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Coding firm caught charging students for free bootcamps

An international company that raked in millions of pounds to run online coding bootcamps in England tried to charge learners for training that was supposed to be fully funded by the government.

An FE Week investigation has uncovered cases of CoGrammar Ltd demanding students pay up to £4,950 for not recording a “job offer” after the course, or face legal penalties.

Most refused to pay after a Department for Education warning about this behaviour, but at least one unemployed learner handed over cash.

Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government allocated over half a billion pounds to spend on its skills bootcamp programme between 2022-25, to train up thousands of people in up to 16 weeks for industries where there is a shortage of workers.

CoGrammar, which traded as HyperionDev and has much of its operations based in South Africa, landed contracts worth up to £22 million from the DfE to train students in England in subjects such as data science, web development and software engineering. It secured similar contracts from mayoral authorities across the country.

Funding rules state: “Individuals must not be charged for any element of the skills bootcamp.”

CoGrammar admitted to charging some students for the course when FE Week presented the company with evidence. A spokesperson claimed students had been offered an apology and promised to refund anyone affected in full, plus £25 in compensation.

Attempts to charge students were made after the Department for Education terminated the company’s contract due to performance concerns.

CoGrammar, which also paid employers to offer job interviews that are required to secure milestone payments, is currently attempting to sue multiple funding authorities including the DfE for non-payments.

‘I was so stressed out’

FE Week spoke to multiple students on tech bootcamps run by CoGrammar. The courses are supposed to be fully funded by the DfE and the company was paid in stages.

Providers can claim payments when learners start a course, complete their training, obtain a job interview and then secure employment.

CoGrammar secured partnerships with multiple Russell Group universities, which attached their names to the courses, taken by thousands of students. All training was delivered online.

The DfE suspended payments to CoGrammar last April after it “notified” the company of “concerns regarding its performance under the contracts” and began an audit, court documents state.

Contract termination followed in September, amid claims the company had committed an unspecified “prohibited act” and a “material breach” of its contract, the court documents add.

CoGrammar, which is now trying to claim almost £6 million in unpaid bootcamp payments from the DfE, tried to charge students a month later.

An email from CoGrammar, seen by FE Week and sent to multiple learners, said: “Our records show that you have failed to submit a job offer by the deadline of 30 September 2024, and due to this, you are liable for a fee payment of £4,950 for your bootcamp as stated in the student undertaking agreement you entered into.”

The company then offered a 75 per cent discount if they paid the fee upfront, or a 50 per cent discount if the student paid 12 monthly instalments via direct debit.

The last sentence of the email said: “Take action now to avoid any legal penalties.”

CoGrammar email to students demanding payment

Laleh Haidari, 42, a senior business analyst from High Wycombe, Bucks, signed up for a DfE fully-funded data science bootcamp with CoGrammar last year. She said she trusted it was a reputable course because it was listed by the DfE as one of its providers.

After completing the course, she said she was shocked when CoGrammar sent her an email saying she must pay thousands of pounds, offering her a discount if she paid by the end of the month.

Laleh said: “I was so stressed out… I was unemployed, and it’s a big chunk of money to pay. And the reason I rushed into paying the discounted fee was that I didn’t want to pay the full fees.”

She paid CoGrammar £1,245 the same day but then received an email from the DfE, several days later, advising participants not to pay.

After Laleh complained and asked for a refund, emails seen by FE Week show that the DfE told Laleh there was “no practical advice we can give”. She had not received a refund at the time of publication.

Zainab Alam, 28, from Stockport, Greater Manchester, also received one of the emails demanding payment but didn’t pay. She started one of the bootcamps while seeking a career change from teaching.

She was terrified the bailiffs would come round as she couldn’t afford what CoGrammar was asking her to pay.

“It’s downright terrifying when you’re not able to get a job due to the job market out there and then being asked to pay back thousands of pounds that I don’t have because I have my parents to support financially as well as two younger sisters,” she said.

Pawel Werbowy, 39, from London, immediately challenged CoGrammar’s attempt to charge him for his course, telling the company “we can see in court if needed” before posting about the issue on social media.

A student experience manager for CoGrammar later “proposed” that Pawel had no payment obligation, but said in return the learner should delete his social media posts.

DfE warning message to concerned students

CoGrammar’s defence

CoGrammar told FE Week a clause was added to student enrolment agreements in 2024 which made learners liable for tuition fees, even though they signed up for a fully funded course, if there was a “lack of evidence on my residency, guided learning hours, interview, or final job outcomes” which leads to the funding authority withholding payment.

