Latest news from FE Week

Sheffield braced for £5m clawback over ESOL scandal

More than £5 million could be clawed back from a Yorkshire college following an investigation into alleged maladministration and fraud, accounts have revealed.

A probe was launched into The Sheffield College’s English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) provision last year by its adult skills funder, the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.

It is understood to have found dubious achievement rates, which were among the highest in the country. The college conducted its own internal audit and uncovered “unsatisfactory practice”, identified as “maladministration”.

Two senior staff reportedly lost their jobs as a result and achievement rates have plummeted.

The college expects a full external audit of its adult skills fund (ASF) to complete by the end of the 2026-27 financial year but is bracing itself for a significant clawback.

Operating surplus figures in its accounts for 2023-24 have had to be restated due to the issue, according to the college’s 2024-25 financial statements, which have been published in recent days, seven months after the government’s annual publication deadline of January 31.

Around £5.18 million of ASF “provision” has been included “based on a risk assessment of areas included in an external funding audit”. The accounts state that the figure is currently an estimate and the college has made “no commitment to repay any amounts whilst audit continues”.

They added that there is potential for “phased payment of any liabilities arising”.

A £5.18 million clawback would be nearly half of the college’s annual £11.58 million ASF contract it receives from SYMCA.

A spokesperson for the college said: “Money has been put aside as a contingency measure should the college be required to repay any adult skills funding on conclusion of an ongoing external audit.

“As the audit is ongoing, it would be premature to conclude whether any funding will need to be repaid and we will not be making any further comment at this stage.”

The college refused to confirm the full scope of the external audit, including whether it extends beyond the ESOL concerns.

Achievement rates plummet

The Sheffield College is South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority’s largest grant provider – receiving around a quarter of the authority’s overall ASF budget in 2026-27.

It is also the third largest ESOL provider outside of London, recording over 5,350 leavers from the language courses last year.

A SYMCA report from November stated its investigation was into “claims of maladministration and fraud in relation to The Sheffield College’s adult ESOL delivery”, adding that the “actions being taken were in accordance with the MCA’s fraud response plan”.

The nature of the alleged maladministration and fraud has not been revealed.

But awarding organisation City & Guilds reportedly revoked the college’s “direct claims status”, which allows the college to mark exams and verify results without confirmation from the exam body. This was according to local news outlet The Tribune, which also reported two senior staff members at the college had left as a result of the ESOL investigations.

The Sheffield College has refused to confirm what disciplinary or other action has been taken against staff members and the college as a result of the investigations.

In a media statement released in February in anticipation of the government’s latest ESOL achievement statistics, chief executive Angela Foulkes said “maladministration” had been identified, adding that this was now addressed through “rigorous quality processes” which have resulted in a drop in achievement results in that area of the college.

A month later, the data was published and showed the college’s level 1 regulated ESOL achievement rate had crashed 52.9 percentage points, from 81.3 per cent in 2023-24 to 28.4 per cent in 2024-25.

Meanwhile, the college’s entry-level regulated ESOL achievement rate fell 34.6 percentage points, from 92.4 per cent to 57.8 per cent.

The college’s non-regulated English language courses still achieved strong results of around 90 per cent, but the number of leavers fell by around two-thirds from 3,840 in 2023-24 to 1,350 in 2024-25.

A South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority spokesperson said: “As investigations are ongoing we are unable to comment further at this time.”

A City & Guilds spokesperson added: “While we cannot comment on internal investigations related to third parties, we can confirm we continue to work with The Sheffield College to ensure our robust assessment and quality assurance processes are followed in the delivery of our qualifications.”

Six-month delay for Tees Valley adult education

Money earmarked for adult education in Tees Valley will not be released for another six months as the region’s mayoral authority reruns a procurement.

The three-year adult skills fund (ASF) contract, worth up to £21 million, was due to begin delivery last month, providing training for unemployed people studying up to level 3.

But Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) has now published a fresh tender, with a late September deadline for submissions and a planned contract start date of February.

The authority’s procured ASF contracts are worth £7 million a year but providers would lose money if they fail to spend the annual allocation in six months. However, it is understood TVCA expects contract-winning providers will compress a year’s worth of training into the shortened timeframe.

In the meantime, only grant-funded training from FE colleges will be available until February.

