Latest news from FE Week

NEET numbers could hit 1.25m within five years, Milburn warns

The number of young people shut out of education and work could surge to 1.25 million within five years unless ministers overhaul “broken” systems meant to support them, a landmark independent review will warn.

Former Labour health minister Alan Milburn’s review will say the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) could rise from one in eight to one in six if nothing changes.

Milburn will launch his interim diagnostic report tomorrow, with final recommendations expected later this year.

He will warn that Britain faces a “generational fault line” unless it confronts “whole system failure” that has left almost one million young people NEET.

Milburn is expected to say: “Six in ten have never had a job. Twenty years ago, that figure was closer to four in ten.

“Detachment is no longer temporary. For too many young people, it is becoming permanent. We are at risk of a lost generation.”

The review will argue that schools, colleges, health, welfare and labour markets built to support young people from childhood to adult life are “no longer fit for purpose”.

Welfare state to working state

It will call for a reset from a welfare state that Milburn describes as “exacerbating inactivity” to a “working state” that “builds capacity”.

The report will also warn that new programmes layered on top of a broken system will not be enough.

Milburn will stress that young people themselves are not the problem. His review found 84 per cent of NEET young people surveyed want a job or training.

But “the first rung of the career ladder has thinned”, leaving many young people trapped between employers demanding experience and a labour market offering fewer opportunities.

The report will point to 1.6 million fewer low and medium-skilled jobs in the economy, the halving of vacancies in the hospitality industry over the past four years alone and the “freefall” of Saturday jobs.

It will also expose what it calls a “fundamental imbalance” in public spending.

In 2024-25, around £25 was spent on benefits for young people for every £1 spent on employment support.

Milburn is expected to say: “This is not a failure of young people. It is a failure of a system stuck in the past.

“Whether it is education or health or welfare, that system fails to enable their participation in the labour market.

“Instead, all too often it ends up putting young people on a path to a life not in jobs but on benefits. This should be the priority for the government. It should be the priority for all of us.”

Milburn’s interim diagnostic report will be published in full tomorrow.

Small HE providers in line for OfS fee cut

Colleges and small HE providers could be in line for a cut to their Office for Students registration fee under proposals from the Department for Education.

A consultation, launched today, proposes a range of new registration fee structures for the higher education regulator, which is mandatory for providers to access student loan funding and degree awarding powers.

Registration fees are the Office for Students’ main source of operating income. Its latest annual report showed it received £31.6 million from the fees in 2024-25 from universities, colleges and private sector providers.

DfE is seeking views from the higher education sector on the distribution of its registration fee income, with various models proposed that cut fees for providers with lower numbers of higher education students, and raise them for providers with large cohorts.

Degrees of adjustment

Under the current system, providers are placed into one of 13 fee bands based on their full-time equivalent (FTE) higher education student numbers.

This academic year, fees range from £14, 775 for providers with less than 25 FTE students to £222,850 for those with more than 20,000 FTE students.

Latest DfE financial data, covering 2023-24, shows the college with the largest HE student numbers was NCG with 3,265. Today, this would place it in a band generating a registration fee of £111,794.

DfE said the current model places a “higher burden” on smaller providers. The consultation gives the example of a provider with 25 FTE students paying £591 per FTE student, compared with £11.14 per FTE student for a provider with more than 20,000 students.

A proposed “small adjustment” model would see annual fees fall for providers with up to 5,000 FTE students. A provider with 100 to 300 FTE students would pay £34,722, down £1,168 on the current £35,890 fee. A provider with 500 to 1,000 FTE students would pay £55,070, down £1,381.

That model would increase fees for larger providers, prodominantly universities. Those with 5,000 to 10,000 FTE students would pay £141,296, up £691, while providers with more than 20,000 FTE students would pay £228,570, up £5,720.

There is also a proposed “large adjustment” model that would cut fees further for smaller providers. The 100 to 300 FTE student band would fall to £32,793, a reduction of £3,097, while to 500 to 1,000 FTE band would fall to £52, 787, down £3,664. Providers with more than 20,000 FTE students would pay £238,096, up £15,246.