The company claimed there had been previous cases where students provided “false information” about their residency or prior training that made them ineligible for bootcamps and led to contractors stopping payments to CoGrammar after it incurred costs.

A CoGrammar spokesperson said the email demanding payment was sent with “erroneous wording to fewer than 0.5 per cent of skills bootcamp students that CoGrammar believed the DfE would not fund due to eligibility issues”.

They told FE Week: “The email did not accurately state the reason for the request, and requested payment at a 75 per cent discount of the maximum amount agreed in the student enrolment clause, which is an amount that is less than CoGrammar would receive for a funded skills bootcamp student that completes only milestone one and so would not even cover CoGrammar’s full cost of delivering a programme.”

The spokesperson claimed that “shortly after” CoGrammar sent this email, the DfE “finally confirmed the eligibility of such students and the process by which they would be evaluated for milestone payments”.

CoGrammar said that it sent affected students an email within 30 working days of the initial payment request, which “contained the corrected context of the payment request, and apology, and offered” students the choice to take a course with a partner organisation or a “full refund plus an additional £25 goodwill payment for the inconvenience”.

The spokesperson said: “CoGrammar regrets having to take the step of adding a clause to its student enrolment forms to protect against non-payments and receive confirmation of their eligibility from the DfE, and in late 2024 removed this clause from its agreements, and will not ever request payment from any student enrolled on any programme intended to be a skills bootcamp, regardless of eligibility confirmation or non-payment.”

Suspicions raised

Some bootcamp participants also raised concerns about job interviews they were offered while on courses.

One employer confirmed it had been paid “a modest reimbursement for a multi-week programme” to interview students, and did not proceed with hiring due to “our immediate project needs and workforce dynamics at the time”.

Paying employers to conduct job interviews is not against DfE rules. Securing a job interview is a key payment milestone for each bootcamp learner.

CoGrammar told FE Week it confirmed with the DfE that it could work with employers to gather feedback on curriculum and conduct interviews and that paying “market-rate rates” was “allowable”, adding that this is “common practice at other skills bootcamp providers”.

It added the company identified fewer than 0.2 per cent of the 1,803 employers it worked with on skills bootcamps were paid to offer job interviews.

FE Week found multiple cases brought by CoGrammar against public authorities over non-payment for skills bootcamps.

West Midlands Combined Authority terminated CoGrammar’s contract after the company allegedly “failed to submit individual learning records”, according to court documents.

CoGrammar said the cited reason for termination was student withdrawal rates that supposedly exceeded a 20 per cent threshold. The company believes termination was “unlawful” and is now suing for non-payment. WMCA said it could not comment as legal proceedings were live.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) also challenged the company’s performance and withheld payments.

CoGrammar said that WYCA later re-procured for a cloud engineering skills bootcamp it had previously been awarded, which was legally challenged by CoGrammar under the procurement act.

This matter has now been settled, the terms of which are confidential.

Ofsted’s high praise

CoGrammar’s CEO Riaz Moola, who has been dubbed the ‘Steve Jobs of South Africa’ in the country’s Sunday Times, was invited into discussions with members of the previous UK government.

In April last year he met with the then-deputy prime minister Oliver Dowden and education secretary Gillian Keegan to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in children’s education.

He set up CoGrammar in 2016 to offer commercial training for the tech industry before entering publicly funded training in 2022.

Ofsted conducted an early monitoring visit to inspect the company’s publicly funded skills bootcamps in early 2024, issuing one “significant” and two “reasonable” progress judgments, highlighting that learners develop “highly relevant skills that are in high demand”.

Freedom of Information requests showed that the DfE has received complaints regarding almost a quarter of all its bootcamp providers since August 2023. Numerous complaints involved CoGrammar.

FE Week spoke to multiple participants who said they had lost confidence in how their complaints had been handled.

The DfE declined to comment due to live legal proceedings with CoGrammar.

No extra cash means no extra students, colleges warn

Students will be turned away this September unless ministers stump up “exceptional” funding increases to cover “unprecedented” rises in student numbers, college leaders have warned.

The Department for Education revealed on Wednesday that colleges will only receive two-thirds of the in-year growth cash they were expecting to accommodate a huge rise in 16 to 19 year olds this year.

It comes as colleges and training providers brace themselves for further cuts to adult education budgets from September.

Data from the Association of Colleges shows 35,000 more 16 to 19-year-old students enrolled in colleges this academic year. They estimate a further 25,000 will come their way in September.