TVCA abandoned its original tender in May after independent training provider Learning Curve Group launched a legal challenge in the Technology and Construction Court, which handles procurement disputes.

At the time, TVCA said it needed to “review the specification” of its contract to ensure it met local skills needs.

The new tender says contractors will be expected to deliver “high-quality, innovative provision” aligned to regional priorities such as manufacturing, construction and digital skills.

Learning Curve’s challenge came shortly before TVCA commissioners were due to move the tender process from stage one, which assesses whether bidders meet compliance requirements, to stage two, which evaluates detailed submissions.

Although Learning Curve Group is understood to have submitted a bid for the TVCA contract, neither the provider or authority have confirmed whether the procurement withdrawal was linked to the legal claim.

Unemployed learners adrift

One independent training provider manager with knowledge of the bidding process, who asked not to be named, said the delay would affect thousands of unemployed learners who are helped into work through training programmes run by ITPs.

They estimated that at an average cost of £750 per learner, a £7 million annual contract would fund about 730 learners a month.

The manager said TVCA had “questions” to answer about advertising a public tender that was not “legally robust”, adding the situation had left some training providers “looking at potential redundancies”.

But they also criticised training providers that launched legal action when bids were rejected because they “think they have a given right” to public funding.

The manager explained that TVCA policy has a subcontracting clause so bidders for the new tender must avoid subcontracting for local colleges or local authorities.

Millions held back

The value of TVCA’s procured ASF contracts remains unchanged at £7 million a year for the next three academic years.

A spokesperson for the Conservative-run authority confirmed that previously procured contracts ended on July 31.

TVCA’s ASF and level 3 free courses for jobs provision has funded more than 18,000 learners per year in recent years. It is unclear how many of these learners were funded through grant or procured provision.

The £7 million sum represents the contracted part of TVCA’s total adult skills fund allocation it receives from central government. Last year, about £9.4 million of the authority’s annual adult skills funding was allocated to 14 ITPs.

This included around £1.5 million each to Learning Curve Group and Triage Central, and £1 million to Orangebox Training Solutions.

The remaining £32 million available to the authority for ASF was distributed to nine education colleges and five local authorities through grant funding.

Procurement disputes

Lancashire Combined County Authority (LCCA), which began its first year of devolved adult skills commissioning this year, has also delayed part of its ASF delivery contract.

An email to bidders, seen by FE Week, said one of the 12 contract lots in its new £5.7 million adult skills framework was “discontinued” due to an error made in the tendering process.

LCCA did not respond to a request for comment.

Legal action, or the threat of it, has caused other delays to devolved adult skills contracts in recent years.

East Midlands Combined County Authority delayed the awarding of £6.5 million in contracts last year after losing bidder CT Skills launched legal action.

And in 2024, West Yorkshire Combined Authority abandoned its £7 million ASF tender to minimise the risk of legal challenges to its botched procurement process.

Learning Curve’s latest ASF legal threat follows the payment of an undisclosed settlement in January 2025 by the Department for Education linked to the provider’s unsuccessful bid for a national adult education contract awarded in 2023.

Learning Curve Group declined to comment.

Why we need to count homeless college students

It was an FE college tutor who Lydia turned to when she was homeless. Lydia, then 16, was sleeping on her aunt’s sofa after deciding she could no longer live with her parents.

Her tutor listened, and put her in touch with a homelessness charity who in turn found her a social worker.

For Lydia, who I met last year, that first conversation was life-changing. Within weeks, she moved to a women’s hostel where she stayed for 18 months until she was allocated a council flat. She finished college and went to university.

How many other FE students experience housing insecurity while at college? The answer is, there is no way of telling. We have some anecdotal signals, but no reliable data.

Concerns about ‘the closure of community services and increased homelessness within the student population’ were raised in an Association of Colleges’ annual health and wellbeing survey in 2024, while its mental health survey this year found 41 per cent of respondents citing homelessness as a significant influence on the increase in student mental health difficulties.

Concerns were also highlighted in a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Students in 2023 which found that ‘cost-of-living pressures on further education students were contributing to homelessness, higher demand for free school meals and social housing, and intergenerational unemployment’.

Clearly, housing instability is a barrier to study and vocational training. Evidence also shows that child and youth homelessness is associated with stress and poorer health, and higher risk of homelessness in adulthood.