DfE is also consulting on whether to introduce an additional top band for providers with more than 30,000 FTE students. Compared to the current structure, providers with more than 30,000 FTE students would pay £274,545, compared with the current top-band fee of £222,850.

Or a formula

Another option would replace the current funding band model with a fee made up of a flat charge for all providers plus a variable element based on FTE student numbers.

Under DfE’s modelling, providers with up to 500 FTE students would pay less than under the current model. Fees for the 100 to 300 FTE band would fall to £27,094, down £8,796, while the 300 to 500 FTE band would fall to £42,626, down £2,375.

But providers with more than 500 and up to 20,000 FTE students would pay more under this option. The fee for 500 to 1,000 FTE students would rise to £64,361, up £7,910. The 1,000 to 1,500 FTE band would rise to £86,577, up £15,720.

Application and degree power charges

In addition to reformed registration fees, new charges for other regulatory processes have been proposed.

These are currently partially or fully subsidised through annual registration fees.

A new initial application fee has been proposed, charged on a cost-revovery basis for providers applying to join the OfS register. This would replace the existing £28,643 flat quality assessment fee.

OfS has estimated the cost of bringing a new provider onto its register, including quality assessment costs, at between £68,000 and and £105,000 depending on the complexity of the provider.

DfE is also proposing to impose a cost-recovery fee for degree awarding power applications. It said costs related to assessing and granting degree awarding powers are currently subsidised by all registered providers as there is no additional charge for this currently. OfS estimates those additional costs, which are not covered by the quality assessment fee, range from £4,000 to £15,000.

A new fixed £11,000 fee is also proposed for applications for university title or university title name changes. This would have applied to today’s decision to allow the University of Greenwich to rename itself to London and South East University Group following its merger with the University of Kent.

The consultation closes on 21 July.

New CEO appointed to Windsor Forest Colleges Group

Windsor Forest Colleges Group has appointed Oliver Symons as its new CEO.

Symons has been principal and chief executive of Moulton College for the last two years, during which the college exited a seven-year stint in government intervention.

He will leave the land-based college ahead of its proposed merger with Northampton College, expected to take effect from January 2027.

He will take over this autumn from Gillian May, who is due to leave Windsor Forest Colleges Group (WFCG) next month to join the FE Commissioner’s team.

The group will be led in the interim by Samantha Foley, a WFCG governor and former chief financial officer at the University of Reading.

WFCG teaches around 7,000 students and employs 900 people across four colleges, with sites in Langley, Windsor, Strode’s in Egham and a specialist land-based college, Berkshire College of Agriculture (BCA). Its latest accounts show ‘good’ financial health and it maintained a ‘good’ Ofsted rating in 2024.

However, staff at the college group have gone on strike three times this year over low pay, with the latest industrial action taking place earlier this month.

Symons is a serving Ofsted inspector and sits on the board of the land-based colleges membership body Landex.

Jo Croft, WFCG chair of governors, said: “Oliver is an outstanding appointment. His track record of leadership, his depth of knowledge across the FE sector and his direct experience as an Ofsted inspector make him ideally placed to lead WFCG forward.”

Symons added: “I am incredibly proud to be joining Windsor Forest Colleges Group at such an exciting point in its development. The group has a strong reputation for educational excellence, innovation, and ambition, and I am looking forward to working with colleagues, students, governors, and partners to build on that success.

“While I am excited for the opportunity ahead, leaving Moulton College is not a decision I have taken lightly. Moulton is a very special place and I am enormously proud of what has been achieved together over recent years. The college is now in a much stronger position and entering an exciting new chapter with real confidence.”

Tyne Coast falls into hole left by £96m campus

A north east college has been placed in financial intervention for “weaknesses” in its oversight of a £96 million campus building project.

In a notice to improve issued today, the Department for Education said it found issues with the oversight and governance of Tyne Coast College’s new 15,000 square metre campus.

The college said the intervention followed an FE Commissioner review of the project in South Shields town centre, which will include a new campus building, a refurbished listed building, workshop facilities and a 125-bed halls of residence.

