A well-known adult education charity has insisted it is on the road to recovery after the FE Commissioner warned of deteriorating finances caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The City Literary Institute said it was the first-ever college to produce more than half of its income through enrolment fees in 2018/19 – a feat which was short lived when multiple lockdowns caused a significant reduction.
The charity, which is the largest provider of community learning in Europe, saw its fee income drop by 27 per cent, falling from £10.1 million prior to the pandemic to £7.4 million in 2020/21.
As a result, City Lit has today received a financial notice to improve from the Education and Skills Funding Agency due to ‘inadequate’ finances.
In a report also published today, the FE Commissioner said in its team’s opinion, the college’s financial recovery plan is based on “sound analysis” which will see fee income recover to pre-pandemic levels of around 30,000 enrolments by 2023/24.
The report also points out that City Lit has no long-term debt and is asset rich because it owns its main campus in London’s Covent Garden, meaning the college is “not insolvent”.
Speaking to FE Week, City Lit’s principal Mark Malcomson said his college is “far from” becoming financially unviable and insisted that “things are slowly getting better” for both daytime and evening courses.
He explained that his provider’s 5,000-odd courses were all delivered face-to-face prior to the pandemic and the switch to online learning was impossible for some areas, particularly practical subjects such as performing arts.
But around 1,300 courses were successfully transferred online, predominantly provision for languages, humanities, creative writing, wellbeing and even music, once the pandemic struck.
Successive lockdowns continued to disrupt enrolments and led to some tough decisions around restricting staff and provision. Malcomson said his staff base has fallen by between 10 and 15 per cent since the pandemic, while an external “interpreting service” function offered by the college has had to close.
The FE Commissioner’s report is however full of praise for governance and leadership at City Lit. It said: “City Lit has been proactive and flexible in adapting its curriculum offer and delivery in response to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and challenges that have predominated since March 2020.
“The college has remained firmly committed to promoting and maintaining the engagement and participation of its learners, with the rapid development of online learning providing a viable alternative to face-to-face delivery for many programmes.”
The report also applauded the college’s quality of provision, giving the example that achievement outcomes on accredited programmes “improved substantially” in 2020/21, with “further improvements” likely in 2021/22.
Today’s report makes clear that the impact on fee income through the pandemic has been the “primary factor” in the “deterioration of the college finances”, which has reported two years of “significant operating deficits and are likely to see a third year of this in 2021/22”.
Malcomson said he was “proud” of the way his college has responded to the unprecedented challenge of the pandemic and is “happy” with the “supportive” approach taken by the ESFA and FE Commissioner.
Previous Job: Vice Principal – Teaching, Learning and Quality, Leeds College of Building
Interesting fact: Nikki is a huge sports fan and loves Formula 1. She also won a national Boots sandwich competition when she was young and received a family trip to Milton Keynes to see her “Chicken Tropicana” being made
Lauren Crawley
Director of People, East Sussex College Group
Start date: March 2022
Previous Job: Head of HR, Orbital South Colleges
Interesting fact: Lauren has many hobbies outside of work including fundraising for blood cancer charities, running two successful Instagram accounts and she’s even flown planes in her time
Carla Hayes
Head of Inclusive Learning, Capital City College Group
Start date: March 2022
Previous Job: Director of Student and Learner Support, Moulton College
Interesting fact: Carla is also an exec member of the National Association for Managers of Student Services (NAMSS) and will be at their national conference next week
The intersection of different identities is barely mentioned or discussed in FE, writes Joyce I-Hui Chen
The first time I heard the term “intersectionality” was at workshops that explore intersectionality accessibility.
The term was first coined by US academic and civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe how an individual’s differences, such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and (dis)ability, can create different forms of discrimination, prejudices and domination.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, overlapping identities in multiple communities leads to complex experiences of oppression and privilege that impact on individual lives.
It’s also important to consider identities such as age, religion, language, mental health, marital status, parental status, body size and so on.
The workshops were facilitated by the Women’s Leadership Network (WLN) through the Education and Training Foundation-funded programme called #APConnect, for advanced practitioners.
Here, I will explore my learning from the WLN workshops, to reflect on how we educators can use an intersectionality lens to examine our practices in FE.
Why does it matter so much in FE?
