The founder of a firm at the centre of a major education data breach involving betting companies was subject to a previous government investigation.
Questions have now been asked as to why the firm, which offers screening checks, was allowed access to a database with the records of 28 million young people, meant only for vetted education training providers.
Unions have slammed the Department for Education’s due diligence processes, with one calling for an “urgent investigation looking at the criteria the DfE uses to grant access to the data”.
“DfE has failed these young people by not performing the relevant due diligence”
According to a DfE list, more than 12,000 organisations have successfully applied to have access to the Learning Records Service (LRS).
Earlier this week, an inquiry was launched by the ESFA after the Sunday Times reported that the LRS had been accessed by data intelligence firm GB Group – whose clients include 32Red and Betfair among other gambling companies.
The data contains names, ages and addresses of young people aged 14 and over in schools and colleges across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Privacy rules state that young people’s personal information should only be accessed through the LRS by organisations “specifically linked to your education and training”.
The DfE suspended access to the system this week in order to carry out the “necessary checks to ensure data security”. It reopened on Thursday.
According to the department, the “education training provider” which “wrongly provided access” to the LRS was Trustopia, a firm co-founded by Ronan Smith in August 2018.
The department said the company had access to the LRS because they registered with a UK Provider Reference Number (UKPRN) on the UK Register of Learning Providers (UKRLP) as an apprenticeship provider.
Trustopia is not on the government’s approved register of apprenticeship providers and can therefore not deliver apprenticeships in any capacity.
Its “nature of business”, according to Companies house, is “other information technology service activities”.
Smith declined to comment on the breach when approached by FE Week, but did confirm Trustopia is not a training provider, nor has it ever been.
It is understood that the firm has worked with education providers in the past.
A previous investigation by FE Week exposed how any company can gain a UKPRN within 24 hours, simply by providing their limited company number.
And a UKRLP spokesperson said at the time: “It is up to stakeholders who use the UKPRNs to ensure that they carry out the necessary due diligence appropriate to their scope when engaging with providers.”
Once a company has a UKPRN, it then needs to fill in a three-page application form to access the LRS.
The service is designed to help training providers verify their potential student’s previous educational achievements and their eligibility for additional funding.
The DfE would not say why Trustopia was given access to the LRS, or what it used the service for.
A spokesperson would say only that “a full investigation is under way and we will share any further information with you in due course.”
Prior to co-founding Trustopia, Smith ran a private provider called Edudo, which was investigated by the ESFA in 2017. The agency subsequently terminated the firm’s contracts, which were used to deliver courses funded through advanced learner loans.
Smith then transferred Edudo’s assets to a new company called Learning Republic and went bust. Hundreds of learners were subsequently left thousands of pounds in debt with no qualifications to show for it.
An FE Week investigation last year found that some of these learners, most of whom were Polish construction workers, had claimed they never started the course with Edudo – or even realised they had signed up for one.
Smith declared as bankrupt in November 2019.
Juliana Mohamad Noor, the vice president for further education at the National Union of Students, said her union is “shocked that this level of personal data of students was readily available without adequate checks on who can access it”.
The DfE has “failed these young people by not performing the relevant due diligence assessment of Trustopia and its owner,” she added.
“We are calling for a full and thorough investigation of this case to ensure that no more harm is done to the students involved.”
“We are calling for a full and thorough investigation of this case”
Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the NEU, said: “Parents will be rightly concerned about this data breach.
“There needs to be an urgent investigation looking at the criteria the DfE uses to grant access to the data and the identities of organisations which already have access.
“Given the hugely sensitive nature of this data it is also vital that there are rigorous checks on any organisations which are granted access.”
According to the Sunday Times report, GB Group used the LRS for age and identity verification services for its clients.
The DfE this week referred the breach to data regulators the Information Commissioner’s Office. An ICO spokesperson confirmed it has “received a report” from the DfE and “will be making enquiries”.
A DfE spokesperson said Trustopia “broke their agreement with us” with regards to the LRS.
“This was completely unacceptable and we have immediately stopped the firm’s access and ended our agreement with them. We will be taking the strongest possible action,” they added.
