Mark Dawe, CEO, The Skills Network

The new head of the Skills Network reveals the family and personal influences behind his career to JL Dutaut

Mark Dawe is a hard man to pin down. Just 18 months ago, the then boss of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) was opening the FE Week apprenticeships conference with critical comments about subcontracting. “Its use as an income source for the lead provider with little benefit to the employer or learner certainly shouldn’t be accepted,” he then said.

Since this August though, Dawe finds himself at the head a large and well-established subcontractor. The Skills Network works, he tells me, with over 300 colleges, some 40 of them on subcontracting terms. The rest are buying in blended learning solutions, among other services.

But there is no dissonance in that for Dawe. He still holds his long-standing policy positions, advocating for a national cap of 20 per cent on management fees and clear sector guidelines. “I’m a great believer that if what’s expected is clearly defined – the quality mechanisms that should be in place, the monitoring, as much for the prime [the college] as the subcontractor – you can get really, really good delivery for those learners.”

But Dawe stops short of calling for regulation beyond the management fee cap. “When we’ve had issues like Brooklands College, that absolutely shouldn’t have happened, but under any rules, it should never have got to that place.” 

If there was a more flexible approach to the funding, you wouldn’t need subcontracting

Brooklands was placed in “supervised college status” by the ESFA and underwent an FE commissioner review a year ago after it was revealed by FE Week that it had handed over £20 million to shadowy subcontractors who had failed to deliver the goods. For Dawe though, it seems, supply and demand should bring about the improvements needed to prevent another Brooklands-type scandal.

“I worked with The Skills Network when I was at AELP, helping put together what good practice looks like in subcontracting.” He goes on to list a number of ways the organisation holds itself accountable to the colleges it works with. It’s clear from his answer that he feels that if more subcontractors held themselves to higher standards, an element of self-regulation would make providers such as SCL Security Ltd, the company that received the £20 million from Brooklands, unmarketable to colleges.

But that’s the system as it is, and Dawe is more inclined to push for a substantial rethink of that system – one that sees colleges hold the purse strings and relies on their procurement acuity to deliver for students. Picking up on Boris Johnson’s announcement last month of a lifetime skills guarantee, extending to all adults the free first level three qualification that was previously restricted to under-23s, Dawe says: “If there was a more flexible approach to the funding, you wouldn’t need subcontracting. Something like 80 to 90 per cent of the national AEB [adult education budget] is grant-funded. Boris’s announcement is the beginning of skills accounts, as far as I can see. That puts the purchasing power in the individual’s hands, and then lets them choose which provider gives them what’s best.”

Two months into his new role, Dawe is already looking past the status quo – not just to a realignment of its priorities but of the sector as a whole. No doubt, his far-sightedness about the sector’s direction of travel was an attractive proposition for The Skills Network. So must his track record have been. Yet his appointment surely involved a calculated risk too; the very traits that make him a leader with vision also make him something of a non-conformist.

Doing these VAT returns. That was the moment I thought ‘This is it. This is me.’

Raised in Bromley in Kent and educated at the private Trinity School in Croydon, Dawe had a privileged upbringing. From Trinity, he hopped to Cambridge for a degree in economics and then to KPMG. Already, the choice of degree and profession was something of an act of rebellion. Dawe’s grandfather was a headteacher. His father was a senior civil servant with the DfE and Harold Wilson’s private secretary at Number 10. His uncle was a lecturer in FE. And if education hadn’t percolated, his mother was a nurse who today still volunteers in hospices. The family was ostensibly well embedded in the public sector, an ethos that can’t have failed to permeate the home environment.

But another influence came to bear on Dawe’s teenage years. Washing cars and gardening for pocket money, one day a neighbour and family friend invited him in to help him with his tax return instead. “And so I went indoors, was given a cup of tea and a Kit Kat, with Big Daddy wrestling on the telly, with a calculator doing these VAT returns for him. That was the moment I thought ‘This is it. This is me’.”