Contractor Castle Construction began work last year, with the college celebrating the securing of funding for the area’s “major transformation”.

L-R Simon Ashton, Principal, South Shields Marine School, Dr Lindsey Whiterod CBE, Chief Executive Tyne Coast College, Cllr Tracey Dixon, Leader of South Tyneside Council, Andrew Dawson, Managing Director, Castle

According to the notice, weaknesses in oversight and governance and “associated risks” to the college met the government’s intervention trigger for financial management.

A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College confirmed it did not request or receive an emergency government loan or grant in relation to the project.

However, the North East Combined Authority (NECA) said building work was held back until summer last year due to a “significant shortfall” of £18 million in funding.

NECA agreed to cover the shortfall in May 2025, noting that the government had refused to give the Tyne Coast College and its regeneration partner South Tyneside Council any extra money, and that the college was “unable to borrow any further”.

At that point, the college had secured a £22 million loan and £11 million grant from the DfE, £8 million from its own funds, £23 million from the sale of its existing campus, £9.5 million in levelling-up funding, and £2.7 million in funding for the restoration of listed buildings.

Rising construction costs

The NECA decision report approving its £18 million grant noted that surveying firm AtkinsRealis’ reported that forecasting “had not been keeping pace” with rising construction costs.

The college’s audit committee minutes from 2024 also suggest it was in an “ongoing dispute” with the company.

A spokesperson for Tyne Coast College said it acknowledged the financial notice following an FE Commissioner review.

They added: “The review recognised the college’s ambition to invest in a new campus and the complexity of a multi-funded project in delivering a new build, a refurbished listed building, a site for workshop facilities and new halls of residence.

“However, the FEC did highlight concerns with the oversight and governance of the project which has meant associated financial risks have evolved which have triggered intervention. The college has been issued with a financial notice to improve and placed in supervised college status, with relation to the capital project.

“We recognise that improvements are required in relation to elements of the capital project and are working closely and constructively with the Department for Education and the FE Commissioner to implement a robust and comprehensive action plan.

“This includes strengthening governance arrangements, ensuring clear leadership accountability for the delivery of the project and enhancing financial controls.”

Chris Robinson, UCU’s northern region support official, said: “Staff across Tyne Coast College have continually given their all for the students and the local community, under often very difficult circumstances, including pay freezes and changes to terms and conditions.

“It is not clear what this judgement means for the staff, but it certainly should not be our members who pay the price for senior management and governance failures.

“Our members have continually questioned the plans for new buildings and campuses. One message that this notice to improve sends, is the need for substantive staff involvement in the future of Tyne Coast College.”

Worsening student data is positive sign for Burnley

Plunging achievement rates are being welcomed at a Lancashire college at the centre of a data manipulation scandal.

Burnley College boasted it was “number one” in the country for achievement rates until an investigation found leaders “misled” students and parents by inflating their data, as reported by Ofsted last July – a day after the college’s principal quit.

The college had submitted inaccurate individualised learner records claiming overall achievement rates of up to 96 per cent – achieved by switching struggling students onto shorter courses.

But FE Week’s analysis of recently published data shows Burnley College’s overall 16-to-18 achievement rate dived to 78.9 per cent in 2024-25, down 17 percentage points in a single year.

It places the college 141st in the national performance tables for general FE colleges.

Last week, Ofsted published its first monitoring inspection report since handing out a ‘requires improvement’ judgment almost a year ago. The watchdog found leaders had commissioned a “series of comprehensive external audits” of the college’s individualised learner records.

This level of “detailed assurance” is now a “routine feature of the checking and monitoring cycle leaders have established to ensure data accuracy”, it said.

Leaders have “robust assurance processes in place, with qualification and achievement data recorded, validated and reported with precision”.

Ofsted had criticised governors’ lack of FE experience and for “too long” not questioning “exceptionally high” achievement rates.

The college has since appointed a new governor with FE experience and board members also now receive “clear, accurate and timely” information, according to the monitoring visit.

