be, so we highlighted this in our recent letter, signed by 175 college leaders, to the prime minister. In that letter one of our three asks was for ministers to sit down with us and the unions to agree a five-year pay plan to close the unjust pay gap with schools and industry.

“This would allow colleges to retrain and reward staff fairly and enable them to deliver high-quality learning to more people in key industrial priority sectors.”

Teacher ups and downs

DfE data shows the size of the FE workforce grew 2.3 per cent to over 200,000 staff, but growth was largely confined to general FE colleges.

Staff headcount in FE colleges inched up 2.5 per cent to 128,816 workers in 2024-25.

Meanwhile, sixth form colleges’ staff headcount fell by almost one in 10, to about 9,400 workers. The sharpest fall was among managers, whose numbers dropped by more than a fifth.

Meanwhile, headcount among ITPs fell by more than one tenth.

ITPs are the second largest employer in the FE sector, but headcount has dropped 15 per cent in four years to 35,907. However, the DfE said ITP estimates are scaled because ITPs are non-statutory and have lower return rates, so they are less reliable than GFEC/sixth form figures.

Simon Ashworth, deputy CEO and director of policy at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, said the figures reflected the “growing financial pressures” facing many ITPs, particularly those heavily reliant on apprenticeship delivery.

He said: “While there have been annual uplifts in 16-to-19 funding, apprenticeship funding bands have historically been reviewed far less regularly, with many bands remaining unchanged for long periods.

“In some cases, funding bands are already operating close to the upper funding limit, further constraining providers’ ability to absorb rising staffing and delivery costs.”

Pay differs across subjects and regions

Most FE teaching staff taught vocational subjects and drew the lowest salaries.

A quarter of FE staff taught academic subjects and were the highest paid.

Philosophy teachers came top with an average salary of £45,576 last year, whereas the lowest paid were retail and commercial enterprise teachers and animal care teachers, on £31,361 and £32,211 respectively.

General FE colleges had the smallest pay differences across England. Full-time equivalent teaching staff in Yorkshire and the Humber were paid a median annual salary of £35,500, one fifth lower than the £42,900 paid to a London equivalent teacher.

Meanwhile, teachers in local authority-run education providers in the East Midlands were paid half as much as their London equivalents, £27,600 compared to £56,200 respectively.

Construction and SEND vacancies

For the first time the DfE published its own retention metrics measuring the percentage of staff that remained in the FE sector from one academic year to the next.

The data only covered colleges but revealed around 85 per cent of teaching staff stayed in the sector in the last academic year.

Analysis also found retention was highest for managers and leaders, and lowest for admin staff.

Meanwhile, teaching vacancies had declined to 3.5 per cent, down from 3.9 per cent.

Vacancies for SEND teachers specialising in speech and communication were the highest at 9.3 per cent. Sensory and supported learning for SEND learner roles were also at least 5 per cent unfilled.

Construction teaching positions had the second highest vacancy level, with 7.3 per cent of posts vacant by the end of the academic year.

Zero-hour contracts

In 2024-25, two-thirds of the workforce (67.4 per cent) who had permanent or fixed-term contracts worked full time, similar to last year (67.7 per cent).

Two-thirds of teaching staff also worked full-time, which was similar to the previous year.

Eight in 10 FE college teachers are now on permanent contracts, compared with 91 per cent of sixth form teachers and 90 per cent of ITP teachers.

FE colleges remain the biggest users of zero-hours contracts among teaching staff. In 2024-25, 10.4 per cent of teachers were on zero-hours contracts, compared with 2.4 per cent in sixth form colleges and 2.6 per cent at ITPs.

Governor long-service drop

Former FE commissioner Shelagh Legrave previously warned that governors should not be serving more than two terms, a maximum of eight years.

The data shows the proportion of governors serving between nine to 12 years has fallen over the last four years. After a peak in 2022-23 of nearly 7 per cent of governors in this bracket, the proportion dropped to 4.6 per cent last year.

The proportion of those who have served over 12 years in a role has also dropped from 5 per cent to 3.3 per cent over the last four years.

Overall, there were 100 fewer governors serving in FE colleges and sixth form colleges last year, down to an estimated 3,600.

Additionally, sixth form colleges recorded more unfilled governor vacancies than FE colleges.

Sixth form colleges had a 9 per cent empty seat rate across their governing boards, which has been rising over the last 4 years. FE colleges had 6 per cent vacancy rate, which has more or less stayed the same.

Diversity improvement

Ethnicity data showed a growing population of ethnic minority workers in FE.

Last year, a total of 23.7 per cent identified themselves as from an ethnic minority group, up from 21.9 per cent the year before.