It is high time, surely, for some rigorous data collection and analysis of the prevalence and patterns of homelessness among UK further education students.

Risks of homelessness are stacked unevenly; some individuals, and cohorts, are at much higher risk than others.

A key driver of homelessness is low, insecure and fluctuating family income. One in five college students (21 per cent) claimed free school meals at the age of 15 due to low family income, according to the Association of Colleges, almost twice the rate in school sixth forms. Students who are care experienced or have poor mental or physical health face a greater likelihood of housing insecurity.

Periods of transition are also associated with elevated risks of homelessness. For young people aged 16-18, in particular, going to college and often attending three days a week, rather than daily as at school, represents a big, sometimes unsettling change.

The context, of course, is that colleges have suffered perennial neglect over decades, with severe squeezes on funding.

Many college staff, including non-teaching staff, do vital pastoral work in challenging circumstances. Some provide on-campus support for students facing housing insecurity, such as hygiene items or clothes washing.

The goal, however, should be to prevent homelessness from occurring, not to treat its symptoms.

Councils share data with schools about pupils’ backgrounds and financial data; local authorities should do the same with colleges, so that bursaries can be targeted simply and rapidly at students in greatest need.

We need leadership, too, to improve data on homelessness among college students. Ideally, government should do this. But the Association of Colleges could survey member institutions specifically about homelessness. An individual college, or group, might lead the way.

Lydia’s life changes were transformed by a tutor she turned to when she experienced homelessness. One suspects many more college students don’t seek help but struggle to study in temporary housing, sleep on friends’ sofas or compromise their welfare in unsafe housing. We should try to find out.

We need joined-up skills system supporting people from classroom to career

Almost one million young people in the UK, one in eight, are not in education, employment, or training (NEET). Alan Milburn’s review estimates this costs the nation £125 billion annually, while leaving a 24-year-old NEET facing up to £300,000 in lost lifetime earnings. At the same time, half of business leaders say the UK’s skills system is fundamentally unfit for purpose. If we want to solve both problems, we need a decisive strategy that tackles these twin challenges together.

Economic growth depends on having people with the right skills in the right jobs. That is why careers education, skills development, employment support, and lifelong learning must be seen as parts of the same connected system, rather than separate policy challenges. A productive economy relies on helping young people make the transition from classrooms to work, while supporting adults to retrain, upskill, and adapt throughout longer, less linear careers as technology transforms the workplace.

FE providers understand this challenge, as do businesses who are already doing their part by providing work experience, offering apprenticeships, and supporting mentoring programs. They want to do more. However, business investment does not happen in a vacuum. Employers need a stable policy environment, clear incentives, and a skills system that is easy to navigate. Too often, firms encounter complexity, fragmentation, and constant short-term policy changes that undermine confidence and stifle investment.

I see the difference a targeted, locally-led approach makes when I travel across the country meeting businesses of all sizes. Take the situation in Berkshire, where the local skills improvement plan (LSIP) led by Thames Valley Chamber identified screen industries as a priority sector. Windsor College used capital investment from the local skills improvement fund to establish cutting-edge film and podcast studios. Around 400 local students are now benefiting from the facilities, gaining employer-ready skills.

The lesson is clear – when the system is coherent and locally responsive, businesses invest and results follow. But across the wider economy, 58 per cent of businesses face active skills shortages, while two thirds say better access to training would unlock growth.

On top of this, the business cost stack has ballooned by 70 per cent in a decade, squeezing the very employers that colleges rely on for placements, apprenticeships and work experience. While the government’s focus on tackling economic inactivity and improving youth opportunities is welcome, the challenge extends across the whole workforce.

So what can the government do to ease this pressure and build a stronger lifelong learning system?

First, the Treasury should immediately cut the cost of hiring a young person. Bringing in an employer national insurance contribution holiday for under-25s would significantly lower entry barriers, giving businesses the financial room to invest in young talent.

Second, businesses need a seat at the table when the growth and skills levy is redesigned. Skills England must commit by 2027 to a formal co-design process with businesses so that levy training directly reflects real operational workforce needs.

The lifelong learning entitlement also needs fixing before it rolls out fully in January 2027. Without a clear employer co-investment model, it risks becoming just another loan product that neither employees nor employers trust enough to use.