CEO and principal Jason Faulkner, who joined the college in February, told FE Week the new achievement rate and Ofsted findings reflected the end of a “challenging” period and the beginning of a new era for the college.

“While the college has confirmed that no learners were impacted by the data issues previously identified, the outcomes published clearly show that performance fell short of expectations,” he said.

“As the new principal, I am clear that this is not acceptable and that improvement is underway.”

Faulkner is the college’s first permanent principal since Karen Buchanan stepped down in July after being suspended four months earlier. He said his primary focus had been restoring confidence and strengthening oversight.

The college has introduced training for all managers on updated procedures to secure consistency and compliance.

“The governing body has been a driving force behind ensuring the robust oversight of quality at the college,” Faulkner added.

The real deal

Data published by the Department for Education shows Burnley College’s 16-to-18 achievement rate hovered around 96 per cent for three years before tanking to 78.9 per cent in 2024-25.

Though Ofsted’s July 2025 report highlighted that inflated achievement rates sat within level 3 provision, the college recorded its sharpest drop among the lower levels.

Level 1 achievement fell 26 percentage points to 72.5 per cent from the year before, and level 2 attainment decreased 20 percentage points to 75.9 per cent.

Achievement in level 2 preparation for life and work subjects nearly halved to 50.7 per cent in 2024-25, having recorded a 100 per cent achievement rate the year before.

Level 1 courses in preparation for life and work also plummeted to 62.8 per cent, down from 97.8 per cent.

Meanwhile, achievement across the college’s level 3 provision held up strongly, increasing from 94.5 per cent to 96.9 per cent.

Ofsted’s full inspection last March found that in previous years too many level 3 learners were “incorrectly” dropped to one-year courses when they did not complete their two-year courses.

The monitoring visit report said leaders had introduced processes to manage learner transfers, withdrawals and amendments.

Retention surgeries are also now run every two weeks to review learners identified as “at risk”.

Faulkner said: “These results reflect the past, not the future. The college is moving forward with clarity, purpose and determination and I am confident that the changes underway will lead to improved outcomes for learners, employers and the wider community.”

Inspectors also noted predictive modelling introduced this year had already proved accurate against January exam results.

Mary Ward steps closer to Newham College merger

An historic adult learning college in east London is expected to merge with nearby Newham College to rescue it from financial turmoil.

The 130-year-old Mary Ward Centre, also known as the Mary Ward Settlement, is in government intervention due to financial difficulties linked to a campus relocation, rising costs, depleted reserves and insufficient tuition fee income.

In recent months, Therese Reinheimer-Jones, the college’s CEO, or “warden”, quietly left the organisation. It is now being led by deputy CEO Sue Craggs.

The proposed merger with a larger general FE college follows the same pattern as other standalone adult education institutions that have struggled with funding over the last decade, including Northern College, Hillcroft College and Ruskin College.

Colleges focusing on adult education have been increasingly strained by the government’s focus on the 16 to 18 age group.

An FE Commissioner-led structural prospects appraisal (SPA) was launched after the Mary Ward Centre asked the Department for Education for a £500,000 emergency loan last year.

According to the college’s accounts for the 2024-25 academic year, signed off in March, the “most likely outcome” of the merger is a transfer of assets and activities to Newham College.

However, neither college has made an announcement, and the decision remained subject to “a process of due diligence” and formal approval by the Mary Ward Centre’s board, the accounts added.

Commenting on the decline of historic adult education colleges, director of policy and external relations at Holex Sue Pember said: “As these historic institutions increasingly merge into the wider FE system there is a real risk that something special will disappear.

“We understand the financial and operational pressures behind these decisions, but the impact will be felt far beyond the institutions themselves and solutions could have been found.”

Updates as ‘process progresses’

Both Mary Ward and Newham College declined to provide details of the merger plans but promised “further updates in due course as the process progresses”.

It would be the second merger for Newham College in two years, after it absorbed Newham Sixth Form College in late 2024 following its ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating.

The east London college group ended 2025 with an ‘outstanding’ financial health rating.