Leadership has marginally improved its ethnic minority representation. Asian leaders made up 4.1 per cent of the cohort, while Black leaders accounted for 2 per cent of the workforce.

Ethnic representation amongst governing boards has also increased. Nearly one-fifth (19.8 per cent) of college governors were from an ethnic minority group, up from 17.5 per cent in 2021-22.

Some 7.8 per cent of governors identified as Asian or Asian British, 4.3 per cent as white minorities, and 4.2 per cent as Black or Black British.

Regarding gender, three out of every five (58.8 per cent) further education teachers are female.

The proportion of female leaders in FE colleges remained the same last year (54.9 per cent), but increased two percentage points at sixth form colleges to 53 per cent.

Inside the booming business of high-tech exam cheating

“Cheat on a test without getting caught,” reads the advert for an earpiece so tiny it disappears once dropped inside your ear canal. “Finally, your nerdy classmates can tell you all the answers!”

The latest gadgets being openly marketed on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram to millions of young people are making it increasingly difficult for exam invigilators to detect cheating.

As AI has already transformed plagiarism and coursework fraud, a parallel technological revolution is now reshaping what cheating looks like inside exam halls.

From toe-controlled invisible earpieces to AI-enabled smart glasses and vibrating dog collars, FE Week has found a rapidly expanding global industry supplying increasingly sophisticated tools to candidates seeking to beat the system.

Experts warn that qualifications across FE are becoming vulnerable to forms of cheating that many colleges and assessment providers are not prepared for.

And as more assessments move online, fraud investigators fear the problem will only accelerate.

Just a whisper

In the past, candidates using covert audio devices often relied on wired earpieces, awkwardly threaded down sleeves. Invigilators could sometimes spot the wires, or other bulky equipment.

Today’s earpieces are tiny and skin-coloured, and can be connected wirelessly to a SIM card-carrying induction collar hidden around the neck.

Niamh Pierce, head of research at the Assessment Security Research Group, a division of VICTVS, says advances in miniaturisation have made cheating technology “more discreet and therefore more effective”.

Some models are so small that suppliers advise users to insert them deep into the ear canal using a magnetic wand. Others require fishing-line attachments or magnetic extraction tools to pull them out afterwards.

One supplier openly boasts that standard metal detectors cannot identify their devices.

The cheaters can pay a heavy price for their misdemeanours, with prolonged use linked to dizziness, headaches and hearing problems.

Doctors in Russia reported a sharp rise in students seeking treatment after micro-earpieces became lodged in their ears during exams last year.

But despite the risks, the market is booming.

Cutting out the middleman

There were 7,615 proven student malpractice cases across GCSEs, A Levels and vocational qualifications in 2024-25, up from 6,310 in 2022-23.

Functional skills qualifications suffered the steepest increase, with cases soaring from 610 to 1,385.

But investigators believe the true scale of cheating is likely to be significantly higher, because advanced technology means many perpetrators are never caught.

“Technology is advancing at a rate of knots,” says Jon Chapman, operations manager at counter-fraud specialist PS3 Limited, which investigates qualification fraud on behalf of the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

Until around three years ago, much of PS3’s work involved investigating “corrupt centres” and staff colluding with candidates – and those risks have not disappeared.

In February, four people were arrested at an independent test centre in Winchester for allegedly accepting payments to help candidates fraudulently pass tests. They have since been bailed until August pending further inquiries.

And in March, three men were jailed after helping at least 66 candidates cheat on the health, safety and environment tests required for Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) cards by training candidates to conceal “cheat phones” inside their underwear.

But such criminal networks are becoming unnecessary since “candidates can now cut out the middlemen,” according to Pierce.

With some suppliers providing downloadable guides on cheating and posting tutorials on social media about how to use their products, candidates can organise fraud themselves.

Lee Fawcett, technical manager at PS3, says those “reaping the financial benefits” are often the overseas companies selling the technology rather than domestic criminal gangs.

The cheat economy

The global cheating-tech market is surprisingly open.

The tiny earpieces mentioned at the start of this article are sold by Monorean, a company registered in Cyprus. Another supplier, Examdevices, markets what it describes as the “most advanced invisible spy earpiece for cheating”, alongside covert button cameras and hidden transmitters.

Founded in Romania in 2004 by “two highly experienced telecoms engineers”, Examdevices says it was inspired by “a frustrated student struggling against one of the walls of our education system”.

It openly states that international expansion, including into the UK, was driven by “high demand”.

Other modern cheating tools include Bluetooth pens that can translate exam text into different languages, invisible ink, and watches, glasses and calculators with hidden screens and live chat functions.