Learning about intersectionality makes me realise how little the intersection of differences is even mentioned or discussed in further education. That’s despite FE having a complex and diverse population of staff and adult learners.
In her talk at TEDWomen 2016, ‘The Urgency of Intersectionality’, Crenshaw states: “Without frames that allow us to see how social problems impact all the members of a targeted group, many will fall through the cracks of our movements, left to suffer in virtual isolation.”
Many of the social problems overlap, creating ‘‘multiple levels of social injustice’’.
Intersectionality in practice
To start with, let me use an example from my own teaching experience to explain intersectionality.
I have taught two Asian female students from the same ethnicity background but different social classes.
One was single with a child, and the other was married with three children. One had a degree, and the other completed secondary school education. One had been living in the UK for three years, and the other had just arrived for a few months.
Although they shared a similar identity as migrant workers who were both learning English as a second language, their perspectives and life experiences were different.
As an educator, it is important to consider what the equality issues might be and where the oppression, privilege and power may be located.
By doing so, we can better understand our students, and we can plan and design programmes that enrich their learning and life experiences.
Sylvia Duckworth, a Canadian educational innovator, produced a “wheel of power and privilege”, shown here. This perhaps provides a starting point for FE providers and educators to be aware of differences between individuals, and different communities that people may belong to.
Meanwhile, the Social Identity Wheel Activity, created by the University of Michigan, is designed for educators to use with students to consider and reflect on their social identities.
Developing an awareness of intersectionality is a meaningful way to appreciate differences.
What can we do about intersectionality in FE?
It is imperative to continue the work of equity and social justice. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified equity issues in the workplace and in education.
Using an intersectionality lens in our practice in FE means that we become more aware of the complex forms of privilege and oppression that influence people’s lives – both staff and students.
After learning about intersectionality in the WLN workshops, I think the following methods can help FE practitioners incorporate intersectionality into our practice.
Develop an awareness and understanding of intersectionality.
Value differences and encourage voices from less-represented communities.
Create supportive and safe spaces for dialogues.
Listen to and appreciate each other.
Collaborate with different communities.
The benefits of doing this would help create a fairer and more equal learning environment and workplace. This in turn would help support students and staff to reach their full potential.
Minimum eligibility requirements are being applied in a generic way, writes Marius S. Ostrowski
A flagship item in the government’s recent Skills and Post-16 Education Bill is the lifelong loan entitlement. This is a system of financial support that allows people to take up to four years of additional courses to retrain and upskill.
But to realise this vision the government will need to become far more sensitive to the actual situation of potential lifelong learners. By adopting a one-size-fits-all approach to skills development, the current regime unfortunately fails to capture the full range of forms that lifelong learning can take.
Take someone who learns a language or an artisan skill in evening or weekend classes while holding a full-time job. Or someone who takes on-the-job accountancy, management, or computer training sponsored by their firm.
Or indeed someone who dips in and out of an eclectic roster of interests by tuning into “massive open online courses” in sociology or astrophysics.
And what about those who take law or veterinary “conversion courses” after a degree, or those who return to full-time study during a career break?
Unfortunately, the more “non-traditional” forms of post-18 learning are often overlooked by policymakers, whose choices have tended to make lifelong learning easier for some and arbitrarily more difficult for others.
One such choice is the byzantine system of exemptions surrounding minimum eligibility requirements to access the lifelong loan entitlement.
There is a byzantine system of exemptions
These include learners over 25, part-time learners, learners with a level 4 or 5 award, a foundation year, or an access to HE qualification (but only to undertake level 6 study).
Why only from 25? This means that, if someone leaves school at 16 or 18, they will have to work for the best part of a decade before becoming eligible for financial support. At the very least, cutting this to 21 would make financial support more accessible.
Another innovation could be to integrate “in-work” skills development into existing accreditation frameworks. This would give learners a “fast track” to lifelong loan entitlement eligibility regardless of age, if they can show that they have already reached a skills level equivalent to the entry requirements of the qualifications they wish to pursue.
At the same time, minimum eligibility requirements cannot be applied to every qualification in a generic way. Certainly, some standards of literacy, numeracy, or vocational competence should be universal.
But learners should not be disqualified from accessing funding if they have not met a minimum standard in areas irrelevant to their next qualification.