The rises stem from a widely reported demographic bulge in young people leaving school in the next few years.

The DfE described this year’s wave of additional students as “unprecedented” and said a previous plan to fully fund in-year growth was now unaffordable.

Officials use November data returns on student numbers to determine over-delivery against previously agreed allocations for places in 2024-25.

This week a new step was added to the way colleges calculate how much in-year growth they can claim. The so-called “affordability factor” means only two-thirds of eligible growth funding will now be paid.

Nottingham College was funded for just over 7,000 students aged 16 to 19 this year, according to published allocations. The college enrolled an additional 600 students and, based on government guidance published in August, expected £1.5 million in-year growth funding. The college now believes it will get £500,000 less than planned.

Nottingham’s additional students have largely enrolled on lower-level courses, which the college said “reflects the needs of our city” but who need “a great deal of wraparound support”.

Janet Smith, principal and CEO of Nottingham College, said the £500,000 reduction comes at a time of unparalleled demands for investment.

She told FE Week: “We need more space. We need to pay our staff fairly. We need to invest in AI and digital. We need to expand support services. We need to meet spiralling costs and demanding building maintenance. A reduction of £500,000 in in-year growth must be balanced by reduced investment elsewhere.”

Smith added there “is a very real risk” of the college turning away additional students next year.

Institutions will be told their growth payments for this year by the end of March, ahead of payments starting in May.

Rate rise isn’t enough

While colleges have no guarantees on what next year’s in-year growth arrangements will be, they will receive a 3.78 per cent increase to the per-student base rate for the 2025-26 academic year.

Most 16 to 19 year olds at colleges will be funded on study programmes which are arranged by funding bands depending on the student’s age and number of learning hours.

At the top end, for 16 and 17 year olds with 580+ planned hours, the base rate will increase from £4,843 to £5,026. This also applies to high-needs students aged 18 and over. For students aged 18 and over who are not high needs the rate will increase from £4,006 to £4,157.

The rise comes from the remaining £250 million announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves in October.

Sixth Form Colleges Association chief executive Bill Watkin said next year’s rate rise was “good news… particularly at a time when public services are under enormous pressure to find savings”.

NCG has the largest funding allocation for 16 to 19 year olds in the country. It recruited an additional 500 students on top of its allocated 12,886 places for this year.

The mega-college called out the government for using Colleges Week – a week created to highlight colleges’ contribution to the economy – to “once again ask [colleges] to deliver more for less”.

NCG estimates its extra students, and a shift to larger programmes, adds around £5 million in costs to their budget for this year. While the college group had planned to fund some of that from its own coffers, stronger recruitment and lower growth funding than anticipated leaves them “being penalised for our success in attracting and supporting learners”, a spokesperson said.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said the increased funding rate for most 16 to 19 year olds next year “will not cover what we expect to be another 25,000 extra young people wanting to start college in September, and I fear that without in-year funding, colleges will have to turn many away”.

Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) has risen to a decade-high of 987,000.

Hughes added: “With a tight labour market, many 16 year olds will struggle to find work, and a place in college is their best option to set them up for a successful working life.”

Colleges at their limits

Luminate Education Group told FE Week it had to cap additional recruitment of 16 to 19 year olds this year. It could only physically accommodate an extra 637 students after recruiting over 1,000 extra last year.

The Leeds-based group plans to add 500 additional places for September 2025, but that too is limited because of capacity.

Colin Booth, chief executive, said the proportion of NEET 16 to 18 year olds in Leeds, currently at around 10 per cent, will rise further without “significant investment to create more spaces”.

He added: “Growing by 500 and paying for teaching and additional equipment without significant in-year funding will continue to put significant pressure on our short-term cash flow.”

Booth added that colleges’ capacity limits are compounded by public sector spending rules barring colleges from borrowing commercially.

“The problem with lack of physical space and no access to capital grants or loans to help increase space adds to the challenges we face.”

The Association of Employment and Learning has previously made the case for independent training providers to fill capacity shortfalls before the population bulge subsides in order to avoid over-capacity in colleges in the future.

Funding vs rhetoric

There is increasing frustration among FE leaders over funding snubs despite seemingly positive rhetoric around the sector’s importance to the government’s growth missions.

Providers of contracted national adult education provision have also been told by the DfE they will not be paid as much for in-year growth this year as they were expecting due to affordability issues.

And mayoral combined authorities have been told to expect cuts to their adult education budget of between 2 and 3 per cent.