A GB Group spokesperson said: “We can confirm that we use the Learning Records Service dataset via a third party. We take claims of this nature very seriously and, depending on the results of our review, we will take appropriate action.”
Trustopia did not respond to requests for comment.
Parents are lobbying the government to restart funding for an arts and media provider that trained mostly high-needs learners.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency terminated its contracts with Sheffield Independent Film and Television (SHIFT) last year, after it was rated ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted.
A report by the education watchdog, published in February 2019, said inspectors found the quality of provision for 51 learners on 16 to 19 study programmes, a third of whom had special educational needs, had “declined and was now inadequate” since an earlier grade two report.
The proportion of its learners who go on to further study, apprenticeships or employment was “low” and Ofsted warned that learners make “slow progress” in achieving qualifications and developing skills.
However, a parent petition says the watchdog is “ill-equipped and inadequately trained to judge specialist provision working with students who have complex needs”.
They have said the provision on offer at SHIFT was “specialist and unique”, as well as “learner-focused using gentle teaching techniques which engages the students”.
Ofsted defended itself by stating that all of its inspectors complete an extensive training programme before undertaking inspection work and inspectors with particular expertise in areas like SEND are recruited too.
“We are confident we made accurate judgements about the provision delivered by Sheffield Independent Film and Television Limited,” a spokesperson added.
SHIFT director Kathy Loizou said parents were “absolutely distraught” that the provider had to close. They believed their children would not have gotten through education without their training.
A lot of the young people’s needs were connected with anxiety, meaning they would have found it “difficult” to go to a learning environment like an FE college, Loizou said. She added that although colleges do “great work under very extreme funding circumstances,” they are often too big for some young people.
“We provided a safe and effective place for learners with complex needs to re-engage. We felt we were especially good at that.”
The petitioners, who are calling for the immediate reinstatement of SHIFT’s funding by the ESFA and for Sheffield City Council to take action to influence the ESFA, said there is no other provision like what SHIFT did in the area.
“Young people in north England are put at a disadvantage in relation to their peers in the south,” they say, compared to providers in the south like Dv8 Training (Brighton).
Dv8, which also caters for high needs learners and offers arts and media courses, received a grade four in November 2018; yet has been allowed to continue its provision, albeit while subject to two monitoring visits in May and September.
Asked to explain this discrepancy, the Department for Education said that while it is normal to terminate contracts for independent providers which receive a grade four, if there is evidence learners’ interests would be best served by maintaining the contract, they will do so under strict conditions with rigorous monitoring.
The spokesperson did say factors such as whether there are other providers in the local area to support learners are taken into account.
“Protecting the interests of learners is always our main priority, and Ofsted’s published assessments of the inadequate quality of provision is always taken seriously,” they said.
Dv8 did not respond to requests for comment about why it was allowed to keep its contract. Sheffield City Council declined to comment on the petition.
The petition had 49 signatures at the time of going to press. It can be viewed by visiting https://bit.ly/2uqrl7p
Show your support for the bid at FEWeek.co.uk/BackABid and on social media using #BackABid.
This is the decade when we can ignite a passion for skills in the UK. But it will require a bold ambition and all corners of the UK to come together.
Last summer we crashed out of the top 10 medal table at WorldSkills in Russia, behind France, Germany and Austria. Team UK in previous years have sat comfortably in the top 10. We are the 6th largest economy on the globe, but just managed to hit position 12 at WorldSkills 2019. It was rather disappointing. Whilst we had some world class performances from the team, it wasn’t enough.
WorldSkills UK have had a tough decade, like many, with continuous uncertainty around funding and subsequent budget cuts.
As a sector we should unite behind reinvesting in WorldSkills UK and a bold vision for their next decade. The government, in recent years, have banged the drum for their support of upskilling the nation and reinvesting in the skills system. What we need now is a common ambition that we can all unite around.
FE Week is today launching our ‘Back A Bid’ campaign for the UK to host WorldSkills in 2027.
The chief executive of WordSkills UK used this paper earlier in January to suggest that their organisation was starting to look at whether we could host a future competition.
It would be an amazing opportunity for our sector and the UK to play host to the global skills community.