Instead, minimum eligibility requirements need to be tailored to a system of vocation-specific lifelong learning pathways. These should be a joined-up series of courses from sixth form to higher degree study, provided by a learning ecosystem of schools, FE colleges and HE institutions.
The exit requirements for each course level should dovetail seamlessly with the entry requirements for the next level up.
This would eradicate learners’ concerns about not “making the grade” to access further funding. It would also make it easier to “step on and off” this lifelong pathway as and when works best for them.
To make the lifelong loan entitlement truly lifelong, the government must also replace the four-year limit on funding availability. Courses can deliver skills improvements over very variable stretches of time ̶ compare a year of night classes to a week of training days, or a term of college study.
Instead, the government should set a limit on the total number of course credits it will fund ̶ say, 600 credits, equivalent to five years’ worth of full-time degree study.
Then learners can see how much of their entitlement they have “left”, and it becomes easier to attach funding precisely to courses on a per-module basis.
This relies on a transparent, overarching accreditation framework for technical, academic and integrated qualifications. Scotland has already led the way on this, and Wales is close behind. It is time for the rest of the UK to follow suit.
The government has created a space for a genuinely radical transformation of lifelong learning.
It now has to ensure it creates the system that works best for learners, no matter who they are or what situation they are in.
With the government’s final climate change strategy due next month, Tim Oates says sound policy is needed for FE to shape the green economy
The global pandemic has prompted a discussion in England about schools and “the future of assessment”. But there are bigger, global questions around the future of education that we need to debate too. One that simply cannot be avoided is the impact climate change is having on economies, industries and individuals.
The essential carbon reduction targets that are being adopted by nations around the world are moving us to radically different economic equilibria. New jobs are being created in the green economy, but these advances will come at a cost to abandoned technologies.
Financial analysts are already growing nervous at the extent of stranded assets in industries affected by these tectonic shifts.
With stranded assets there also will be stranded workers. These will not be young people – they will tend to be older, specialist workers, with families, mortgages and purchasing habits that drive our economy.
Hundreds of thousands of UK workers are likely to be affected directly. Finding themselves and their skills redundant will be both a shock to them and a shock to society. They will need support and retraining.
We must start to think now about their education and training needs ̶ just as much as young people.
Our thinking here in England should start with the best of what we already have – and that means further education.
We ignore FE at our peril
Hilary Steedman, one of the most informed international comparative researchers, constantly compared the German vocational education and training system with the system in England. By 2010, Steedman felt that the FE sector in England was both performing a vital function and providing a higher quality than continental counterparts.
Most recently, FE institutions have proven themselves to be inventive, adaptive and highly responsive during the pandemic, both for young people and adults.
My discussions with FE principals have highlighted the high load that came in September 2021 from students who had certificated in GCSE maths and English, but whose material performance was far lower than expected once on the course.
This required sensitive yet intensive action – just the kind of adaptive and supportive provision at which our FE service has excelled. That this did not result in a slew of press stories is testament to the dedication of staff and the application of the students.
It also reflects our lack of recognition of what the FE service does within the education system.
I have no doubt that FE will be more fundamental to our social and economic future than most realise.
The government rightly is considering all measures that can be adopted to “green” the school curriculum. But policy cannot stop at the school gate.
The development of apprenticeship provision in the past decade has been steady and effective. But we know from the continental experience that specific effort will be needed by both government and employers to sustain apprenticeship provision during this time of dramatic industrial and economic restructuring.
The skills bill currently going through parliament includes changes to FE governance, accountability, labour force, the renewal of estate and learner funding. These are welcome, since we know from the past that qualifications reform can be a necessary but not sufficient policy measure to support growth in vocationally focused provision.
We should also consider what more may be needed. This could include institutional development (buildings, staff and more), curriculum development (new programmes oriented to different groups and new industrial areas), and professional development (particularly in the new knowledge and skills required by industrial restructuring).
FE already provides a vital and highly effective bridge into work and into higher education that we should better recognise and celebrate.
Sound policy action can now support FE to become even more fundamental to our effort to shape a world-leading green economy and an equitable society. The government’s final climate change strategy is due very soon, in April.
It is my view that we ignore FE at our peril. A heroic shift in FE outcomes should be considered as worthy a target for political ambition, as improvements in school standards.