NCG’s spokesperson said: “Alongside the proposed cuts to the adult skills fund, colleges are once again being asked to deliver more for less, despite the government’s stated missions of prioritising skills, education and employment.”

The DfE is yet to confirm its funding approach to non-devolved adult education for 2025-26, but colleges are braced for more cuts.

Hughes said: “The picture for adults is even more stark, with a cut to the adult skills budget suggesting that the government does not recognise how vital investing in skills is for their missions, and in particular for economic growth.”

Team UK to showcase new talents at Worldskills Shanghai

The UK will make its debut in two new competitions at next year’s global WorldSkills competition in Shanghai, China.

WorldSkills UK has announced the UK’s best and brightest will step up to the plate in the logistics and freight forwarding and software testing competitions at the 48th WorldSkills finals.

The skills charity also confirmed the UK will rejoin three competitions it had previously withdrawn from: cloud computing, bricklaying and graphic design technology. WorldSkills UK said these were added in response to increasing employer demand in these sectors.

The UK last competed internationally in bricklaying and cloud computing in 2019 at WorldSkills Kazan, Russia. Graphic design technology was last contested when London hosted WorldSkills in 2011.

The new competition in logistics and freight forwarding involves organising shipments of goods from the supplier or manufacturer to the point of distribution or final marketplace.

WorldSkills UK brings bricklaying back to global stage

Competitors can be assessed on their knowledge of different countries’ export and import regulations and quizzed on details of documents needed during the shipment process.

China and Singapore won joint gold in logistics and freight forwarding at WorldSkills Lyon last year.

Meanwhile, software testing is a new competition for WorldSkills Shanghai.

The contest will involve analysing software needs, creating test plans and cases, coding and writing reports.

The new competitions come with the backing of Pearson UK which has renewed its sponsorship of Team UK.

Ben Blackledge, chief executive of WorldSkills UK, said: “It is fantastic to be working with Pearson once again as we build up to the ‘skills Olympics’.

“Together we will showcase and celebrate the young people preparing to represent the UK at WorldSkills, demonstrating that technical education and apprenticeships can both change lives and drive economic growth.”

Freya Thomas Monk, managing director of Pearson Qualifications, said: “Pearson is proud to sponsor Team UK.

“Boosting the profile and prestige of technical and vocational education is incredibly important to us – it plays a crucial role in driving both personal success for learners as well as economic growth at a national level.”

Route to Shanghai

WorldSkills UK is currently picking talented young people to be part of Squad UK.

They will undergo training and pressure tests, the next being EuroSkills Herning in Denmark this September.

EuroSkills Herning is expected to bring together 600 young professionals to compete in 38 skills.

Team UK is then selected from the squad, to compete in 30 skills in Shanghai.

The UK came in 11th place for total medal points at WorldSkills Lyon last year out of the 60 participating countries, and 10th for average point score.

They brought home two silver medals and a bronze.

Following an appeal, the bronze medal – won by Luke Haile in refrigeration and air conditioning – was upgraded to a silver by the WorldSkills Board.

FE Week is the media partner for WorldSkills UK.

DfE: Funding ‘unprecedented’ extra students this year is ‘unaffordable’

The Department for Education has announced it can’t afford to fully fund “unprecedented” requests for in-year growth to cover this year’s rise in student numbers.

Instead, the department said it could only fund two-thirds of what colleges expected based on previously published guidance.

In an update this evening, the DfE said a “very large” increase in 16- to 19-year-olds in colleges this year is “positive” for young people but “significantly above the budget for in-year payments, so we cannot fully fund this growth.

“Because of the size and distribution of this growth in student numbers, it does create an unprecedented amount of in-year growth. We will fund all students through the lagged student number methodology in future allocations as normal. However, the current growth is significantly above the budget available for in-year payments, and so we cannot fully fund this growth.”

Officials use November data returns on student numbers to determine over-delivery against previously agreed allocations for funded student numbers.

For this year, a new step has been added to the way colleges calculate how much in-year growth they can claim called “the affordability factor”. This means once over-delivery has been calculated and any previous under-delivery removed, only two-thirds of the growth award can be claimed.

Institutions will be told their growth payments for this year by the end of March, ahead of payments starting in May

Colleges have been told not to assume these rules will apply to in-year growth for 2025-26 as no decisions have been made.

Raise the rate

Today’s announcement does however confirm a 3.78 per cent funding rate rise for 16- to- 19-year-old students, bringing the top funding rate for study programme students to £5,026.