A bid is an opportunity for our sector to truly think big and demonstrate a bold ambition. We can exploit the process of bidding, and hopefully hosting, as a catalyst for change. Adopting an ambition to implement international benchmarking across the sector and thus creating a stronger economic future for more young people.
Winning the bid would also see the UK host ministers and, business and education leaders from across the globe as part of an international skills summit. A platform from which we can demonstrate we are developing the skills needed to attract investment and subsequently jobs for our highly-skilled learners.
The cost of hosting the competition would be around £100 million. Funding could be sourced from three areas, one third coming from government, one third from sponsorship and the remainder coming from delegate packages and competition fees. Not an eye watering sum of money when you consider the short and longer term impact hosting could have.
The next step for government is to announce their support of a feasibility study, which of course will require public money and time. The Secretary of State appears to be supportive, in principle, but he will need some encouragement. That’s where the sector and your stakeholders come in!
The UK last hosted the competition in 2011, a major legacy from 2011 was the annual WorldSkills UK Live at Birmingham’s NEC.
It’s early doors, but now is your opportunity to help shape what 2027’s legacy could be. The sector needs to demonstrate there is a healthy appetite working together on a bid and leaping back up the international medal table.
Show your support for the bid at FEWeek.co.uk/BackABid and on social media using #BackABid.
One in five colleges have not published board minutes in over a year, an FE Week investigation has found.
The news will come as a shock to FE Commissioner Richard Atkins who recently criticised Hull College for being less than transparent by not making its minutes available to staff and stakeholders for the same period of time.
The leaked report said the practice “needs to change” (see below).
And Lord Agnew, the minister responsible for college oversight, said at an event in May that good governance was “something of a personal crusade”.
Although there is no fixed rule on whether colleges must publish their board minutes online – or how frequently – “accountability” is considered a requirement by the Department for Education.
A spokesperson for the DfE said they “expect colleges – like all education institutions – to be open and transparent about their operations”, including “publishing minutes in a timely manner”.
Guidance from the Association of Colleges (AoC) states: “In the spirit of open governance and accountability, approved minutes should be published on the college website”.
FE Week’s analysis was based on an audit of more than 250 general FE and sixth form college websites.
The analysis also showed that 14 colleges appear to not have any openly accessible corporation or governing minutes on their websites.
Some, including South Devon College and Warrington and Vale Royal College, advertise that they can be obtained on request. Others, like Portmouth College’s website, state that permission needs to be granted to access their minutes.
Some websites, including those of New College Stamford and Fircroft College of Adult Education, stated minutes were published online, but no links could be found by FE Week, while others appeared to have no specific references at all.
The AoC’s 2015 report on ‘Creating Excellence in College Governance’ confirmed that, under the 2008 “instrument”, governing bodies must meet at least once each term.
In 2019, as part of its ‘Governors’ Council Code of Good Governance for English Colleges’, the association added: “The board should conduct its affairs as openly and transparently as possible.
“…With the continuing trend for greater transparency and ‘student/customer’ protection, we cannot stress enough the importance of being proactive in providing this assurance if we are to avoid future legislative or regulatory creep.”
College corporations can decide whether to include this requirement in their own rules, but some providers are not abiding by these either.
NCG’s instrument of government states it “shall ensure that a copy of the draft or signed minutes of every meeting of the corporation… shall be placed on the institution’s website, and shall, despite any rules the corporation may make regarding the archiving of such material, remain on its website for a minimum period of 12 months”.
However, it is one of 25 colleges that have not updated their board minutes since 2018.
In addition, all of the archived minutes on NCG’s website are currently without working links.
The most recently available board minutes for four colleges were from 2017.
After being asked why this was so in the case of Chichester College Group, a spokesperson told FE Week: “It is our policy to publish the minutes of our governing body meetings on our group website.
“Unfortunately, the minutes have not been appearing on the site. As soon as this was identified, we were able to rectify this error.”
Many of the published sets of minutes across the colleges were also incomplete.
For example, York College, which has published regular governing body minutes since March 2012 up to July 2019 was missing the minutes from its March 2018 meeting until contacted by FE Week.
A spokesperson for York College described it as an omission which has now been corrected.