A pilot for a longer learning period after GCSEs is worth considering post-Covid, writes Joe Hallgarten
When it comes to post-16 learning, it’s two that’s a crowd, not three. I’m talking about the two-year 16-to-19 phase. In reality it is about 20 months long.
A couple of weeks after their GCSE results, most students are in new institutions, making rapid decisions about, and rapid adjustments to, new types of courses, teaching and learning.
Less than two years later, here the next step comes, ready or not.
For those on a semi-cushioned, near-inevitable track to university, this rushed period might just about makes sense. Good enough GCSEs leads to a fairly straightforward set of A-level choices, which then leads to a university place (with maybe a gap year thrown in).
For the majority of students, it’s a more complex journey.
There are, of course, smooth routes into professions via technical qualifications. But many young people are much less sure about where their GCSEs should take them. Their career advice did not prepare them for the choices they need to make. They may not yet be developmentally ready for the independent maturity that most post-16 study requires.
With a manic September start, there is no time to “try before you choose”, and the need for many to retake English and maths GCSEs adds to this complexity.
They may start level 3 qualifications such as A-levels without understanding the extent of jump-up required, and many quit after a wasted year 12. Even if their A-level courses run smoother, they are also unclear about whether university is really for them.
At their best, post-16 institutions (and FE colleges in particular) handle this excess of choice, uncertainty and complexity brilliantly. They help their students navigate the best possible way into further work or study through both pedagogical and pastoral care. However, they do so in a time period that feels irrationally short.
Why the hurry? Lots of possibilities, most with big price tags, are currently being considered to aid “catch-up”. The tutoring programme is already rolling out. Officials are considering options to extend the school day and reduce summer holidays.
How about we extend our post-GCSE education period from two years to three? What could this look like? Here’s one way it could work.
In the autumn term of year one, students would be given a variety of experiences and advice to make sure they are choosing the right pathway for them and the right school or college to support this.
Some students would retake key GCSEs and consolidate other aspects of learning that will enable success in their chosen pathway.
In addition, each student would be assigned a mentor, ideally linked to a possible career choice. Where possible, each would also be allocated a year 7 child to mentor.
Each student would be assigned a mentor
Students would also begin a personal development project, as suggested in the proposed 14-19 national baccalaureate.
From January of year one, the next six terms would be similar to the current two-year period. Each young person would start a selected qualification pathway, with space for personal projects and mentoring.
Two years later by the end of February of year three, students would complete courses and examinations, with results announced by the end of April.
This would leave a few months’ space to complete personal development projects, and a civic national caring service programme ̶ a placement of approximately two months that gives them experience of caring within a nursery or school, care home or day centre, hospital or hospice.
No college or school could achieve an effective three-year extension alone. It needs the types of long-term civic partnerships with local employers, universities, voluntary and community organisations that FE colleges already foster.
This is a less than half-formed idea, which would have a financial cost. If you’re thinking “what about…?” then you aren’t the only one.
But the Centre for Education and Youth would love to create a coalition of partners who can help us interrogate this idea further, perhaps through an actual pilot.
If we believe that Covid recovery requires radical solutions, one more year of compulsory education may well be worth considering.
For the very first time we’re making our competition assessment modules available to educators, free of charge. We’ve done this so that students and apprentices can compare their performance with the average scores from last year’s competitors in our highly-respected national skills competitions. Participants can benchmark their performance against some of the best students across the country and instantly recognise how they can improve their skills, knowledge and competencies through self-reflection against set criteria. Taking part will inspire students and apprentices to learn in a fun environment that engages and enthuses them and drives up aspirations to achieve higher standards in their work.
This benchmarking also gives educators a valuable opportunity to provide constructive feedback on strengths and areas for improvement and to support curriculum development, so students and apprentices are learning the skills that are reflective of what professional sectors need, now and in the future.
The programme is aimed at all students at level two and three (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) or level five and six (Scotland SVQ2 and SVQ 3) even if they have taken part in regional or national competition activity in previous years.
A powerful tool, skills competitions have been proven to drive up standards and improve the teaching and learning experience of teachers and students and raise aspirations for both. They are an ideal way of enriching the curriculum and re-engaging learners and enabling them to address lost learning that may have resulted from the last two years of the Covid pandemic. They are also valuable in helping students and apprentices to develop the employability skills that employers value so highly, helping young people to become more well-rounded and high-performance ready individuals.
