I wish FE offered a broader range of subjects to study

Students should be able to study what interests them, instead of the subjects the system prefers them to pursue, writes Aaliyah Kennedy

Further education is a huge player in so many lives. Every young person must stay in education or training until they are 18 years old, and what they do here contributes hugely to what they may progress to.   

I have a confession. I long for there to be more choice of subjects in FE. As a former FE student, I know that a large breadth of options allows future generations like mine to widen their experience and minds.  

A broad choice of courses allows learners to explore who they want to be, rather than what the system wants them to be.

But sometimes students like me aren’t able to continue studying a modern foreign language at college, or can’t access the international baccalaureate, which I was lucky enough to do but isn’t widely available in FE. 

I think the limit on subjects is partly due to government cuts. Funding per student aged 16 to 18 fell by 14 per cent in real terms between 2010 and 2019. Even with the money announced at the recent spending review, college spending per student in 2024 will still be around ten per cent lower than in 2010.  

Only since 2020/21 has the rate increased to £4,188 for full-time students. But this is not enough. The Association of School and College Leaders is calling for the funding rate to be increased to at least £4,760 per student so that it is in line with inflation. For 16- and 17-year-olds, it is due to rise to £4,542 from August.

I’m on a mission to improve education across England with my campaign called Reshaping OUR Education. We completely agree with ASCL’s statement.   

For myself, I think proper funding would allow FE institutions to offer more of the subjects I would like to have learned. For me, this included French and law, which weren’t on offer at my college. 

I could have developed my French from GCSE, alongside my other college courses which were an international baccalaureate in global politics and also in history, a WJEC diploma in criminology and a BTEC in business. The availability of French especially would have allowed me to develop more of my interests before considering higher education. 

I couldn’t continue French at my college  

From my personal experience, the international baccalaureate is amazing. It contributed to the confidence, resilience and skills I now have. I did the international baccalaureate careers-related program (IBCP), and there is also the IB diploma programme and partial IB. 

The IB allows you to explore a subject in real depth and prepares you for life post-18. It includes aspects that fit well with further education; for example, I learnt how to work independently and as a team through project work and charity events. 

In terms of studying a subject further, the global politics IB especially helps you understand the real world better. Whereas the normal A-level politics focuses more on British politics, this was a much broader curriculum of the study of power and sovereignty which is more applicable to the international world we live in. 

You also deliver a project on an issue that you care about, which is where Reshaping OUR Education stemmed from! This was the engagement activity in the IB that takes students outside of the classroom.  

I wish more FE colleges offered the IB, and I wish I’d been able to study French and law at college too. It would have connected my courses closer together and it might have made me consider a career as a human rights lawyer. 

More FE colleges should consider the IB as a model as it opens up pathways for learners. I know that Bridgwater & Taunton College in Somerset offers the IB; but not many colleges offer it in comparison to the total number of colleges. 

Cuts have meant many FE institutions have been unable to provide more of a variety of courses, or in some cases courses have also been withdrawn.   

I really hope that in future more FE colleges can offer a wide and diverse set of subjects.

We must dispel the image of a male coder sitting in a dark room all night

A career in tech isn’t all about coding – there are multiple other roles for young people too, writes Sukvinder Kathuria

I am proud to say that I teach a diverse group of skilled people. Among my college students are young adults who are also holding down jobs, who are carers, young mothers and adults who may think mainstream education is not for them. 

But there is still lots more to be done to get more women and people from minority backgrounds into careers in technology, my specialist area of expertise. This issue is especially relevant, with the announcement just before Christmas of new skills bootcamps, many of which focus on digital skills.  

On December 22 we were told four new areas will have access to the bootcamps: Lancashire, Hull and East Yorkshire, Tees Valley and North of Tyne. The prime minister has previously said the bootcamps are “where you can learn IT, whatever your age”. 

However, we also know from FE Week’s reporting a year ago that many of the skills bootcamps were dominated by men, and the government’s equalities impact assessment had lots of recommendations to bring in more female and minority ethnic learners. 