Warmth, tea and a pay rise helped, but Dawe still says he was “destined to be an accountant”. He remembers with evident excitement when his new employer got one of the first spreadsheet programmes to run on a personal computer – SuperCalc. “I learned how to use it and taught him, but then I used to do all his projections for all his clients when I was aged 14 and even then earning £5 an hour!”

But the family influence ran deeper than perhaps the rebellious young Dawe had realised, and it wasn’t long after joining KPMG that he changed tack. “I had a look up above me and it was ten years of tedious work to become a partner and I thought ‘Time to get out’.” It was 1993. Colleges were being incorporated and looking for accountants. Dawe made the jump. “I cut my teeth down at Canterbury College for seven years working for Sue Pember. We did all sorts of exciting stuff: building new colleges and prison education and a whole range of things like that.” Ironically, it wasn’t until he received a funding letter for Canterbury with his dad’s signature at the bottom that he realised the import of the work he did. “I genuinely had no idea. That was the first time I realised the connection between the job I just got and what my dad was doing.”

When I joined, AELP was known but not listened to as much as it should be

From Canterbury, Dawe moved on to his first dalliance with e-learning as group education director for eGS, a company founded by Labour MP Liam Byrne. Three years later, he found himself working with Pember again, this time at the DfES on the adult basic skills and further education strategies. Another three years later, he turned his back on national strategy to get stuck into local implementation as the principal and chief executive of Oaklands College in Hertfordshire. 

“To be fair to the governors, they took a risk with me,” he says. “I think I was against four other existing principals.” That risk paid off. Within five years, Oaklands had gone from ‘unsatisfactory’ to “solid ‘good'”. That mission accomplished, Dawe sat down with the governors to talk about his vision for the next phase. “I wanted to bring Hertfordshire together as one college. We had very open discussions, but they weren’t really up for it.”

A pattern emerges, and Dawe is frank about his “five-year cycle”. He joins with a vision, delivers the goods, stays long enough to be held accountable and then: “I have a view on how I could stay on in a role,” he says, “and if not, I agree to move on.”

Five years at Oaklands were followed by five years as chief executive of OCR at the time Ofqual was being created and “sharpening its teeth and claws”. Of the current exam travails, he says: “You can never do an excellent job in the exam board, because everyone just expects you to perform well. But anything that goes wrong is a massive negative because it affects people’s lives.”

After OCR, a short stint working with the FE commissioner’s office under Sir David Collins led him to the AELP job. “When I joined, membership was down about 500. AELP was known but not listened to as much as it should be. It was just a year before the levy was being introduced and the board was very keen to have someone to drive the AELP agenda.” He describes a period when “the employer was king and the provider was pushed to one side” and “public battles because we weren’t getting anywhere in private conversations”. 

I had people calling me who had refused to take my calls for the previous four years

In August, he left an organisation with a renewed membership and a reinvigorated voice in the sector. But for all the battles over that period, the real breakthrough, he says, came with Covid. “It was like a 180-degree shift almost overnight. I had people calling me who had refused to take my calls for the previous four years.”

The calls came because AELP had grown into its position and was ready to receive them, testament to another transformative half-decade. 

It’s a truism to say that nobody knows what the sector will look like post-Covid and post-Brexit. And it’s probably not even all that true. Taking Dawe’s far-sightedness and his move to The Skills Network into account, it’s clear that blended learning and independent provision are likely to be key battlegrounds.

And Dawe is ready for those fights. You won’t pin him to a clear career trajectory, but you can certainly pin him to that.

Colleges applying for bailouts will NOT be automatically placed in formal intervention, DfE says

Colleges which apply for government bailouts will not automatically fall into formal intervention from now on, the Department for Education has said. 

The department’s ‘College oversight’ policy was today amended to say they reserve the right, where a college makes a request for emergency funding to continue running, to place the college into formal intervention or not. 