Newham College appears to be preferred over Capital City College, which also expressed interest in a merger, noting in recent board minutes that the Mary Ward Centre had debts of £4 million and an annual turnover of £4 million.

Craggs said the merger plans remained “in early discussions”.

When questioned about the reasons for Reinheimer-Jones’ departure, Craggs said she was “not at liberty to discuss personnel matters”.

Reinheimer-Jones’ exit came to light when FE Week received an automatic reply from her email address confirming she had left the college.

The former CEO, who joined the centre in 2023 and was previously director of student services at Sussex University, could not be reached for comment.

Cash crisis

The Mary Ward Centre’s financial crisis came in the aftermath of a major relocation of the so-called specialist designated institution from its central London base to Stratford, east London, in 2023.

For more than a century it had been based in Holborn, originating from the Victorian philanthropist “settlement” movement that fought to improve living conditions for the urban working-class through education and community.

The centre’s move to a new building in Stratford, that it refurbished and expanded at a cost of at least £14 million, was funded by loans and grants, including from the Greater London Authority.

But according to an FE Commissioner intervention report, the college was surprised by low cash levels due to “inadequate financial oversight” that included “manual” monitoring of student numbers and costs.

It ended the year to July 2025 with an operating deficit of £556,000 on an income of £3.9 million.

The Mary Ward Centre’s own assessment of the year was that its relocation resulted in “higher than expected” building running costs and required “significantly more” investment in curriculum, marketing and resources.

However, the college also said its enrolments and tuition fees were “up to 30 per cent” higher than during its final year in central London.

Its accounts added: “Our expectation is that in the short term, the centre will work towards a merger with Newham College, and that in the medium to long term, operations from The Mary Ward Centre in Stratford should ultimately see a return to much stronger financial sustainability, with the support of the merger partner and with corresponding careful budgetary management, increased student enrolments and higher average class sizes.”

Andy Forbes, director of the recently launched Centre for Advancement of Lifelong Learning (CALL), said the situation at the Mary Ward Centre was the “latest sad chapter in the story of the dismantling of adult education in England over the last decade”.

He told FE Week: “It’s an act of economic and social self-harm, contributing to the decline in community cohesion and the fragmentation of British society.

“In an era when people are living longer and experiencing more changes in technology during their working lives, we need more adult education, not less.”

Switch focus to national solutions on pay, UCU told

The University and College Union could vote to stop campaigning for annual pay rises and prioritise national bargaining instead.

At its annual congress next week, members will consider motions to decide strategy for its flagship ‘new deal for FE’ campaign, as well as setting national policy on Ofsted, adult education funding and “ending the corporate model” of college leadership.

Teachers at Luminate Education Group will call for the UCU to prioritise “national level expectations” on workload, teaching hours, national pay bargaining and pay parity with school teachers.

The Leeds City College branch, part of Luminate, will argue that since annual pay uplifts are decided by individual colleges, the UCU’s national campaign should focus on national wins, such as binding national bargaining and workload agreements.

Representatives will argue that pay should not form part of any national dispute this year.

The UCU has demanded a 10 per cent or £3,000 pay rise from FE colleges for several years, on top of demands to cut workload and secure pay parity.

The pay rises recommended by the Association of Colleges were 2.5 per cent in 2024 and 4 per cent in 2025, but came with warnings that such increases were unaffordable for many colleges.

Since then, colleges have been slapped with a real-terms cut to the 16-to-19 funding rate for the academic year 2026-27.

Bolton College, which is chaired by the union’s vice president of FE Suzi Toole, will also call for a special FE sector conference next year to define the grounds for the next dispute and ballot arrangements.

‘Politically motivated’ ESOL cuts

Elsewhere at congress, teachers at South & City College Birmingham will attack Greater Lincolnshire mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns’ defunding of ESOL courses as a “politically motivated and vindictive attack” on migrant communities, and will call on the union to lobby funding bodies for “protected status for ESOL”.

And the UCU’s Black members standing committee will demand research into the recruitment and progression of senior leaders in FE from ethnic minority backgrounds.

The motion will insist pressure is placed on the Association of Colleges to develop “equitable career development opportunities”.