Colleagues in many FE colleges are finding our national competitions useful in supporting curricula with 58% colleges in England registering competitors in 2021 resulting in over 3,000 registrations. The competitions have a nationwide appeal with substantial representation of competitors coming from Wales, the North-West, Scotland, West Midlands and Northern Ireland. This is encouraging in terms of supporting the Government’s levelling up agenda and highlights WorldSkills UK’s specific focus on opening up career opportunities to young people from all backgrounds, especially those who may traditionally have been denied them.
Over eight in ten national competition participants surveyed said that competing made them feel more ambitious in pursuing their career.
97% of previous entrants say they improved their technical Skills
93% said they improved their personal and employability skills
90% said they could apply the skills they developed
“My knowledge of some skills has improved and are more in-depth now than I ever would have had before. Currently I just want to keep working and improving my skills through participating in more competitions to build upon my skills in the workshop.” (Billie-Jo, automotive technology student and WorldSkills UK competitor, South West College, N Ireland).
The modules of our competition-development programme are designed to be incorporated into lessons of up to one hour so they can be easily integrated into timetables, or for students and apprentices to undertake in their own time. Each activity is relevant to the individual skill area and will address potential skill and knowledge gaps. Some of these will be ongoing skills development gaps in the curriculum but will also include areas for development that have been established through the National Finals. For example, in some practical skills it is evident that students have experienced challenges using basic tools and equipment.
We cover a wide range of skill areas in our competition-development programme at levels two and three (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) or level five and six (Scotland SVQ2 and SVQ 3):
Accounting Technician
Aeronautical Engineering
Automation
Automotive Body Repair
Automotive Refinishing
Automotive Technology
Construction Metalwork
Fine Jewellery Making
Health & Social Care
Heavy Vehicle Technology
IT Software Solutions for Business
IT Support Technician
Landscape Gardening
Mechatronics
Network Infrastructure Technician
Network Systems Administrator
Welding
All our training materials have been designed by industry experts for relevance and assess an individual’s knowledge and practical skills, together with employability attributes such as resilience, communication, time management and teamwork.
Designed to be engaging and flexible, during class or in their own time, students simply visit the website page and look for the relevant skill area and click ‘start assessment’. The programme not only gives them a realistic reflection of ability against their counterparts from across the UK, but also encourages them to strive for excellence raising their aspirations and encouraging them to take more responsibility for their own learning and development.
By weaving skills competitions into the core curriculum, vocational education providers can develop learners more creatively using competitions as a means of assessment. Through encouraging different teaching and learning practices, in line with employers’ needs, colleges can help drive up the quality and profile of vocational education providing valuable evidence against a range of criteria within the Ofsted Inspection Framework.
Give your students the opportunity to stretch and challenge themselves by taking part. They will benefit from the experience which for many is life-changing and they can include their competition results in their personal portfolio, supporting their CV when engaging with employers and educators. Getting your students and apprentices to participate is also a good way of addressing Gatsby Benchmark four: Linking curriculum learning to careers.
“The best thing I have learned is more about myself. The competitions bring so many qualities out of you that sometimes you don’t realise you have. You find out a lot about yourself through these competitions.” (Harry Funnell, Former student at Myserscough College Lancs, and former apprentice, award-winning Frogheath Landscapes).
Having competition activity within the curriculum and its delivery doesn’t necessarily mean additional work, it’s about enhancing what’s already in place through different ways of learning. The concept can be introduced gradually into the classroom to enable students to get comfortable with the idea competing, as a way of building their skills and confidence.
The competition-development programme can also be used as an introduction to select competitors for the 2022 WorldSkills UK national competition cycle which is now open for registration and closes on 1 April. Each year over 3,000 competitors enter. They take part in National Qualifiers and those that succeed go on to the National Finals held in November throughout the country when they compete against their peers for coveted Gold, Silver and Bronze Medals and the chance to join Squad UK. After this, they also have the unique opportunity of being selected for Team UK and the chance to represent their country on the international stage. The next EuroSkills competition will be held in 2023 and the next WorldSkills event in Lyon, France in 2024.
“Apply for it and see where it takes you! It’s a great opportunity to show off your skills and if you do make it to the National Finals, it’s really fun and hands-on, you get to have a play around with technology that you wouldn’t normally.” (Toby IT support technician apprentice).