So how can the gender imbalance be changed?  

Well, we must first dispel the idea of what a career in digital looks like. You don’t need to sit in a dark room all night every night coding, be male, and wear glasses, a checked shirt and jeans in order to work in technology. People in tech come from all walks of life.  

One student I worked with even changed her A-levels to STEM subjects after being inspired to follow a career in tech and is currently completing an apprenticeship in a well-known multinational professional services company.

We also need to challenge the perception that tech is just about coding. I would argue that isn’t true: there are many roles in tech that don’t require coding as a skill. This includes helping with digital transformation within a company, product design and project management roles. Junior level salaries within these roles can reach close to £30,000.

Instead, we need to make it clear to students that projects start at a conceptual level, and that this requires creative thinking, teamwork, the ability to meet deadlines and other transferable skills.

The tech industry is a fast-moving and exciting place to be, where your thinking skills are as important – if not more important – as your technical skills at the outset.

Your thinking skills are as important – if not more – than your technical skills

Just like any other industry, if you are committed, you can succeed in this space.  

To increase the number of women entering the industry, we cannot wait for people to come to us. Community within the industry is vitally important.

For those who have been successful in the industry, it is so important that they help those just starting out. I can say first-hand that companies are reaching out to diversify and support women and girls to begin their journey and stay in the technology pipeline.

Meanwhile, colleges like ours must continue making a concerted effort to engage people in all communities to give them opportunities in technology. The college prides itself on engaging people from under-represented and diverse backgrounds. The companies we work with share our mission to improve representation within tech roles.

To those who think it always will be like this, think of pioneers such as English mathematician Ada Lovelace, and computer and rocket scientist Annie Easley.

Or electrical engineer Kimberly Bryant, founder of Black Girls CODE; Reshma Saujani, founder of Girls Who Code; and finally Liane Agbi, CEO and founder of lifestyle website BAUCE.

They each took the opportunity to work in technology and flourished. There are more to come, and I cannot wait to add more names to this list.

There is a talent pool of diverse young digital-savvy individuals out there. If they cannot make it in technology, we as a sector have failed them.

First chief of freshly merged City of Portsmouth College

City of Portsmouth College has announced Katy Quinn as its first permanent principal and chief executive.

Quinn will join the college this summer from Strode College in Somerset, where she has served as principal since 2017.

City of Portsmouth College formed in August 2021 from a merger between Highbury College and Portsmouth College. It is currently being led by interim chief executive Graham Morley.

“City of Portsmouth College is a remarkable organisation, with many unique strengths, a big heart and a fantastic future,” Morley said, adding: “I am delighted that Katy will be leading the college on the next phase of its journey.”

This role will see Quinn return to college leadership in the south-east, having held senior roles at Eastleigh College and Canterbury College prior to Strode.

“I am very excited to be joining City of Portsmouth College at the dawn of a new era. I can’t wait to get started and work with students, staff and governors as together we strive to make the City of Portsmouth College one of the best FE colleges in the country,” she said.

In addition to her college role, Quinn is also a trustee at the awarding organisation VTCT, a member of the AoC’s curriculum development policy group and the Heart of the South West LEP’s skills advisory panel.

Chair of governors, Paul Quigley, said that Quinn’s “wide-ranging skills, experience and enthusiasm for further education were evident to us all and will prove invaluable to drive our ambitious plans during this exciting period of development, building on the enormous progress that has been made so far”.

For this academic year, Highbury and Portsmouth will continue to operate under their separate identities but will come together under one brand in September 2022.

On the recommendation of the FE Commissioner following historic leadership and governance issues, Highbury College has been in ‘supervised status’ since November 2019.

However, recent board minutes state that the Education and Skills Funding Agency no longer believes it is necessary to attend the college’s corporation meetings as “they believe the college now has a strong board and an effective management team”.

Why the delay to mental health teams reaching all colleges?