The government should also adopt a single national framework for flexible work experience, along the lines of the Careers & Enterprise Company’s ‘equalex’ model. A consistent, straightforward process would make it far easier for businesses, particularly SMEs, to take part. We also need schools to be measured on delivering high-quality work readiness to their students.

Finally, every school and college should be connected to an employer-led mentoring network by September 2027, backed by long-term support for local skills brokerage through lsips. Embedding careers education early throughout schooling, aligned with local labour market needs, ensures more young people benefit from meaningful employer interactions before drifting out of the workforce.

The goal should not be to introduce more short-term initiatives, but to build a simpler, more coherent skills system that supports people from classroom to career, one that catches young people long before they become another NEET statistic. If policymakers in all parts of the UK can provide that framework, businesses stand ready to play their part.

Transition support matters more than ever in college-based HE

The world of higher education has been changing rapidly. More students are now choosing to stay in their family homes throughout the course of their studies and to study locally.

There are many different reasons for this. After all, higher education is no longer the exclusive preserve of 18 year olds looking to move away from home.

Many students may not be able to afford the cost of campus accommodation. The cost-of-living crisis hasn’t made this any easier. They may be supporting family members as parents or carers. They may want to stay in their hometowns to sustain family relationships, friendships and social connections. They may find that staying and studying close to home supports their own wellbeing.

They may want to continue working in jobs close to home. Their studies may be connected to those jobs, through apprenticeships, internships and work-based and lifelong learning. Each will make that choice based on their own reasons, responsibilities, expectations, ambitions and needs.

Many universities have adapted their timetables and modes of delivery to support local students who continue to live at home. This is also a space in which FE colleges have shown particular aptitudes and strengths – and this has resulted in the growth in recent years of high-quality college-based HE.

Even for those students who move into HE at the same college at which they’ve just completed their A Levels, T Levels, BTECs or NVQs – and more so for those older students who are returning to learning – the transition into HE can be challenging. Approaches to self-directed study assessment can, for example, make students feel like they’ve been thrown in at the deep end of higher education.

This is why we’ve been working with a group of five FE colleges on a collaborative enhancement project funded by the Quality Assurance Agency to research effective approaches to these transitions. In partnership with colleagues and students from Bishop Burton College and University Centre, Derby College Group, Nottingham College, Solihull College and University Centre, and Walsall College, we’ve explored how flexible pathways and effective transitions in college-based higher education can be enhanced through a structured approach to student-staff collaboration.

Our project involved staff and students in an approach designed to support dialogue and engagement between students and staff, through a cyclical structure of observation, reflection and discussion.

Our pilot study demonstrated remarkably positive results. Students found that participation enabled them to develop a stronger sense of ownership over their learning, alongside enhanced reflective and critical thinking skills. Meanwhile, staff found that their participation supported the development of more student-centred and facilitative pedagogical approaches, reinforcing the value of student voice in shaping their teaching practice.

The study involved 18 members of staff and 45 students. Over 80 per cent of the students across all five of the colleges reported increased confidence, improved understanding of assessment expectations and greater engagement with feedback processes. Some even reported concrete impacts on attainment levels: for example, some of the students observed that, when they’d started, they were achieving marks between 45 and 50 per cent, but that by the end of their engagement in the project they were averaging marks in the mid-to-high 60s.

What was particularly striking was the uplift that students experienced in what are often called “soft skills”. When it comes to students making the transition into higher education – especially in the cases of “non-traditional” students – confidence, self-esteem and belonging are key to their success. Students involved in the project noted significant improvements in these qualities, and in their abilities to communicate with their tutors and with each other, as well as major boosts in their beliefs in their own abilities.

Our study highlighted the importance of collaborative relationships in supporting these crucial transitions, and highlighted the value of embedding transition support within curricula. It has shown that educators and institutions should work to promote opportunities for reflective learning and dialogue, and prioritise the development of pedagogical relationships in inclusive and supportive learning environments. They also need to recognise the importance of staff development and the allocation of appropriate resourcing.

The focus, contexts and scale of college-based HE raise unique sets of challenges for students and educators – as well as extraordinary opportunities to add value to communities and to transform people’s lives. We have found that a collaborative approach to these transitions, by mirroring the best aspects of that provision itself, can enhance both the learning experience and the learners’ prospects of success.