This increase comes from the £300 million package announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in October’s budget.

Around £50 million of that has been committed to “one-off grants” to further education and sixth form colleges to help with pay awards this year from April to July.

The remaining funding has gone towards the rate increase for 2025-26.

Funding details for adult learners, and payments covering next month’s employer national insurance rise, have not yet been released.

The base rate increase applies to each study programme funding band, which is calculated using annual planned hours.

At the top end, for 16 and 17 year olds with 580+ planned hours, the base rate will increase from £4,843 to £5,026. This also applies to high needs students aged 18 and over. For student aged 18 and over who are not high needs, the rate will increase from £4,006 to £4,157.

Additional payments for disadvantaged students and care leavers will be frozen at current rates: £570 for bands 4 and 5 students and £772 for T Level students.

English and maths funding has also not changed.

T Levels uplift removed

A 10 per cent uplift on T Level funding applied for this year has not been applied for next year. DfE said it would “confirm the position” on the uplift “in due course”.

Today’s update confirms that the September 2024 intake of T Level onsite construction will be the last.

Funding for students on the T Levels in the legal services specialisms will be reduced for 2025-26. This is because it was previously “over-funded” and there was an error in previously calculated guided learning hours for the courses. They will attract £10,456 for the two year course rather than £12,060.

Funding for the new T Level in marketing, which begins teaching for the first time in September, has been confirmed at the lowest funding band, £10,456.

English and maths

Previously announced changes to the English and maths condition of funding have been confirmed.

These include the 100 hours over-the-year requirement, asking institutions for their “best efforts” to deliver an extra 35 hours of maths on top of that, and reducing the non-compliance tolerance threshold from 5 per cent in 2025-26.

College unfairly dismissed managers ‘pressured’ over provision for principal’s relative

Two college managers who were “pressured” to accommodate special provisions for a relative of the principal in an understaffed department were unfairly dismissed after “falling out of favour”, a tribunal has ruled.

A judgment published this week found in favour of two ex-staff members of the City of Liverpool College who felt they were forced to resign after facing significant pressures to make special arrangements for a relative of principal Elaine Bowker.

The three-year-long battle with the college resulted in a win for Stephanie Doyle and Kerry Dowd, who were employed as the head and deputy head of the college’s digital academy (DA) nearly four years ago.

The tribunal accepted the allegations that the principal expected the pair to give “preferential treatment” to her relative, who was enrolled on a course at the DA.

The staff members “fell out of favour” with Bowker who made “bespoke requests” on behalf of the student which were interpreted by staff as instructions from their principal.

College bosses later “put pressure” on Doyle and Dowd to resign after being suspended over alleged safeguarding concerns the tribunal found not to be genuine.

Doyle told FE Week she and Dowd were “relieved” but “traumatised” over the whole ordeal.

“I was asked to manage a school with a blindfold on and my hands tied behind my back. It felt very planned, and I could see what was happening.”

The claimants said they are seeking “substantial” compensation at a remedy hearing later this year.

In a statement, the college said “there were a number of inaccuracies” in the court’s judgment “linked to key information” and are taking advice for an appeal.

“As a result, the college is seeking legal support to help review and advise on next steps, which may include appointing counsel and submitting an official appeal.”

Bespoke provision for family member

The complaints against the college started in May 2021, when the college conducted a quality assurance visit to the DA, which found some areas for improvement as well as “complementary comments” about Doyle and Dowd’s performance as leaders.

The tribunal judgment also noted senior managers were aware of the DA was understaffed but did not approve hiring requests until after the 2021-22 academic year started.

Meanwhile, the college was cutting courses with low enrolment numbers. One course in scope to be cut was a level 3 coding programme, but this was retained even though it had one enrolment: a student who was a relative of Bowker.

Doyle was called into a meeting to discuss running the course, which the tribunal found would not have happened for other students in similar circumstances.

The two heads were instructed to continue the course and assigned one teacher to the principal’s relative, creating “bespoke provision”.

Bowker emailed the senior leadership from her college email account complaining about her relative’s experience in the DA, who was struggling on the course.

As a result, Doyle and Dowd found themselves “falling out of Ms Bowker’s favour”.

The tribunal also heard that no one in the senior leadership team was able to speak openly to Bowker about the DA’s staffing issues or the correct procedure for complaints.

The judge noted that the college’s witnesses during the hearing, including senior leadership and governors, were “unusually stressed” when giving evidence, visibly shaking, perspiring and flushing bright red.