Croatian company 24uki.com advertises a wi-fi camera that allows users to “secretly and instantly stream your exam questions to your friends and family without anyone ever knowing”.

Its “magic calculator” promises to hide “photos, videos and unlimited text”.

Some systems are almost comically elaborate. One “invisible earpiece” is controlled using buttons concealed inside the user’s shoe.

Customer testimonials posted online are blunt about the intended purpose.

A user identified as “Bryan from the UK” praised Slovenian company Unseeyn.us after finally passing a maths exam he had repeatedly failed.

“I sent my test in a second to my friend and he helped me so I passed,” the testimonial reads.

Another UK-based customer, Peter, claimed the device had transformed him into a “top student”.

The products are not just confined to obscure websites. FE Week found “invisible earpieces”, “spy earphones” and even cheating devices disguised as lighters and credit cards openly sold through Amazon listings, with some explicitly describing their use for “exam assistance”.

Online influencers are cashing in with their ‘how to cheat’ tutorials too.

One YouTube video showcasing “8 secret exam cheating gadgets” amassed more than 10 million views.

Some suppliers even offer behavioural coaching.

“They provide training on how to appear natural with the device, to go undetected,” says Pierce.

Madrid-based vendor PingaOculto advises customers how to avoid detection from metal detectors or radio-frequency scanners.

Its website also raises ethical concerns – not about cheating itself, but about exam centres using surveillance equipment to identify devices.

Wearable tech

The rise of consumer wearable technology should keep invigilators on their toes, as they often blur the line between legitimate consumer electronics and cheating tools.

The global wearable-tech market was valued at $87 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $231 billion by 2034.

Unlike smartphones, wearable devices such as smartwatches, smart glasses and biometric rings are often not banned during assessments. Because they are discreet and designed to resemble everyday accessories, “invigilators may be hesitant to inspect them closely due to privacy concerns or lack of technological knowledge”, says Pierce.

Whereas the “massive lenses” of some smart glasses are a telltale sign that may alert suspicion, others have screens discreetly built into the lenses for users to view preloaded text which remains invisible to nearby observers.

“Invigilators need big-brand recognition,” Pierce says. “You’re looking for things like unusual frame shapes or touch pads hidden behind the ears.”

One TikTok advert claims smart glasses let cheating users “see answers right in front of your eyes, completely invisible to everyone else”.

An app also marketed on TikTok claims to transform Apple Watches into “the ultimate cheat test”.

Basic smartwatches can store large volumes of text and quickly switch between hidden notes and a normal watch face. Higher-end models can receive messages, livestream video or connect directly to covert earpieces.

Some can pair in real time with AI chatbot systems specifically trained to answer exam questions.

A policy void

Despite the growing sophistication of the technology, many colleges appear poorly prepared.

An FE Week review of college exam policies found that many still focus primarily on mobile phones and older devices such as MP3 players.

One lecturer preparing to invigilate upcoming GCSE English exams told FE Week they were unaware that smart glasses could be used for cheating.

Wigan & Leigh College’s exam guidance poster still references “iPods” and MP3/MP4 players.

Craven College appears to be more up to date. Its policy explicitly states that candidates retaining a “smart phone, smart watch or any other device capable of transmitting or receiving information”, after being instructed to switch it off and store it away may be demonstrating “intent to commit exam fraud”.

Pierce believes knowledge gaps among invigilators are a vulnerability.

“You’ve got to admire the invigilators who are catching these culprits. They can be our greatest strength.”

Nationally, the assessment regulator Ofqual said it finds the marketing of cheating technology to students “unacceptable” and it was up to individual awarding organisations to keep on top of cheating technology

Chief regulator Sir Ian Bauckham recently wrote to exam boards saying there had been a “noticeable long-term rise” in exam hall rule-breaking and urging them to “strengthen your arrangements” to stem it.

“We require exam boards to protect the integrity of their assessments, to ensure their rules about cheating keep pace with new technology.

“Ofqual takes this very seriously. We will not hesitate to take further action to protect the integrity and fairness of the qualifications that students work so hard for.”

Danger zone

Nowhere are the stakes higher than in construction, where qualification fraud can lead to fatal site accidents and dangerous buildings.

Chapman says criminal facilitators can charge between £600 and £1,400 to help candidates cheat the health, safety and environment tests needed for CSCS cards. Since 2020 at least 10,000 of these test results have been revoked by CITB.

In some cases, organised crime groups use fraudulently qualified workers for labour exploitation and modern slavery operations.

The fragmented nature of the construction certification landscape does not help.