New GCSE-level technical qualifications may be needed, says Powell

New or reformed national GCSE-level qualifications may be needed as part of Andy Burnham’s plans to introduce technical pathways for 14-year-olds, the education secretary has said.

But the pathways will initially use existing qualifications such as technical awards when they launch in 2028.

The government announced earlier in the summer that it would create the new pathways to start in two years’ time, but provided little detail on what the policy would mean in practice.

Education secretary Lucy Powell wrote to the education committee on 28 July, shortly after the policy was announced.

In the letter, published yesterday, she said her department would work with schools, employers and mayoral and strategic authorities to “explore what new or reformed national qualifications, at GCSE level, might also be needed as part of these pathways”.

This is the first time the government has explicitly said it would consider creating new technical qualifications at GCSE level, FE Week understands.

Pathways to use existing technical awards

Technical equivalents to GCSEs – such as technical awards – already exist. FE Week’s sister title Schools Week revealed last month around nine in 10 schools already offered these qualifications.

Approached by Schools Week, the DfE clarified that the new technical pathways will be rolled out in 2028 using existing technical qualifications already available.

This is because any new or reformed qualifications would not be ready for first teaching by then.

The DfE added that work will be done in parallel to explore what new or reformed qualifications could be introduced at GCSE level.

The timescales for introduction are yet to be determined.

‘Technical education superpower’

Powell added in the letter that her department “would work with partners across the country to make England a technical education superpower”.

This would be done “by placing technical and academic education on an equal footing and creating a system where technical excellence is recognised, rewarded and valued as highly as academic achievement”.

“Building on successful models such as the MBacc in Manchester, we will work with schools, colleges, employers and strategic authorities to ensure every young person can access high-quality locally tailored technical qualifications.”

It is not clear how far the qualifications will differ depending on the region, or whether different qualifications will be offered in different areas.

Analysis by Schools Week found that nine in ten mainstream schools entered at least one key stage 4 pupil for a technical award in 2025.

The government acknowledged that while most schools offer technical qualifications already, their plans would “boost the quality, availability and status of the offer”.

But Powell pointed out in her letter that only half of pupils in mainstream state schools studied a technical award.

“Most take just one alongside their GCSEs, and a small minority take more than two.

“This is not surprising when access to pre-16 technical education is uneven across the country and between regions.”

Variation in qualifications offer

She added that schools in the north east offered twice as many technical award options on average compared to schools in London.

It is not yet clear how the technical routes will fit into ongoing plans to update the national curriculum or progress 8, which are already in motion.

The government is set to publish the programmes of study for the new curriculum, as well as its response to the progress 8 consultation, this September.

There are plans to introduce V Levels – which are worth the same as an A Level and would be studied post-16 – with the first being taught in September 2027.

Powell said: “The revolution in post-16 which shows early promise needs more pathways into it and a stronger relationship between KS4 and KS5.

“This over-focus on academic pathways only has limited opportunity for young people, leaves many disengaged and is a major factor driving the growing NEETs crisis.”

‘Too many’ written off by Gove reforms

Setting out his plan for government in the House of Commons this week, Burnham defended his proposals to reform education “so that it balances academic and technical, and offers a path in life for all young people”.

One of his fiercest critics has been former education secretary Michael Gove, who declared in a Spectator column that Burnham and Powell “want to bring back stupid”.

“Michael Gove calls this ‘bringing back stupid’, when in fact, for too many young people written off by his reforms, it is bringing back hope.

“Allowing mayors to shape technical pathways and provide work placements for young people, building back into colleges and schools from the needs of the regional economy, is the way to support more young people into work.”

College campus safety starts long before an incident occurs

When people think about campus safety, they often think about security guards, CCTV cameras or access controls.

Those measures have an important role to play. But in my experience, the most effective way to keep young people safe is not responding to incidents when they occur – it is preventing them from happening in the first place.

That is why the conversation about safety in further education needs to move beyond physical security alone.

Today’s colleges are supporting young people through a far more complex landscape than existed even a decade ago.

According to figures, around 20 per cent of young people have a probable mental health disorder, with 65 per cent feeling unsafe online. The UK’s annual crime survey shows that young people aged 16 to 24 are consistently among the age groups most likely to be victims of violence, while national safeguarding data continues to show concerns around criminal exploitation and county lines activity.