A DfE spokesperson confirmed the amendment means colleges will not “automatically” be placed into formal intervention if applying for exceptional funding. 

They said the department is providing “maximum support” to colleges during the Covid-19 pandemic, and “we will continue to intervene where colleges are at financial risk”. 

However, they added, “we want to make sure our action fits the college circumstances,” based on “thorough” assessment. 

Colleges which are placed in such measures are usually published online, with the subsequent assessment by the commissioner explaining if it was because they had applied for emergency funding. 

However, if colleges do not automatically enter intervention following an application for emergency funding, it could lead to the public being left in the dark as to which colleges requested bailouts. 

Skills minister Gillian Keegan told the House of Commons last month five colleges had needed emergency funding due to the Covid pandemic – the department has refused to reveal the names of the providers. 

This comes after the number of colleges entering formal intervention rose by two-thirds in 2018-19, according to FE Commissioner Richard Atkins’ annual report from February. 

An application for emergency funding was what brought formal intervention down on Hadlow and West Kent and Ashford colleges, the first two FE providers to enter the insolvency regime. 

And earlier this year, Greater Brighton Metropolitan College was put in formal intervention after it applied for emergency funding. 

The amended oversight policy does warn that if a college is placed into formal intervention, it will trigger a notice to improve from the government.

Here’s what we learnt from running digital bootcamps

Bootcamps are a step in the right direction – but lessons need to be learned from pilots like ours, writes Clare Hatton

The prime minister’s recent funding announcement for digital skills “bootcamps”, which will deliver short IT courses to boost employability, forms part of the government’s commitment to improve the UK’s digital capabilities and to “build back better” from coronavirus.

These bootcamps are being built on pilot programmes run in my combined authority, which represents 12 local authorities and three local enterprise partnerships, as well as in Greater Manchester and other established providers.

But there are lessons that should be learned from our “Beat the Bots” programme in the West Midlands Combined Authority, especially around responding to regional demands.

Introduced in 2019, Beat the Bots was designed for two groups: unemployed people in need of skills and training, and employed people in low-wage markets and at risk of automation.

We have worked with 20 providers, including colleges, training providers and new organisations such as School of Code and refugee help organisation ACH.

Through full- and part-time bootcamps we covered everything from coding, software development, data engineering, web design and infrastructure with learners.

The first bootcamps have engaged 800 residents, of whom about half were unemployed when they came to us. The majority are still in training, with the aim of getting 70 per cent into jobs upon completion.

So far we have supported 100 of the 107 previously unemployed people who finished the bootcamps into meaningful employment and directed more women and people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds into the sector.

We have supported 100 out of 107 previously unemployed people into meaningful work

We are now considering how to use the additional £1.5 million funding to expand our offer and hopefully share what we have learnt.

For those authorities introducing bootcamps, here are some words of wisdom:

1. Work with diverse organisations to attract different groups of people. This will enable you to engage more people with special educational needs, BAME communities, refugees, older people and women.

2. Develop an employer-based approach. Employer-led projects and masterclasses allowed us to look beyond qualifications to develop the training to deliver the skills employers actually need. The result is a programme that employers can reliably recruit from.

3. Focus on your region. Co-designed programmes aren’t feasible if you use a national one-size-fits-all approach. Working with local employers provides a clearer route to employment and reflects regional nuances.

4. Warm the market. Leverage existing relationships by involving both training providers and employers in conversations about the programme’s development to create a more cohesive offering. But also take care to avoid conflicts of interest, given the competitive procurement landscape.

5. Attract expertise. Trainers must be experts in their field and have up-to-date market experience. The additional money to hire these trainers may pose a challenge for some colleges.

More broadly, we would also recommend undertaking reviews of contracting models used. Because we were in a pilot phase, we were able to experiment with smaller grants rather than contract for service and sub-contracting models, in order to minimise and share delivery risk.