Colleges are reporting more suicides and eating disorders – they need better support now, writes Richard Caulfield

Over a year ago we published our mental health survey, with stark results. Now, all the feedback we have from the first term of 2021-22 is that the challenge is increasing. It’s driven by more learners presenting with mental health problems and the complexity of the issues they are facing. 

Anecdotally we are hearing from a number of colleges that more students are attempting suicide, and that eating disorders are on the rise. The NHS is now struggling to meet demand for eating disorder services.   

With over 190 colleges signed up to the AoC mental health charter there is strong commitment within the sector to support the mental health and wellbeing of learners and staff.

But there is a limit to the resource that colleges can allocate to deal with the volume of issues, and a limit to employing enough staff with the expertise to support the most complex needs. 

Mental health and wellbeing in FE supplementDownload

Many colleges have been extremely positive about the rollout of the government’s mental health support teams and the work driven by the Transforming children and young people’s mental health provision green paper.   

Colleges such as South Thames College group have been quick to praise the partnership and support from the trailblazer. But this support will only reach 35 per cent of schools and colleges under the current plans. What does this mean for the 65 per cent of settings who miss out?  

We need to ensure all settings have access to these additional resources.  

Other areas have focused on further education too. In Greater Manchester, where health monies are devolved, there has been a significant investment in mental health over the past three years, allowing colleges to develop services to test new ideas.   

In the first year of the project, Hopwood Hall and Bolton College both set about becoming trauma-informed colleges. Another six have now started to implement a trauma-informed approach, including the specialist college, Bridge College. The feedback has been hugely positive.  

Other work has included a successful partnership with the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapists (BACP) to develop a programme of training in supervision skills. This is so that staff dealing with the growing number of safeguarding issues can be supported appropriately. 

What about the 65% of settings missing out?

Of course, prevention is better than cure and colleges are increasingly looking for support that can help students and staff to manage their own mental health and wellbeing too, as well as support services. 

I am looking forward to seeing what we can learn from tools such as the Fika app (which supports student mental fitness) that many colleges, supported by NCFE, have been implementing this year. Like other initiatives, it will not be a golden bullet, rather another tool in the box for colleges to utilise. 

We are also seeing a growing interest in social prescribing, which is where individuals are referred to social support in the community, rather than, or alongside, medical intervention. The Office for Students has recently funded a social prescribing project in Merseyside and Lancashire, and several other colleges are going down this route with local partners.

There is also synergy with this approach with Good For Me, Good For FE, the volunteering projectled by London South East Colleges, Loughborough College and East Coast College, aiming to boost mental health. This has huge potential if we can increase engagement from NHS-funded link workers with colleges. 

Capacity remains the biggest challenge. Through AoC, we can help colleges access lots of support from the Charlie Waller Trust and elsewhere. However, many of the initiatives I’ve mentioned cannot be implemented without the capacity.  

As we begin 2022, and government and policymakers plan the next phases of education recovery, mental health support must be at the heart of any post-16 strategy. Colleges must be funded to provide the support students and staff deserve and need.

BTEC students nearly twice as likely to drop out of university, report finds

Researchers have called for more tailored support for students with BTECs at university as a new study finds that they are almost twice as likely to drop out than undergraduates with A-levels. 

The study, published on Wednesday, also found that while 60 per cent of graduating BTEC students complete their university studies with a least a 2:1, they were typically 1.4 times less likely to do so than A-level students. 

Funded by education charity the Nuffield Foundation, the report, titled Educational choices at 16-19 and university outcomes looked at how students’ backgrounds, entry qualifications and entry subjects impacted on their educational experience at university. 

It is hoped, the Nuffield Foundation says, that a better understanding of the differences in the experiences of students with BTECs and A-levels will reduce educational disadvantages faced by students from lower socio-economic groups while at university. 

Researchers found that even after accounting for a “rich set” of demographic and prior attainment data, the likelihood of a BTEC student dropping out of university was 11.4 per cent, compared to six per cent for a similar A-level student. 