Education secretary Gavin Williamson has applauded the UK’s ambition to host an upcoming WorldSkills competition – and is encouraging the sector to back a bid.
His remarks come as FE Week launches its ‘Back A Bid’ campaign to prove there is sufficient interest in hosting the competition, affectionately known as the ‘Skills Olympics’, in 2027.
It follows on from WorldSkills UK “exploring” whether to bid to host the competition, as outlined by the organisation’s chief executive Neil Bentley-Gockmann in an interview with FE Week earlier this month.
Williamson said the competition “is a fantastic way to showcase the very best young talent from across the country,” and he “applauds WorldSkills UK’s ambition to host a future WorldSkills competition here in the UK”.
“I look forward to hearing the extent of support for this from the sector.”
FE Week kicked off its campaign with a call by Shane Mann, managing director of FE Week’s publisher Lsect, for the sector to “unite behind reinvesting in WorldSkills UK and a bold vision for their next decade”.
It would be great if we could mount a bid for a city other than London
Mann said holding the international skills tournament here would “be an amazing opportunity for our sector and the UK to play host to the global skills community”.
Shadow FE minister Emma Hardy has offered her full support, as she says the WorldSkills competition “is a wonderful opportunity for young people to highlight their skills and talents on the world stage”.
“I’ve seen the transformation in young people’s confidence and employability after developing skills and being chosen to represent their country.”
The chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education Jennifer Coupland said her government quango also “backs the bid”.
She would find it “incredibly exciting” to host WorldSkills 2027, because of the chance to “showcase the fantastic skills we have in this country” and “really energise young people and training providers to hit the highest standards”.
The possibility of hosting has already attracted support from sector organisations like the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, with chief executive Mark Dawe saying “now” is the right time to bring the competition back to the country, after it previously came to London in 2011.
But Dawe, who also sits on the WorldSkills UK board, said this time “it would be great if we could mount a bid for a city other than London”.
“Fantastic” was how Association of Colleges president Steve Frampton described bringing WorldSkills back to the UK “as part of a very strong signal we are serious as a nation about being a world leader”.
“If the UK is to be a world leader in skills at all levels, this is exactly the sort of thing, alongside wider plans, that will be key to tackling the employment challenges of the future”.
It is not just sector organisations which can back the bid: FE Week readers are being encouraged to show their support at FEWeek.co.uk/BackABid and on social media using #BackABid.
An FE Week investigation into T-level cold-spots has found six out of eight college principals in Lincolnshire appear to have turned their backs on the opportunity, with one telling FE Week the mandatory industry placement requirement in the region was “really, really difficult”.
We also found no colleges or training providers in London would be offering the construction T-level from September this year, something the Mayor of London said he is “concerned” about.
Lincolnshire colleges refusing to join the party
The lack of T-level industry placements in Lincolnshire appears to have been acknowledged by the Department for Education, with a series of meetings lined up so they can speak to the college principals, FE Week understands.
But officials declined to comment on the problem beyond repeating a previous statement concerning a “phased approach to the introduction of T-levels so they can grow in a managed way”.
It remains unclear how the lack of industry placements opportunities in the Lincolnshire area will be resolved.
Of the eight grade one and two colleges in the Greater Lincolnshire area, only Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education will be running the digital and education routes in wave one this year, and DN Colleges Group, which includes North Lindsey College and will be running all four routes in wave two from next year.
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This means learners will have to put in the miles if they want to take T-levels: students at New College Stamford, for example, would have to travel out of the county to Derby College, a journey estimated to take an hour and a half by car.
Boston College principal Jo Maher said they are “carefully considering and reviewing” the expression of interest requirements for wave three, and will be looking at the work placement requirements and local demand to ensure any expression “set learners up to succeed with local demand”.
She explained that her college had not gone for T-levels due to problems around the industry placement, which the college found “a challenge for rural areas”.
Also, at the time of applying for the early pathways, she said “we did not feel that there was enough course detail to market to prospective students and to develop the content”.
Franklin College is “reviewing the situation as more information comes from the pilot centres and are considering our options for the next wave at this time,” a spokesperson said.