But the recently announced funding is limited to using a more standard contracting model, so it would be worthwhile considering joint ventures to provide a degree of flexibility for providers.

At the WMCA, meanwhile, we need to roll the bootcamp into our education budget, to ensure these bootcamps don’t end with the pilot.

Finally, these bootcamps can only be successful through a regional and skills-based approach – and that’s why we are calling for the devolution of the National Skills Fund.

Rather than funding being distributed nationally through the DfE, we believe it needs to go directly to combined authorities in the same way as the adult education budget.

The digital bootcamps are a step in the right direction, but the bootcamps must be managed and funded at a regional level. Then they can really help create a talent pipeline for the 21st century.

After Black Lives Matter, it’s time FE led the way on inclusion

FE has some of the most diverse classrooms around and should be setting an example when it comes to representation, writes Teresa Carroll

Teaching and learning at its best should reflect the diversity of our learners’ worlds.

Covid-19 has brought into focus the disparity in learners’ experiences from a social and economic perspective. Meanwhile, movements such as Black Lives Matter have highlighted that systems in Britain (sometimes unintentionally) can default to a white, middle-class, heterosexual, ableist norm that fails to acknowledge the full range of our society.

We want learners in FE to see themselves in the curriculum and in the workforce too. Learning is about enriching lives so that learners can become the people they want to be. A learning experience underpinned by “if you can see it, you can be it” makes this much more likely.

That means that we want our learners to be taught more often by people who look and sound like them. But our most recent staff individualised record report, which brought together findings from 186 FE providers, outlines that the 84 per cent of the staff workforce identify as white British; 81 per cent report having no disability and 81 per cent identify as heterosexual.

Meanwhile, the workforce is predominantly female, at 64 per cent, and the average age is 46 years old.

That’s before we even consider FE staff who experience intersectionality of identities, such as being both black and disabled.

Only by fully acknowledging and embracing diversity in all its forms can the FE sector go some way to narrowing the achievement gap in the classroom.

FE is especially well placed to do this, as many colleges have some of the most diverse classrooms in the education system – across age, socio-economic background and ethnicity.

According to the Association of Colleges, 16 per cent of 16- to 18-year-olds claimed free school meals at age 15 last year, compared with just eight per cent in maintained school and academy sixth forms.

An inclusive learning experience is one that is emotionally nurturing

Meanwhile, about 17 per cent of college learners have a learning difficulty, disability or difference, compared with about 15 per cent in schools.

We also know that more than 30 per cent of people who enter the prison system have a learning disability or difficulty. This isn’t good enough.

Much more needs to be done. For instance, in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), there is evidence that inequity begins early and becomes more pronounced along the educational journey. Male learners outnumber female learners in STEM apprenticeships by 9:1.

Meanwhile, around 27 per cent of young carers experience educational difficulties, including disrupted school or college attendance ̶ a figure that rises to 40 per cent where children care for a relative with drug or alcohol problems.

At the other end of the age spectrum, 99,000 college students are aged 60 and over and we want to make sure that there are opportunities to harness their skills. What are we doing to support them in their next career move?

Finally, almost one-third of adults in FE colleges are from an ethnic minority background, and about a quarter of students aged 16 to 18 are.

So serious work still needs to be done to help teachers challenge stereotypes and avoid reinforcing inequity.

An inclusive learning experience is one that is emotionally nurturing, where learners feel they belong and are valued for who they are, including through the way we listen to them.

We want teaching and learning to be a truly positive experience where learners and staff recognise that learning is about so much more than qualification attainment.

A curriculum that reflects the diversity of modern Britain, and particularly draws on theory and practice from a diverse range of academics, will go some way to engage learners with content that is relevant to their lives.

And remember, it’s important to remember that every learner is different and learns differently. Get to know your learners ̶ if we take the time to listen we have so much to learn from them.

The DfE’s college merger process seriously ‘requires improvement’

These are three steps the government could take to ensure no other college has to endure the protracted process we have, writes Sarah Stannard

As you may expect of the principal of a college on the road to merger for five years now, I have strong views about mergers.