Many of these issues do not begin when a student arrives at college, but they often become visible there.

As a result, safeguarding and security have become inseparable.

FE colleges have always been places of opportunity, environments where young people develop skills, confidence and independence as they prepare for adulthood. But over the past decade, the role colleges play within their communities has evolved significantly.

Today, colleges are not simply education providers. They are large, open, public-facing institutions supporting thousands of young people from a wide range of backgrounds and circumstances, often with increasingly complex needs. As that landscape changes, so too does our responsibility to safeguard and support the students in our care.

At West Herts College Group, we see first-hand how the challenges affecting young people have become broader and more interconnected. We must think differently about safety and wellbeing from the way we may have done in the past.

Effective safeguarding cannot be limited to responding when concerns reach a crisis point. The most effective approach is one that identifies issues early, provides appropriate support and builds resilience before problems escalate into more serious safeguarding or security concerns.

The rollout of mental health support teams in schools has been a welcome step forward, but while 79 per cent of secondary school pupils are in settings now covered by a mental health support team, only 42 per cent of 16 to 18 year olds are. We would always welcome greater access to specialist mental health support across the FE sector.

It is important to recognise that schools are intervening further upstream, helping children develop resilience and coping strategies from an earlier age. Ultimately, effective safeguarding is a shared endeavour across the entire education system.

Keeping young people safe today requires a much more holistic approach, one built around prevention, partnership working, staff training, student education and early intervention. This means maintaining strong relationships with police, local authorities, safeguarding agencies, youth services and community organisations so that concerns can be identified and addressed before they escalate.

In many cases, the most effective intervention is not a physical security measure at all. It is a timely conversation, an appropriate referral, information shared between partner organisations or support put in place before a situation reaches crisis point.

Recent national discussions around Martyn’s Law have helped highlight the importance of robust emergency planning and security awareness across publicly accessible spaces. In many ways, however, the direction of travel reflected in the legislation aligns with work already taking place across the education sector. Colleges have long understood that creating safe environments requires ongoing review, investment and adaptation.

Young people thrive in environments built on trust, belonging and support. While colleges must be realistic about the challenges facing society today, we must also avoid creating cultures driven by fear or alarmism. Safety should provide reassurance, not anxiety.

The safest campuses are not those with the most visible security measures. They are the ones where students feel supported, connected and able to access help before problems escalate.

A huge amount of work in this area happens quietly behind the scenes, often without public visibility. Yet it has become one of the most important responsibilities colleges carry.

The real exam crisis happened after the papers were sat

Every summer, hundreds of thousands of students leave examination rooms and halls believing that the hardest part is over. After months – often years – of preparation, revision and anxiety, they trust that the next stage of the process will be fair and carefully managed. They assume that their work will be marked by experienced professionals working under conditions that allow them to make accurate judgements.

This summer, that confidence in exams has been severely tested.

The issue has not been the quality of examiners. Across the examining community there remains an extraordinary level of professionalism and commitment. The problem has been the system surrounding them.

Weeks after a number of Pearson’s GCSE examinations had been sat, only a tiny proportion of scripts had been scanned and made available for marking. But I don’t think anyone fully understood the extent of the impact these delays had in numerous ways.

While the official marking period continued to tick away, examiners found themselves with little or nothing to mark, despite being contracted and prepared to begin work immediately. Many of the most experienced examiners balance marking alongside full-time teaching jobs, making evenings and weekends their primary opportunity to complete allocations. Instead of being able to plan their workload sensibly, they spent days repeatedly refreshing online systems in the hope that another handful of scripts might appear.

The consequences of this issue extend far beyond inconvenience and the exam board’s staggering lack of concern left many of us baffled. Regular pleas from the senior examining teams to the powers that be seemed to fall on deaf ears.

When scripts arrive sporadically and in very small batches, examiners inevitably feel pressure to complete them quickly before work disappears again. Team leaders, responsible for monitoring marking quality are simultaneously trying to support anxious examiners, answer constant queries and maintain rigorous quality assurance processes under increasingly difficult circumstances. Senior examining teams become consumed by firefighting rather than leading the marking operation with precision.