Currently, just over one in 10 managers in FE are from a minority or mixed ethnic group background according to 2024-25 workforce data, a slight improvement from 8.6 per cent four years ago.

Membership fee fight

Congress is also expected to debate UCU membership fees, with the union’s leadership at odds with some of its members.

The UCU national executive’s report to congress shows a small increase in members working in further education at 27,047 as of April 30, up 389 on the year.

But it has shed over 2,600 members from higher education in the last year, bringing its overall membership down from 121,335 to 119,008.

UCU’s proposed budget for 2026-27 proposes a “limited increase” in membership fees, described elsewhere in documents as a “progressive movement”.

Membership currently costs teachers up to £31.54 per month, with lower fees for lower earners.

The proposals, seen by FE Week, would see an incremental increase to subscription rates the more a member earns. Those on salaries of £60,000 or more would pay 3 per cent more to their monthly subscription, while members earning under £30,000 would see a reduction of up to 3 per cent to their dues.

But UCU Cymru will demand a standard annual membership fee reduction of at least 15 per cent to make the union more “competitively priced”.

Internal strike

The annual congress takes place against the backdrop of an unresolved industrial dispute between UCU and its own staff.

Unite members who work at the teachers’ union staged an 11-day walkout in February over allegations of trade union victimisation, which UCU claimed were “categorically untrue”.

There has been no significant development in the dispute since.

Goldsmiths University submitted a motion expressing solidarity with Unite UCU members, calling on the union to donate £20,000 to their strike fund.

However, the motion has been removed from the order of business. According to a note in congress papers, discussing staffing issues would be a breach of congress rules, which cited risks to the union’s liabilities as an employer.

Procedural disputes are common at congress and delegates can argue for amendments to the agenda on the first day.

Financial mess forces Boston College into intervention

A Lincolnshire college has been placed into government intervention after suffering serious cashflow issues and breaching an unexplained legal requirement.

Boston College was issued a financial notice to improve (NTI) by the Department for Education today. The FE Commissioner’s team has now been called in to assess the college’s leadership, governance and finances.

The DfE listed two grounds for intervention. These were financial health concerns related to serious cashflow pressures and for “financial management and other controls relating to failing to adhere to a legal or regulatory requirement”.

The college said it had already begun to address the “historic” financial challenges with the DfE.

Principal and CEO Lynette Leith, who joined the college in November, “raised the seriousness of the college’s financial position with the DfE”, the notice to improve said.

The college told FE Week it was committed to transparency and accountability, but refused to provide details about the nature of the regulatory breach or cashflow pressures.

It must now comply with a set of conditions before its intervention status is lifted. These include a commissioner-led “capability and capacity assessment” and producing a detailed improvement plan, which will be monitored by the commissioner’s team.

Boston College’s finances slipped from a ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’ financial health rating last year, according to its 2025 accounts.

It recorded an operating surplus of £519,000 compared to a £990,000 surplus in 2023-24.

Additionally, the college’s EBITDA fell to 2.6 per cent, under the 6 per cent sector target. The year before it recorded a 6.1 per cent EBITDA as a percentage of income.

The accounts stated that cashflow forecasts indicated “temporary pressure on liquidity”, with cash reserves declining to 11 days.

However, projections had predicted “recovery from February 2026 onwards, rising above 20 cash days and reaching 28 cash days by year-end”.

These “short-term cash constraints” were attributable to capital expenditure requirements for the college’s Mayflower construction project, which was due to complete last November.

Leith said: “This is an important time for Boston College. Having already begun to address the college’s historic financial challenges, we welcome the notice as an opportunity to continue improving with pace, transparency and accountability.”

Leith replaced Claire Foster who had worked in further education for 30 years, serving her last five years as Boston College principal.

David Earnshaw, Boston College chair, said: “Lynette, who joined the college in November, is determined to utilise the support of the DfE through the mutually agreed improvement plan.

“I have every confidence that the dedicated staff team will make sure that Boston College continues to deliver high-quality education, while achieving a financially robust future through rigorous management and governance.”