There are currently 38 different CSCS Alliance card schemes permitted to display the CSCS logo, alongside rival “skills passport” systems run by separate organisations locked in a trade mark battle.

“The card schemes are all in competition with each other, and some don’t share information,” says Fawcett.

“But the criminal doesn’t care what card scheme it is. When they find a vulnerability, they’ll exploit it.”

An FE Week investigation two years ago uncovered a flourishing black market in fake CSCS cards promoted through social media platforms. The trade seems to be continuing.

One TikTok user bragged online about returning to a construction site using a fake card after being removed for health and safety violations the previous day.

Chapman says many online advertisements offering CSCS cards are themselves scams targeting desperate buyers.

But while fraudulent cards remain a concern, investigators say fraudulently obtained genuine qualifications are the bigger threat.

“That’s what’s keeping the industry awake at night,” says Fawcett.

Commercial cheating

The rise of AI has fundamentally transformed cheating beyond traditional exams.

Essay mills became illegal in England in 2022, but new generative AI-powered cheating services operate in a legal grey area.

Plagiarism accounted for roughly one third of misconduct penalties in non-academic courses last year, up from just 5 per cent three years earlier.

More than two-thirds of those plagiarism cases involved AI misuse.

A growing ecosystem of AI tools is now explicitly marketed to students seeking to avoid detection.

CheatGPT promises users they can “cheat with confidence”.

Some educators believe oral assessments and presentations may be more useful in verifying genuine understanding.

But AI systems are rapidly adapting there too.

Tiny earpieces connected to real-time AI assistants like Cluely, which claims to be “undetectable in every way”, can feed through live answers during interviews and presentations as well as in written tests.

Pierce warns this creates dangerous dependency cycles.

“If students don’t actually develop the underlying skills, they may feel compelled to continue relying on AI just to maintain the appearance of competence,” she says.

Social media effect

Meanwhile, investigators increasingly believe the proliferation of ‘how to cheat’ videos on social media is normalising cheating culture itself.

Fawcett says many young people are routinely exposed to influencers promoting AI cheating tools or covert devices through algorithm-driven feeds.

“It just comes up in their stories,” he says.

That creates additional pressure on honest learners who fear competitors may be cheating successfully.

“They feel they should cheat as well, because the bar’s being raised.”

Pierce says students do not even need to search for cheating content for it to appear in their feeds.

“If a student posts a video despairing because they’re struggling with an exam, they’ll get comments offering a nice, cushy service to help them with it,” she says.

Who cheats?

Despite the scale of concern, Fawcett estimates only around 1 per cent of test candidates actively attempt fraud.

And the motivations behind cheating are often more complicated than simple dishonesty.

Some candidates struggle with English comprehension or digital literacy. Others panic under pressure.

Fawcett recalls one candidate who was approached at his home by fraudsters offering cheating services.

The candidate was reportedly fully capable of passing legitimately but chose to pay rather than spend additional time in training.

“He’d rather pay £500 than spend three days off the tools in a classroom,” Fawcett says.

Pierce believes growing AI dependence may also be damaging students’ confidence.

In her previous role as an English teacher, she found learners’ homework increasingly bore little resemblance to the work they produced in class.

Eventually, she stopped assigning homework altogether.

“They have to think on the spot in exams, and it’s a big shock to the system for those who are used to getting answers from AI whenever they need them,” she says.

Cheating set sold on Amazon, with parts disguised as a Bic lighter and credit card

Online testing vulnerabilities

Remote assessment is now emerging as perhaps the biggest battleground.

Online testing is cheaper, more scalable and logistically easier to organise than in physical exam centres. But investigators fear it is dramatically harder to secure.

Some providers actively market online assessments as faster and more convenient alternatives to in-person testing.

TKS Training advertises an online health and safety course for CSCS green cards that can supposedly be completed “in half the time”.

Fawcett says “alarm bells” ring whenever providers advertise 100 per cent pass rates, which some do.

“If you do not control the test environment, you cannot guarantee it’s secure,” he says.

Online communities on Reddit and Telegram openly share methods for bypassing remote proctoring systems, including defeating webcam monitoring and browser security tools.

Fawcett fears fully remote testing environments create ideal conditions for organised cheating operations. Criminal networks could simply charge candidates to take a test in their own facility, which is “staged” to look like a bedroom or office, and where they can be assisted without detection.

But James Gupta, CEO of online exam platform Synap, points out that the “new opportunities for misconduct” created by generative AI and digital tools are “not exclusive to online exams”.

He says: “AI now challenges coursework, take-home assessments and even traditional classroom testing, which means the conversation needs to focus on assessment design and integrity rather than simply blaming the delivery format.”