“Witnesses may be nervous at the start of giving their evidence, but it is unusual for them to suddenly become visibly nervous in response to a particular line of questioning,” the ruling said.

Following Bowker’s intervention, a personalised timetable for one-to-one tuition was created for the student despite “chronic staff shortages”.

“We find that Ms Doyle did this as she understood that the consequences for her of falling out of favour with Ms Bowker would have been significant,” the judge said.

Doyle said: “It was heartbreaking because there were students with no teacher in front of them, and there was literally nothing I could do.”

Shortly after, the DA was subject to another “deep dive” quality visit and a proposed “curriculum transformation” which the judge accepted caused the two academy heads to feel “ever-increasing pressure” by senior leadership.

“We had an idea that we were being pushed out because the pressure was just coming in thick and fast,” Doyle added.

No evidence of ‘genuine’ safeguarding concerns

Doyle and Dowd were off sick from December 2021. In the new year, the college suspended the two women claiming to have found a “potential safeguarding concern”. They were suspended for alleged gross negligence over quality standards and inaccurate registers.

But the tribunal found no evidence of “genuine” safeguarding concerns as the college never took steps to “properly” investigate the matter.

“[The college] never genuinely believed that there was a real risk of safeguarding failures and that HR included this in the suspension letter in order to put pressure on the claimants to resign,” the report said.

The college’s HR department told the pair they would give them a clear employer reference excluding safeguarding breach if they resigned within 24 hours.

Both staff members resigned immediately as they said the safeguarding threat would not allow them to get a job in education again.

A spokesperson for the college said: “The safety and well-being of all students is of paramount importance at The City of Liverpool College. The college takes great pride in providing effective, secure, and high-quality learning environments for thousands of students who choose to learn and develop here. The college takes its governance and duty of care very seriously, as evidenced by a positive Ofsted inspection in 2024.

“In relation to the recent legal case, a potential safeguarding issue regarding the falsification of an attendance register was identified, logged and subsequently, investigated.

“The college takes such claims very seriously; registers are legal, auditable records used to evidence attendance and support student welfare.

“The falsification of this official documentation was deemed as a potential safeguarding issue and as such, the college’s HR processes and procedures were subsequently duly followed.”

Third ‘outstanding’ for London Catholic sixth form college

A London-based catholic sixth form college has received its third grade one rating from Ofsted for “outstanding” exam results and pushing students to achieve “far beyond” the basics.

St Dominic’s Sixth Form College was awarded top marks in all categories for the third time in a report published today after landing the accolade in 2022 and 2008.

The beaming report found the college’s ambitious curriculum results in “outstanding” outcomes in exams, leading to most students continuing to university.

St Dominic’s in Harrow, north-west London is a Roman Catholic designated college. During its January 14 to 17 inspection, the college had 1,475 students enrolled mostly on A-Level courses. Fewer than 10 students with high needs were enrolled at the college.

Inspectors said students flourish in a college community where differences are “celebrated” while practicing the Christian ethos of care, kindness and integrity.

Students from a range of backgrounds, including from LGBTQ+ communities, feel “welcomed and accepted for who they are” from day one at college, inspectors found.

The report also said many students achieve grade B or better in their A-level examinations and progress to the university or job of their choice.

Inspectors were impressed with the ambitious curriculum that demonstrates the college’s “high expectations and vision” for all students to achieve their highest potential.

“They ensure students take advantage of outstanding opportunities to expand their knowledge far beyond the basics of their qualifications,” the report said.

Andrew Parkin, principal of St Dominic’s, told FE Week he was delighted by the news.

“I’m very, very proud of the students and I’m very proud of my staff. I have a superb staff team, and I couldn’t want anything better from them.”

Parkin added: “We’ve got really strong teaching, and the students work hard. The students are really committed to their own academic development, and they’re ambitious. There’s an element of competition among them, which helps them.”

Students are also encouraged to take part in external competitions and practice their skills in group projects, such as mock trials for A-level law students.

“This enables students to develop important skills they need for future employment such as oracy, critical thinking, confidence and working collaboratively,” inspectors said.

As a result, students are “fully prepared” for university or apprenticeships that they progress onto.

Ofsted also found the college made a “strong” contribution to meeting local skills needs.

They said St Dominic’s established “meaningful and highly effective” relationships with West London Business, North West London Chamber of Commerce and neighbouring education organisations.

The college involves stakeholders in workshops and workplace projects, helping students to develop skills needed by employers.