As well as looking at who dropped out of university, the study also looked at the entry qualifications of students who repeated their first year. While fewer students repeat than drop out (just 4.3 per cent probability overall, compared to eight per cent), researchers found a similar pattern. Student with BTECs were found to be 1.7 times more likely to repeat their first year than those with A-levels.

Despite BTECs being accepted university entry qualifications for some time, and millions of pounds having been invested in widening participation, researchers report that students with BTECs have a 24.9 per cent chance at achieving a degree classification below 2:1, compared to 17.7 per cent for A-level students. That gap is larger for students at the lower socio-economic levels.

Drop-out rates are low in the UK compared to other countries, as is the number of students who repeat their first year. The report also highlights that BTECs are a highly effective route to a degree for students from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Cohorts of students that researchers studied for this work pre-dated reformed BTECs. This means that it is not known what those performance gaps would look like for more recent generations of undergraduates, who would have experienced more external assessment as part of their BTEC.

Differences found in academic performance while at university, explored by using results of modules, are believed to be a big part of the explanation for the differences in the educational experience of university students arriving with BTECs compared to those with A-levels.

The report states “for the one university for which we have data on assessment method by first year module, we find that the performance gap between students with A-levels and BTECs is larger for modules assessed as least in part by written examination, compared with modules assessed by coursework only”.

Schools, colleges and universities should be more mindful of the differences between A-level and BTEC teaching and assessment when giving advice about post-18 options, the report argues. Further, tailoring courses to try and close these gaps, which disproportionately affect students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, rather than just focussing on recruiting them, should be integral to universities’ widening participation. 

The report’s findings provide some challenge to the government’s current approach to level 3 qualifications reform, the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA) has said. James Kewin, deputy chief executive at the SFCA, told FE Week: “This welcome research from the Nuffield Foundation shows that the vast majority complete their studies and most graduate with at least a 2:1. The report provides further evidence that scrapping the majority of BTEC qualifications will stop many disadvantaged young people from progressing to university in the future – a key concern of the Protect Student Choice coalition.  

“If ministers are serious about making evidence-based decisions on the future of these qualifications, they should respond to the concerns set out in this report by pausing the defunding process until data on reformed BTECs is available and then look at the evidence in the round, rather than focusing exclusively on comparing outcomes between A-level and BTEC students.”

Remove the universal credit rules blocking people from education

‘Conditionality’ rules are forcing people to give up their training courses, writes Peter Aldous

Like all MPs, I am regularly contacted by constituents struggling to access the training they need to secure fulfilling and meaningful work. I also speak to employers about the severe skills shortages they face in key areas across the local economy. This is replicated nationally and finding a solution is central to levelling up.

Resolving this issue is complicated and something that governments of all stripes have tried to answer.

There is one area where further education colleges play a key role ̶ supporting unemployed people to train and retrain.

Modest changes to the way the current welfare system operates provide the opportunity to make access to this support from colleges much easier and fairer. I and many other MPs support these changes.

For many, the key obstacle they face is the rigid and complex rules around studying and claiming universal credit at the same time. As those who work in colleges know all too well, recipients of universal credit considered able to work face strict requirements, known as ‘conditionality’.

Typically, they must spend up to 35 hours per week looking for work, provide evidence of their work search to their Jobcentre Plus work coach and be available to meet with them and attend interviews.

Claimants must also be prepared to give up their training course if they are offered suitable work.

This leaves many in a Catch-22 situation, where they may secure employment in the short term, but are prevented from developing skills that would allow them to get into higher quality, more stable and better-paid employment.

Claimants are left in a Catch-22 situation

The high employment rate in the 2010s should not disguise the fact that some people have moved from job to job with little chance to train or retrain for more meaningful and sustainable employment with prospects for progression.

Most claimants have a certain number of hours they can study per week and are typically limited to 12 weeks of full-time education and training (with 16 weeks for skills bootcamps), which restricts the options available. Extension to the amount of study time is at the discretion of work coaches, leaving scope for inconsistency and unfairness.

Claimants can be required to take part in Department for Work and Pensions’ courses that take them out of college courses. Otherwise, they risk sacrificing payments.