The issue has become politically sensitive because of the Home Office’s plans to move English-language testing for visa applicants fully online from 2027 under a contract reportedly worth £816 million. The UK would become one of the first countries to make these tests fully remote. Australia banned fully remote visa English testing last year.

The International English Language Testing System (IELTS) consortium, which oversees two-thirds of the current in-person English tests, withdrew from the procurement process, warning the proposals would create “new and significant security vulnerabilities”.

Migration minister Mike Tapp is aware of the risks; he recently said suppliers would need to demonstrate robust anti-cheating protections against threats, including AI and wearable devices.

But Chapman fears the move could normalise weaker standards across other sectors.

“Other organisations will follow,” he says. “The Home Office providers will probably spend a lot of money trying to make it secure. Other providers won’t.”

Cheating used to leave clues. Today’s students have access to an unregulated marketplace of invisible gadgets.

The challenge facing colleges, awarding organisations and regulators is no longer simply catching individual cheats.

It is confronting a rapidly growing and unregulated global market, powered by AI, social media and consumer electronics, that is increasingly making dishonesty in assessment feel normal.

Movers & Shakers: Edition 533

Ofsted gives 12 months’ grace to apprenticeship unit providers

Ofsted will not inspect apprenticeship unit provision until next April at the earliest.

In an agreement with the Department for Work and Pensions, the education watchdog will not bring the new short courses into scope for at least a year to give providers time to develop and embed “effective” models.

The government said the timeline would allow the DWP and education watchdog to consider the design of an “appropriate” quality framework.

The move reflects the “distinctive nature” of apprenticeship units and will ensure quality oversight is “proportionate”, the update to FE providers added.

From now until April 2027, the DWP and Department for Education will monitor units with a “light touch” and exclude results from qualification achievement rates.

“As the test-and-learn phase progresses, further detail will be published on how apprenticeship units will be incorporated into the apprenticeship accountability framework in a proportionate and flexible way,” the update said.

Delivery on apprenticeship units, the government’s new flagship short course route, begins this month.

Units are part of Labour’s reformed growth and skills levy – marking the first time that levy funds can be used for non-apprenticeship training.

Ten short courses have been launched so far, ranging from AI leadership to battery manufacturing, lasting between 30 and 140 hours each.

Skills England limited the initial delivery to a “targeted” group of existing apprenticeship providers that already had strong performance in the occupational standards from which the units are drawn.

But FE Week analysis showed the group includes those with achievement rates of below 50 per cent.

Providers also warned low funding rates, a milestone payment model and “poor design” could deter them from delivering apprenticeship units.

‘Education for all’: SEND reform bill confirmed in King’s Speech 2026

Special educational needs reforms will be legislated through the “education for all” bill, the King’s Speech has confirmed.

King Charles told Parliament that ministers “believe that every child deserves the chance to succeed to the best of his or her ability and not be held back due to poverty, special educational needs, or a lack of respect for vocational education”.

He added: “A bill will be brought forward to raise standards in schools and introduce generational reforms of the special educational needs system.”

Policy briefing notes reveal this will be named the education for all bill, subject to the ongoing consultation of the SEND white paper.

Documents released contain largely the same information released about the schools white paper in February, including the five reform principles early, local, fair, effective and shared.

‘A truly inclusive education system’

It said: “This bill will transform support for children and young people with SEND by providing early access to support close to home and ensuring all schools, nurseries and colleges deliver the stretching, rewarding education that all children and young people deserve.

“The government will build a truly inclusive education system that works for every family.”

The schools white paper and a corresponding consultation, set out proposals to SEND reform, most of which are expected to be enacted from 2029.

From that date, pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCPs) will have them reviewed when they reach their next transition point in secondary.

Documents outline the previously announced £4 billion investment in reforms over the next few years, including a £3.7 billion capital investment in education settings from 2026 to 2030, and the £1.8 billion investment into experts at hand.

It is the second time that government has named a bill ‘education for all’. In 2016, the Conservatives were planning to force all schools in “unviable and underperforming areas” into academies under the same name. But plans were shelved by the then education secretary Justine Greening.

The SEND consultation closes on 18 May.

Policy briefing documents said the government will “carefully consider the responses”, with ongoing engagement with families, the sector and experts.

King Charles also used his speech to confirm that ministers will “continue to invest in apprenticeships and measures that tackle youth unemployment”.

“They will respond to the Milburn Review and the Timms Review and continue to reform the welfare system to support both young and disabled people to flourish in work as the basis for long-term economic security,” he added.