You may suppose that after such prolonged uncertainty I would think mergers are a bad thing ̶ but that’s not the case.

I have worked in colleges (and companies) during and after mergers. Although there are challenges to doing the process well and making the new organisation effective, I think mergers are a positive way to resolve many issues.

That’s particularly true when policy and funding changes mean colleges become too small to exist as individual institutions. Mergers can allow further education colleges to respond to changing circumstances and continue to meet the needs of the communities we serve.

In Southampton and the surrounding area, it has been clear for a long time that the existing further education eco-system is unsustainable.

When I took up my post in 2013, it was in the knowledge that there were a lot of small and medium-size colleges competing in the same area. In fact, there are eight colleges within 15 miles of the city centre.

Local stakeholders agree there are too many colleges close together

Local stakeholders (governors, MPs, the city council and the local enterprise partnership) all agree that so many colleges close together have an overall negative effect – with destructive competition resulting in too many financially weak institutions.

Totton College was the first institution to need significant intervention and since then, City College Southampton and others have needed financial support or FE commissioner intervention.

So the case for City College’s merger within this local ecosystem is understood and supported by stakeholders, the ESFA and the FE commissioner.

Why, then, after five years has it not happened? And how could the situation be improved, so that no other college has to suffer such a protracted process as we have?

To summarise, we have undergone three separate merger proposals. First was a proposal from Solent University, which was refused by the Department for Education because of concerns about the suggested governance model and not being value for money. Second came a proposal from Eastleigh College which was refused as also not being value for money. Most recently a proposal from Itchen College was refused due to concern that it would not create a financially viable college.

A major issue for us has been the very slow pace of the proposal process and decision-making. It was 18 months from the local area review’s recommendation for the first merger to the DfE’s final refusal, eight months from the second and 12 months from the third.

This has resulted in years of uncertainty for staff and students. Will they be here next year, they wonder? Governors, leaders and staff have been astonishingly resilient and in a recent survey, 97 per cent said they are proud to work at the college. But it must not be assumed that this precariousness hasn’t had an impact on us.

Clearly, deciding about merger proposals is complex, but here is what I would do to improve the situation:

1. Ensure strong project management of merger proposals through them being owned by a single DfE team that would be accountable for progress and bringing processes to a timely conclusion.

2. Second a DfE expert full-time (perhaps from the FE commissioner’s team) to the merging colleges to work with them on the proposal. This would ensure the DfE’s success criteria are fully understood by all parties and that there should be no nasty late surprises. More capacity and merger expertise would also be available to the bidding colleges, which they may not otherwise have.

3. Set a clear timeline for the proposal’s submission, with deadlines along the way so all concerned know what progress has been made and can address issues as they arise, not at the last minute.

In the meantime… I look forward to our next merger being swift and positive.

DfE lifts all provider T Level restrictions from 2024

The Department for Education has announced today any provider delivering 16 to 19 study programmes will be able to run T Levels from 2024. 

In an update to its ‘T Levels: next steps for providers’ document, the Education and Skills Funding Agency said: “By 2024 all T Levels will have been delivered for at least a year and we will be moving towards full national roll-out.  

“Therefore from 2024, T Levels will be available to be delivered by all providers delivering 16 to 19 study programmes.” 

This will affect colleges, school and independent sixth forms, and certain independent training providers, and will come after the remainder of the 25 T Level routes are intended to have been rolled-out in 2023. 

The first three T Levels were made available this September, with another seven yet to be rolled out next year, followed by eight more in 2022. 

It was announced in June the DfE had dropped the requirement for training providers to be rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted to deliver T-levels. But providers rated ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ were only allowed to teach T Level routes introduced in 2020 and 2021. 