The cost for examiners is significant. Frustration builds quickly when contracted work simply isn’t available. Some examiners inevitably question whether they can continue committing their evenings and weekends to a process that appears so unpredictable. Others withdraw altogether, reducing capacity precisely when it is needed most.

But the greatest concern isn’t the experience of examiners. It should be the experience of candidates.

Every delayed script represents a young person – or adult learner – who has invested years of effort into achieving a qualification that could shape their future education or employment. Candidates deserve confidence that their work is being marked carefully, consistently and without unnecessary pressure. They deserve to know that the systems supporting examiners are functioning effectively.

Instead, the risk becomes one of compression. If only a small percentage of scripts have been released during the early weeks of marking, what happens when tens of thousands eventually become available? Can the same level of scrutiny and consistency realistically be maintained if the remaining workload has to be completed in a fraction of the planned time?

Experienced examiners take enormous pride in marking accurately rather than quickly. Quality marking requires time to settle into a paper, become familiar with responses, discuss difficult cases with team leaders and continually calibrate judgements against standardisation. Those processes safeguard fairness for every candidate. Compressing weeks of work into days inevitably places those safeguards under real strain.

Communication also becomes critical during periods like this. Examiners understand that technical issues occur. Large-scale assessment systems are complex, and unforeseen problems can arise. What becomes far more difficult is working in an information vacuum. Senior examiners need clear updates, realistic timelines and honest communication about recovery plans. Without this, uncertainty spreads rapidly throughout marking teams, increasing anxiety and reducing confidence in the process.

It is important to recognise that support staff and operational colleagues are rarely the cause of these difficulties. Throughout periods of disruption, they often find themselves handling escalating concerns from hundreds of examiners while possessing little additional information themselves. Their professionalism frequently prevents situations from deteriorating further, even while they are managing unprecedented workloads.

Public discussion around examinations understandably focuses on the papers themselves – the questions, the grade boundaries and the results. Much less attention is paid to the behind-the-scenes infrastructure, which is every bit as important as the assessment itself. A well-designed examination can only deliver fair outcomes if the systems responsible for processing and marking it function reliably.

Here is the rub – exam boards, including Pearson, outsource much of the actual ‘examining’ work to conscientious educators. But the systems and infrastructures that keep things moving are usually operated by the exam boards internally and rarely come under any scrutiny.

Candidates place enormous trust in awarding organisations. They trust that once they hand over their paper, every stage that follows will be managed with the same care they invested in preparing for it. Examiners share that commitment. They want nothing more than to ensure every script receives the careful, consistent marking it deserves.

When systems supporting that work fail, everyone feels the consequences . But ultimately, the candidates face the greatest risk. Investment in robust processes, realistic contingency planning and transparent communication should never be viewed as operational details. It is fundamental to maintaining confidence in the integrity of the examination system itself. In the current landscape, it is hard not to feel that the drive for profit is the central priority of exam boards, at the expense of the very people paying them for this crucial, life changing service.

A spokesperson for Pearson said: ”Scanning and marking for the 2026 summer series were completed on schedule and as planned. Every paper was marked through Pearson’s established quality assurance processes, ensuring careful, consistent and accurate marking.

In a large-scale operation involving hundreds of thousands of exam papers, scripts are released to markers on a rolling basis as they are scanned, processed and quality checked. As a result, the volume of scripts available to individual markers can vary at different points during the marking period.

We know that markers in some subjects experienced periods when fewer scripts were available than they expected. We understand the challenges this created for those planning their marking around other commitments, including concerns about having enough time to complete their allocations.

As part of every series, we closely monitor script availability and marking progress, so we can support markers and make additional volumes available where they are most needed. While individual markers may have experienced periods of lower availability, this did not reflect the overall position across the series.

It was not the case that only a small proportion of scripts had been scanned and made available for marking in the weeks following the GCSE examinations. All scanning was completed in early July, as planned and in line with the equivalent point in 2025.

We always welcome feedback from markers and will listen carefully to their experiences from this series, including concerns about communication during the marking period. We will use that feedback to improve how we support and communicate with examiners in future series.

Our markers play a vital role in delivering our assessments, and we would like to thank them for the professionalism, expertise and commitment they have shown throughout the series.”

If you have information and insights to share about your experiences of awarding bodies, related to the issues raised in this piece, please get in touch at news@feweek.co.uk