For learners with special educational needs, the watchdog found the college provides “outstanding support” to them.

High needs learners are very involved in the college community as well. They manage the college’s popular law society, which helps them to develop friendships with others who have similar interests.

Ofsted praised the college for instilling confidence in students with high needs and noted they were prepared for their next steps in education or employment.

The inspectorate also found “exceptional” oversight of the provision from leaders and managers, who use data effectively to spot low performing areas. Governors were also found to provide leaders with “excellent support and challenge”.

There’s no simple answer to trainer shortages, so don’t seek one

There’s no universal cure for the construction trainer and assessor shortage we’re experiencing. I really wish there was, and I bet I’m not alone there.

The challenge is complex, with sticky issues like pay and working conditions in construction and education.

You might have a picture in your head of what a construction trainer is, where they work and what they do for a living – but that image is probably different to mine.

The variety of sector specialisms and qualifications makes generalised observations about the problem and potential solutions unhelpful. To solve the challenge, we first need to understand it.

A training provider’s ability to overcome the problem also varies. Some larger commercial providers are better able to offer competitive wages or flexible forms of employment. Construction firms with a training arm may be better placed to identify candidates from their own workforce who may make suitable trainers. Micro providers likely face similar recruitment challenges to micro construction companies, such as reaching the best candidates and ensuring profitability.

If we accept there is no cure-all solution, we need to stop looking for one and begin breaking the problem down into manageable pieces.

Here are three pieces we’re considering at CITB:

Making it easier for people at different stages of their career to become trainers or assessors

The role of older construction workers embarking on a second career is, quite rightly, considered of paramount importance. However, often a second career is shorter than the first. Helping the right skilled people make a change earlier on in their career offers a whole host of benefits.

Action Sustainability’s diversity benchmarking survey indicates a peak in construction workers leaving the industry aged 25–34. Typically, this isn’t the age group that comes to mind when we think about recruiting trainers and assessors, but it could be an area of untapped potential.

Many of these people will have started their construction career in their teenage years, meaning they could be looking for a change of career but still have over a decade of construction experience. If we are losing them from construction, can we make a transition to education easier? This will be an area we explore more closely at CITB this year.

Fostering greater industry collaboration to prevent short-termism

Trying to find a trainer can lead to short-term periods of panic – someone has resigned and you have to replace them. These short-term problems can suck up time and resources, but it’s important to have an eye on long-term solutions and collaborations that may help. Building recruitment pipelines from industry takes time, as does training up a great teacher.

There are some fantastic examples of collaborative partnerships between construction companies and training providers. CITB can invest up to £500,000 through the industry impact fund for innovative collaborations led by employers that address any aspect of the trainer and assessor challenge.

CITB will be trialling approaches to build construction employer and provider collaborations this year and next, exploring how this can drive improvements in a learner’s experience and potentially bridge teaching shortages.

We must retain and support existing trainers and assessors

Lastly, we must not forget the construction trainer and assessors we already have. Supporting them to stay in education is vital. Providers themselves, and of course the government, will play an important part in this.

There is a role for CITB to support continuous professional development and keep the conversation going on this issue with providers, representative bodies and awarding bodies.

Ultimately, without more trainers and assessors, we will struggle to train the number of people we need to join the construction industry.

By making it easier for more construction workers to make a switch at any point in their careers, building collaborations between construction and education and looking after the trainers and assessors we already have, we can make serious inroads.

AI and data security – let’s worry about the right things

Do AI chatbots learn from everything we enter? That’s probably the most common question I’m asked when it comes to AI and data security.

I can see the logic in asking this. Because AI chatbots talk to us in a human-like way, it’s easy to assume that they also learn in a human-like way. There’s also a tendency to assume that, just like a human, not only might they learn from a conversation, but they are probably awful at keeping secrets and might well share the information they have learnt with many other users.

Why does this matter? Because I think it’s driving how we approach AI and security, with people often focusing too much on the very limited risks around AI models and training data, and not enough on other, more pressing AI security issues, such as the overall security of the tools they are using.

At one end of the spectrum this is causing users to think any system is safe if it says it’s not using interactions for training, and at the other end, leading to the idea that developing in-house solutions to avoid data being used for training is the most effective way to get a secure AI system.

AI and training data

To understand this, it’s good to think a little more about the data involved. The data used to train large language models is typically scraped from the internet, is licensed from big media companies, or includes books obtained by potentially unethical means. As an aside, that means any data we intentionally or otherwise make available on the internet could be used to train AI models – it’s not just about interactions with AI tools.