In a new consultation on level 3 qualifications launched today, it was confirmed adults will be able to take T Levels from 2023, having previously been restricted to 16 to 19-year-olds, after education secretary Gavin Williamson made an “absolute guarantee” in the House of Commons that adult learners will be allowed to take the courses. 

Today’s change, allowing any and all to run the government’s flagship qualifications, comes after schools and colleges have struggled to attract learners to the brand-new programme.  

FE Week analysis in September found the providers which launched T Levels had missed two-thirds of their enrolment targets. 

Out of 44 colleges and schools starting T Levels this year, twelve colleges and four school sixth forms provided breakdowns of their 28 enrolment targets, showing 19 (or 68 per cent) were under target. 

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 331

Your weekly guide to who’s new and who’s leaving.

John Cope, Non-executive board member, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education

Start date: November 2020

Concurrent job: Director of strategy, policy and public affairs, UCAS

Interesting fact: He once backpacked from one side of Mexico to the other

Dayle Bayliss, Non-executive board member, Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education

Start date: November 2020

Concurrent job: Chartered building surveyor and director, Dayle Bayliss Ltd

Interesting fact: She enjoys growing and cooking her own food with her family

Kirstie Donnelly, Co-chair, Federation of Awarding Bodies

Start date: December 2020

Concurrent job: Chief executive, City & Guilds Group

Interesting fact: She once gate-crashed a Gloria Estefan birthday party in Miami (by accident) many years ago and managed to stay the whole evening!

Alan Woods, Co-chair, Federation of Awarding Bodies

Start date: December 2020

Concurrent job: Chief executive, Vocational Training Charitable Trust

Interesting fact: He delivered five babies while working for the London Ambulance Service

Nigel Smalley, Director of learning for construction and engineering, Bournemouth & Poole College

Start date: October 2020

Previous role: Curriculum manager for construction and engineering, Newbury College

Interesting fact: While serving in the army he took part in campaigns such as Bosnia and Northern Ireland

Colleges have key role to play in maximising SME innovation

The post-Covid business recovery is going to rely on innovation as never before. And this is where FE colleges will prove crucial, says Marguerite Hogg.

Earlier this year during lockdown, the Association of Colleges ran the first home learning webinars, where colleges and technology providers shared advice and ideas about online teaching and learning.

What was apparent was not only how quickly the sector adapted to partial closure but how much excellent and innovative online practice was already in place. Colleges find ways to innovate every day. As
the UK continues to grapple with Covid-19, never has there been a more crucial time to cement the link between colleges, innovation and business.

During the summer the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) released the results of its UK Innovation Survey 2019. It is impossible to read the survey findings without thinking about how productivity, skills and the labour market run in parallel. The results showed an 11 percentage
point decrease in innovation activity within UK businesses, down to 38 per cent, and the perhaps unsurprising outcome that large businesses are more likely to have innovated than small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs). The average college works with hundreds of local SMEs and trains 1,300 apprentices. While the BEIS survey reported that there is some collaboration with higher education institutions, there is an untapped resource available in colleges.

We ran our own survey in the summer to gauge what colleges are doing to support innovation growth and development with SMEs and businesses in their local areas. Colleges are well-placed to help their network of local SMEs, who do not always have the connections or capacity to adopt and benefit from new technology and business practices in order to improve their own productivity. There are mutual
benefits of innovation activity with SMEs as shared knowledge can be brought into the curriculum to directly support and improve the employability skills of students and apprentices.

Currently, a lack of capital funding limits colleges from developing specific innovation spaces within colleges and a lack of financial support stops them from being able to fund business innovation account managers to work with SMEs along with time constraints.

If, in the FE Reform white paper, the government sets out a national remit for colleges to lead in this space, along with the provision of support in capital and revenue funding, this will be a significant leap forward.

We would also recommend that better collaboration between further education colleges in local areas should be encouraged in order to share best practice.

Equally important, colleges need to secure resources to enable time alleviation, giving college staff the time and space to engage in innovation development and research activities.