Regardless of what stage competitors reach in the national and international competitions, all of them have the chance to stretch and challenge themselves and return to their college or employer with a renewed energy and newfound skills to contribute and act as a role model to colleagues.
For educators, embedding both the competition-development programme or national cycle competition activity into the curriculum offers greater scope for creativity in teaching, training and learning techniques. It’s a valuable way of continuing professional development, extending pedagogical skills and knowledge and opportunities for more involvement with skills competitions. Our judges, coaches and experts are dedicated to helping the next generation of young professionals hone their talents, leading the way to a skills-led economy.
The eighth biennial EuroSkills event was originally scheduled to take place in St Petersburg in August 2023.
WorldSkills Europe approached the three member countries that had previously expressed intentions to bid to host the EuroSkills Competition 2027 – Germany, Luxembourg and Poland.
“After extensive discussions it was agreed by all parties that WorldSkills Poland should take up the enormous challenge of organising the EuroSkills Competition 2023 at such short notice,” a spokesperson for WorldSkills Europe said.
The spokesperson added that WorldSkills Germany and WorldSkills Luxembourg have expressed their “utmost support for WorldSkills Poland’s new bid” and have confirmed that they remain committed to plans for a joint bid to host the EuroSkills Competition 2027.
“WorldSkills Europe wishes to express its sincere gratitude to WorldSkills Poland for its support and commitment to have Europe’s biggest vocational education and skills excellence event relocated to Poland,” the spokesperson added.
WorldSkills Poland’s application to host the EuroSkills Competition 2023 will be ratified by the WorldSkills Europe General Assembly at its annual meeting in June 2022.
The exact dates and a city of the relocated EuroSkills Competition 2023 are still to be confirmed. Further details will be released when available.
Following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, WorldSkills swiftly condemned the Russian government’s actions and cancelled WorldSkills Russia’s participation in WorldSkills Shanghai 2022.
“WorldSkills is politically and denominationally neutral. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is a clear and enormous breach of our Code of Ethics and Conduct. Belarus, by its active support of Russia’s invasion, has also breached our Code of Ethics and Conduct,” they said in a statement.
“The Russian government has made choices that forfeit its access to participate in events and activities organised by WorldSkills and its Members.”
Nottingham College has announced Janet Smith as its new permanent chief executive.
The appointment comes after the college’s previous leader John van de Laarschot had to step down because of a “serious heart attack”.
Smith joins the college from Inspire Education Group, where she is currently chief executive and principal of the merged New College Stamford and Peterborough Regional College.
She is set to join the college before the end of this academic year.
“I am very much looking forward to joining Nottingham College, and working within a city with such high aspirations for its residents and its young people,” Smith said.
“The college has achieved much, but there is more to do and I’m thrilled to be joining at such an exciting time.”
Smith’s career spans seven different FE colleges, where she has delivered curriculum and quality improvement as a senior manager in three of these institutions.
She oversaw the merger of New College Stamford and Peterborough Regional College in 2020, to form Inspire Education Group.
In the group’s latest Ofsted monitoring visit report from just over six months ago, the group was seen to be making significant progress in all areas listed.
Chair of Nottingham College, Carole Thorogood, announced the appointment.
“I’m delighted to be welcoming Janet,” she said.
“Her fantastic track record in the sector, coupled with her knowledge of our college and our city, makes her an exceptional appointment and I am very much looking forward to working with her.”
Martin Sim, who has been the college’s interim chief executive office and principal since May 2021, will continue to remain with the college for the next couple of months, providing “leadership stability”.
Smith’s appointment comes after former chief executive, John van de Laarschot, ended his five-year tenure at the college last year to “focus on regaining fitness and resilience” following a heart attack.
The college had gone through a troublesome period since being created from a merger of New College Nottingham and Central College Nottingham in 2017.
It was subject to 15 days of strikes in 2019, during which University and College Union members dealt a vote of no confidence to the leadership. Months later, the college was downgraded by Ofsted from ‘good’ to ‘requires improvement’.
In 2020 it was subject to FE Commissioner intervention after hitting “serious cashflow pressures”, which arose after the college completed a major £58.5 million build and following the Covid-19 pandemic.