Language models are trained infrequently, as each training run can cost millions of pounds. Their model isn’t updated as we use them.

As these are language models, the companies behind them are looking for high-quality texts, so things we tend to type into AI tools generally aren’t useful as training data. They are random chats, fragments of text, etc.

The companies will ask for permission to use our data in the terms and conditions primarily to understand how we use the tool, to help them improve its overall performance.

But even if our text did find its way into the training set, the chance of it being output by the model is close to zero. That’s because the size of the training set is vast—typically 10 trillion words. To put this into context, if you started reading it today, it would take over 120,000 years to read it all! (and yes, I should confess, ChatGPT helped me work that out).

Language models aren’t knowledge models, so they can’t look things up from the training set. Instead, each extra bit of data has a tiny, tiny impact on the overall output, which, in the end, is just a text prediction. It’s partly why we don’t see lots of personal data revealed by tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini.

Data security

So, does that mean we don’t need to worry about using AI tools at all from a security perspective? Absolutely not!

Legally we must prevent our staff and students’ private data from being used for purposes other than those necessary and contractually agreed. But we also need to understand what the actual risks are, and it’s much more about general data security.

The biggest risks are actually around data being poorly secured or shared with other third parties. Only a few weeks ago security researchers found a basic security flaw that meant anyone could access Chinese chatbot DeepSeek’s database and view all the chat history.

It’s tempting perhaps, to think the best way to get secure AI is to create or host your own solutions. But securing software is really hard! And don’t forget, our word processors and spreadsheets, for example, handle our most sensitive data, but we don’t build or host our own in-house versions of them. We manage the risks through contracts, user training, policies and technical controls.

So, what’s the best approach to using AI safely and securely? It’s simple. Don’t think of AI systems as gossipy friends eager to spill your secrets. Instead, treat them like any other IT system—where security and contracts matter most.

Contracts are key, and if you only take away one thing from reading this it should be to use AI systems with a robust agreement in place, ensuring responsible and secure data handling.

Mayor launches £100 per week payments for net zero students

Weekly payments of £100 have been made available to over 100 students in the north east to incentivise in net zero skills courses.

A £1 million ‘net zero industry scholarship’ has been launched by Tees Valley Combined Authority. It will offer term-time weekly payments of £100 to up to 141 students who train in industrial skills at local colleges and training providers from September.

Funding will be available to students aged 16 or above who study priority skills, including welding, instrumentation, pipefitting, electrical engineering and civil operations.

Adult learners looking to change careers or upskill are also encouraged to apply.

The scholarship, which is initially funded for one year, is financed by businesses Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) and Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) and is being promoted and coordinated by Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA), which has devolved control of adult skills policy locally.

Last year, Basildon Council announced an “education essentials grant” funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that will pay £360 to up to 360 students to help them stay in further education.

Mark Lewis, NZT Power and NEP construction manager, said: “Construction of Net Zero Teesside Power and the Northern Endurance Partnership will require thousands of skilled workers.

“Along with our construction partner Balfour Beatty, we have worked closely with local colleges across the Tees Valley to design a net zero industry scholarship which will equip people from the region with the skills needed to secure the roles that are urgently required to drive the energy transition”.

The businesses are owned by a consortium of global gas corporations, including Equinor, BP and Shell, and are focused on exploiting new carbon dioxide “capture” technology.

Net Zero Teesside Power claims to be the “world’s first commercial scale gas-fired power station” that will capture carbon emissions and pump them into former oil and gasfields beneath the bed of the North Sea.

Northern Endurance Partnership will build and run the carbon capture, transport and storage technology.

Local training providers involved in the scheme include Education Training Collective, Redcar and Cleveland College, NETA Training Group, Middlesbrough College, Hartlepool College of Further Education and Darlington College.

Each has a limited number of scholarships available per subject. For example, there are 36 available at Middlesbrough College; 24 for instrument tech and 12 for electrical.

Zoe Lewis, principal and CEO of Middlesbrough College, told the BBC the scholarships have “created quite a buzz” towards “rapidly expanding number of opportunities in the renewable and low-carbon energy sector right on their doorstep”.

Students have to apply for scholarships directly with their training provider.

Mayor of TVCA Ben Houchen said: “With billions of pounds of investment coming into our clean energy industry, we need a workforce that is ready to meet demand.

“The Tees Valley industry scholarship will give people the training and support they need to secure well-paid, high-quality jobs right here on their doorstep.”