I welcome the steps the government has taken to address the disjointed education and welfare policies in recent years, including skills bootcamps. But unfortunately these are too temporary, creating instability and complexity in the system. This is challenging for people, some of whom already have educational disadvantages, and for colleges to navigate.

At the meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on further education and lifelong learning last summer, we heard about the important role that colleges play in supporting unemployed people into work through working with the local Jobcentre Plus (as captured in the Association of Colleges’ Let Them Learn report).

To empower colleges to do even more, the report called for the government to reform universal credit rules, removing existing barriers. I wrote to the-then skills minister Gillian Keegan, alongside a cross-party group of parliamentarians, encouraging her to take action.

The Skills Bill currently progressing through parliament is a unique opportunity for the government to commit to reviewing conditionality rules.

A review would enable a better understanding of the barriers to training that claimants are facing. It could show where flexibilities are needed in pursuit of a benefits system that encourages, not prohibits, education and training.

I intend to bring forward an amendment to the bill that would bring about this review with support from MPs across the House. While it may not make it on to the face of the bill, I’m confident that a constructive dialogue with government has been established and positive steps forward can be made.

The cost of taking no action will ultimately be fewer people in stable and meaningful employment, slower economic growth and bigger tax burdens.

Omicron: January exams start smoothly despite staff shortages

College staff absences have spiked since the start of term, but despite the shortages, there appears to have been no major disruption to January exams.

Where challenges have arisen, staff are working extra hours, with managers stepping in to help invigilate vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs) this month. 

Some colleges believe there should be an additional exam series in March to help those learners having to defer tests until the summer due to catching Covid.

The Department for Education’s latest attendance survey data estimates that one in 25, or four per cent, of FE college teachers and leaders were off on January 6 because of Covid. The figure for support and other staff sat at 3.4 per cent. 

This is up from 1.6 per cent of teachers and leaders and 1.2 per cent of other staff on December 15, increases of 150 per cent and 183 per cent respectively.

Geoff Barton, leader of the Association of School and College Leaders, said “any hope” the Christmas holidays would act as a firebreak for schools and colleges “have evaporated”.

“The challenges posed by having so many staff absent will continue to put schools and colleges under severe pressure.”

It comes as about 300,000 learners sit exams each January, with exam boards having flexibility to bring in adaptations this year because of Covid disruption. 

FE Week approached ten of the largest colleges to ask whether they had faced problems and how they worked to overcome them. Of those who responded, four said plans were going smoothly.

However, Stuart Rimmer, chief executive at East Coast College, said their usual bank of invigilators had shrunk for the 1,500 VTQ exams they’re putting on this month. This was in part due to current Covid rates, but also because of staff retiring or taking extra precautions against infection. 

He said: “The staff have been absolutely amazing, whether that’s short-term cover work or doing extra hours or working on days they wouldn’t normally or stepping in to invigilate. We’ve had to deploy teachers and managers to invigilate some of these exams.” 

Earlier this week, nearly 40 out of 550 staff (seven per cent) were absent, with 25 of these testing positive for Covid, Rimmer added.

Ofqual’s framework this year allows exam boards to make adaptations to take into account the disruption students have faced. But it’s up to each awarding organisation to make its own choice. 

Pearson, for example, has extended the assessment window and delayed the start of the series by a week, to allow more time for teaching. 

HCUC, in Uxbridge, said its 4,825 January exams are a “major logistical challenge” and had created “emergency invigilation schedules” due to staff absences. 

A spokesperson said this schedule extends to senior management as well as external invigilators, which has extra costs and training time implications. 

The college’s usual staff absence rate at this time of year (five per cent) has risen to 18 per cent because of sickness and self-isolation. A spokesperson commended all teams for their “commitment and creativity”. 

However, a spokesperson said a March 2022 re-sit series should take place before the summer to prevent potential student disadvantage if they have had to isolate this January. 

A spokesperson added: “Without a March exam sitting, students will only have a June sitting and no re-sit opportunity. Many are on a one-year programme and cannot defer exam re-sits to a second year.”