The BEIS report reveals that one of the success factors for those businesses that actively innovate is the higher number of employees who hold a degree or higher-level qualification in comparison to those non-innovating businesses.

In fact, according to the survey results, the ratio of higher skilled/qualified employees to lower skilled employees is slightly higher for SMEs than it is for large businesses. There’s huge opportunity to look at skills at levels 3 to 5 and how they may be equally useful, and the role colleges play in training at these levels and at higher levels.

Prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, the UK government was turning towards its ambitious “levelling-up” agenda. Colleges, as community hubs, play a central role in ensuring that no one is left behind. The AoC’s recently published bi-annual research shows that 68 per cent of SMEs have said that to both “thrive and survive”, skills must be a top priority.

We’ve already seen colleges innovating swiftly in response to Covid-19, for example, by producing 3D printed face shields for the NHS. Time and time again colleges prove themselves to be responsive, innovative and resilient. A national innovation remit for FE, appropriately resourced, won’t help the country just in times of crisis but in times of stability, growth and opportunity, enabling colleges to lead in this space to initiate a place-based business and skills innovation revolution.

Gateshead College to remain standalone after merger snub

Bids from two north-east colleges to merge with an embattled neighbour have been snubbed by the FE commissioner.

FE Week understands that Newcastle College and Tyne Coast College were both in the frame to amalgamate with Gateshead College, which has been undergoing a structure and prospects appraisal with the FE commissioner after a £6 million black hole was found in its books.

But the FE commissioner has now recommended to the government that a merger is taken off the table and the appraisal has instead concluded that Gateshead should remain standalone.

Following the news, NCG, which runs Newcastle College, said it wants to see Gateshead “go from strength to strength” and that it looks forward to “being able to work with Gateshead, both as a respected neighbour and as a community of excellent FE practitioners”.

Tyne Coast refused to comment.

A Department for Education spokesperson said the recommendation awaits ministerial sign-off and is subject to a series of conditions – which they would not disclose.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency and the FE commissioner, Richard Atkins, would “continue to work closely with the college to monitor progress and support a long-term sustainable solution to provide high-quality opportunities for learners,” the spokesperson added.

Gateshead said it was “delighted” with the recommendation, which “is not only good news for all our staff and students but also our regional partners, who wanted us to remain an independent college.

“Whilst we don’t underestimate the hard work that lies ahead, this shows confidence in our ability to deliver the recovery plan and recognises everyone’s efforts to maintain a high-quality teaching and learning experience for all of our students throughout this challenging time.”

Gateshead College had to call in forensic auditors after discovering in October 2019 that it would have a £6 million deficit in its 2018/19 financial statements.

The FE commissioner conducted an assessment of the college in December 2019 and found the underpinning cause of the shortfall was “a failure by the board and the senior leaders at the college to address the very significant reduction in income that was the result of the loss of the European Social Fund contract”.

Gateshead had, in fact, been in deficit for years, but this had been disguised by a misstatement of certain bills, reads the commissioner’s report.

The deficit had been worsened by “incorrect” budgeting of around 40 per cent for subcontracting costs, which was a “major” cause of the size of the deficit.

The DfE delayed the publication of FE commissioner report because of the Covid-19 pandemic, so the assessment of Gateshead was only published earlier this month.

In a letter accompanying Atkins’ report dated from July, skills minister Gillian Keegan said: “It is clear that significant failures in leadership and governance have allowed for the serious deterioration of the college’s financial position.”

Judith Doyle

Principal Judith Doyle, once the highest-paid in the country, resigned from the college in January, followed by the chair, John McCabe, that same month.

Trouble-shooter Andy Cole is now running the college, with former Middlesbrough College principal John Hogg as chair, and a financial recovery plan has been developed.

Atkins’ report shone a light on how remuneration for senior leaders and postholders had included an annual pay award “significantly” in excess of that paid to college staff, and that pay rises for senior management were given without regular performance review or appraisals.