Meanwhile, independent training providers’ January exams appear to be largely unscathed, although their staff absence rates are not published by the DfE.

Simon Ashton, an assistant principal with Nacro, said it has fewer than 50 students taking exams, with only one deferral to the summer so far. But the staff absences are hitting its day-to-day operations, such as not being able to run some practical classes because there are not enough supervisors. Several of its 14 sites had staff levels of below 50 per cent over the last month. 

“We’ve had to be resilient and make the best of it,” Ashton said. “We’ve had to combine classes, and managers have had to step in to help run classes to ensure learners still get a face-to-face session.

“But, for example, in motor vehicle classes, we’ve had to move to more theory-based work with the staff that we’ve got.” 

There will be a focus on practical catch-up as part of the government’s 16-to-19 tuition fund, he added.

Confused and frustrated: Most universities reject first cohort of T Level students

Less than half of all UK universities have confirmed they will accept T Levels for entry this year – with most Russell Group members turning their backs on the new technical qualifications.

An FE Week investigation has also found many universities still yet to decide whether to accept T Levels despite there being less than two weeks before the UCAS deadline for 2022 admissions.

The first T Level students – who study either digital, construction or education and childcare – began their two-year course in September 2020 and will be deciding their next steps now. 

While T Levels were designed so that students can enter work straight after completing their course, ministers have repeatedly made clear that the courses are still a viable entry route into university.

One parent of a T Level student who spoke to FE Week slammed the “disconnect” between the government and universities after spending months scrambling to find higher education institutions that might accept her son, with no clear way of identifying them.

The Department for Education said universities are independent of government and it is for them to set entry requirements, but urged them to offer prospective students “transparent information about their entry requirements” as soon as possible.

DfE finally publishes list of unis that will accept T Levels

On December 17 – the last day of term for most colleges – the DfE published a list of higher education institutions that had confirmed T Levels were suitable for at least one of their courses. 

Eighty were listed, of which 66 were traditional universities. There are 140 universities in the UK, meaning just 47 per cent currently accept students who have studied T Levels.

The new technical qualifications are equivalent to three A-levels and have UCAS tariff points allocated to them.

Ten of the 24 universities in the elite Russell Group are so far not accepting T Levels.

The University of Oxford told FE Week that T Levels alone “are unlikely to satisfy the requirements for entry, as they are technical qualifications, while all degree courses at Oxford are highly academic”. Cambridge University said the three initial T Level subjects “would not be a natural fit” with any of their degrees.

Some universities, such as Imperial College London, said they will wait until T Levels are rolled out further before determining whether students studying them are academically able to cope with their courses.

Others, including the likes of Leicester and Loughborough, told FE Week they have still not decided whether to consider T Levels as entry criteria.

Nick Hillman, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute think tank, said universities legally have autonomy over who they admit but pressed that it is vital that there is clarity about how they treat applicants. “Where universities are already clear that T Levels are unlikely to provide effective preparation for a specific course, they should make this really clear,” he said. “Otherwise, disadvantaged students in particular are likely to continue lagging behind middle-class students when it comes to entering highly selective institutions.”

Universities UK, which represents the country’s 140 universities, said it expects to see T Level acceptance increase within the sector as the number of subject areas expands “to give learners the opportunities and flexibility they deserve”.

The DfE’s list doesn’t even include details of which courses T Levels are accepted as entry criteria. Instead, it encourages students to “look at UCAS and at their preferred higher education provider’s website for more information on entry requirements”.

‘I’ve been really struggling to get a clear answer’

Annie Dorrington’s son Niall is in his second year of digital, design production and development T Level and she began helping him search for university opportunities at the start of the 2021 autumn term.

She said it was a confusing and frustrating time as most universities failed to advertise whether or not they accepted T Levels as entry criteria, while others had still not made up their mind.

Most shocking to Dorrington was that some universities said they would only accept her son if he also had an A-level in maths, despite the T Level effectively being a nine-to-five course.

She criticised the government for not publishing a list of universities that would accept T Levels sooner, explaining that it was released after the timeframe for university open days. “It seems to me that the DfE thought it was enough to give T Levels UCAS points and leave it at that,” she told FE Week.

“I work at a university and know my way around the admissions process but even I’ve been really struggling to get a clear answer in most cases.”

Dorrington, who described the T Level course as “fantastic”, said she knew from the get-go that there would be some universities who would not be interested in students with T Levels but did not expect the process to be so difficult: “I was expecting there to be a list of universities accepting T Levels much earlier. The college didn’t have that, nor did the government.”

Around 1,300 students studied the first three T Levels in 2020 and a further 5,450 signed up in 2021, with a total of ten subjects now on offer at over 100 colleges and schools.

A DfE spokesperson said the government expects the number of universities offering T Levels “to grow in the coming weeks”.

Owner of defunct provider involved in £20m subcontracting scandal declares bankruptcy

The boss of a defunct training provider has declared bankruptcy as the government seeks to reclaim over £20 million from his firm following a subcontracting scandal.

SCL Security Ltd, founded and run by Andrew Merritt, went insolvent in October 2020 after the Education and Skills Funding Agency kicked the company out of the apprenticeship market.

The decision followed an audit, prompted by several FE Week investigations, which found apprenticeship funding was being used to pay the wages for the 16-to-18-year-olds, which is strictly against the funding rules.

A liquidators’ statement for SCL Security was published this week and revealed its debts have ballooned seven-fold over the past year, from an initial £3.85 million to £26.3 million.

The uplift in claims “predominantly relates to claims arising as a result of the ESFA review in respect of monies paid by a number of colleges and agencies”, the report said.

Brooklands College subcontracted out more than £20 million to SCL Security over a three-year period and had faced having to repay a similar sum to the ESFA following the agency’s investigation into SCL Security, as it was the prime provider responsible for the funding.

It is not clear whether the agency has now agreed to pass the repayment on to SCL Security, or whether it is seeking similar clawback from both providers.

The ESFA refused to comment on the investigation.

Christine Ricketts, principal of Brooklands College, said she could not comment on the clawback or SCL Security investigation but told FE Week her college “continues as a going concern” and has benefited from a “recent increase in recruitment and improved financial performance”.

The college is “well advanced in discussions to resolve outstanding issues” and expects to publish its much-delayed accounts for 2019 and 2020 before the end of this financial year, Ricketts added.

Merritt, who took a director’s loan of over £8 million from SCL Security, “decided he had no alternative” but to file for bankruptcy, which was granted in July 2021, the liquidators’ statement states.

His main asset was a property owned jointly between him and SCL Security’s other director, Kym Rowe. The property is currently on the market and any proposal for repayment would be funded by way of the sales proceeds.

The joint liquidators, Phil Deyes and Anthony Milnes from Leonard Curtis Business Rescue and Recovery, have submitted a claim in the bankruptcy to recoup the overdrawn loan account.

Their report states that although there are currently no funds available to “enable a distribution” to unsecured creditors, it is “considered likely that there will be sufficient funds available to enable a distribution to creditors in part from asset realisations in the future”.

However, the liquidators have “not formally agreed” to any claim as yet from the ESFA. They have “spent a considerable amount of time” reviewing the agency’s claim in order to understand the impact on their investigation “both in terms of the liquidators’ statutory duties and assessment if these could lead to any other realisations”.

Over the past year the liquidators have also received claims from “a college” and another “agency” identified in the ESFA investigation, according to the report.

“Again, time has been spent reviewing the supporting documentation provided in respect of these claims together with the information brought to the joint liquidators attention as a result of the ESFA investigation,” it said.

“Due to the quantum and nature of the claims received the joint liquidators instructed lawyers from Andrew Jackson solicitors to provide legal advice in relation to these claims.”

The liquidators warn that if these investigations determine there are further monetary claims against SCL Security’s directors, it is “uncertain whether these would ultimately affect the overall recovery from this source”.

Merritt did not respond to requests for comment.