One college which will not be going for wave three is New College Stamford after it was rejected for wave two; though its decision is also because of the demands of an ongoing merger with Peterborough Regional College.
Principal Janet Meenaghan said her college had also faced challenges around industry placements, the 315-hour work experience requirement for T-levels which partly caused education secretary Gavin Williamson’s alma mater Scarborough Sixth Form to drop out of the T-level programme in October.
Williamson said at the time that his old college took the “right decision” by pulling out and promised to convene business leaders to thrash out a solution.
New College Stamford has been part of the capacity and delivery fund piloting industry placements: they met their target of putting 74 learners on placements last ear; but Meenaghan believes that while well over 100 will be placed this year, they will struggle to meet their target of around 142.
“The challenges of making it work are really, really difficult in this location,” she said, because 98 per cent of Lincolnshire’s businesses are small or micro businesses, and a lot are just one or two people.
“You have to supervise and give a student something meaningful when they are there. How do you do that when you’re a tiny business? You haven’t got the capacity.”
And her learners have to travel to placements using “poor” public transport and road infrastructure, when some take more than an hour and half to reach the college as is.
The college has told the Department for Education they do not think they will be able to hit the placement target this year.
Meenaghan said she thinks the placements are a good idea and T-levels, as a whole, are “fantastic”: “I wish I had this as a young student. I would have loved it.”
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has said he his “concerned” that the T-level in construction will not be offered by any providers in capital in the next academic year, or any in south London from 2021.
He believes the government “must to do more to address this gap in provision”.
Of London providers starting this year, just one is a college (Harrow and Uxbridge) and none of them are running the construction T-level, so London learners will have to travel out to providers like East Sussex College Group, Chichester College Group or Havant and South Down College.
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The three London-based providers of the construction route from 2021 – Barking and Dagenham College, Newham Sixth Form College, and United Colleges Group – are all based north of the river.
There was one provider delivering the construction T-level south of the river that year, Richmond-upon- Thames College.
But a spokesperson left the door open to running the qualifications in the future, saying it could introduce them “at a later stage, rather than in 2021”.
They were also scheduled to deliver the digital, education and childcare, and health and science routes.
Construction skills have taken on added importance under Khan as he has led the Greater London Authority to set up a construction academy and bestow a quality mark upon providers recognised as delivering high-quality construction skills training in the capital.
So far, 24 providers have received the quality mark, including Barking and Dagenham College and United College Group, and applications for it are due to reopen this year.
The FE Commissioner has almost doubled the number of national leaders of further education (NLFEs) and national leaders of governance (NLGs), after new appointments were announced today.
Richard Atkins announced that five more college leaders will become NLFEs, and that there will be four new NLGs, bringing the total number to 19.
The national network has already supported more than 60 colleges where governance and leadership needs to improve since being set up in 2018, according to the Department for Education.
Education minister Lord Agnew said: “Good governance and leadership are the backbone of any well-run college.”
He claimed the programmes have made “a real difference” helping to “ensure our colleges have better leaders and governors so more people have the opportunity to access high quality education and training”.
“I welcome the appointment of these experienced college leaders and governors. They will play an important role in supporting colleges, so more people can gain the skills they need to progress,” Agnew added.
NLFEs are serving college leaders with “a strong track record of delivering improvement – both at their own colleges and in working with others”.
They are also tasked with providing strategic mentoring and support to other colleges.
The new NLFEs are: Phil Cook (Stockton Riverside College – Education Training Collective), Angela Williams (Huddersfield New College), Sam Parrett (London South East Colleges), Amanda Melton (Nelson and Colne College) and Colin Booth (Leeds City College – Luminate Education Group).
They join existing NLFEs Lindsey Whiterod (Tyne Coast College), Peter McGhee (St John Rigby College), Gill Alton (Grimsby Institute of Further & Higher Education), David Gleed (North Kent College), Graham Razey (EKC Group) and Paul Phillips (Weston College).
Experienced college governors and clerks with “a strong record of supporting college improvement” are chosen to be NLGs.
Their remit is to provide strategic mentoring and support to governance boards.
The new NLGs are: Jennifer Foote (clerk, LTE Group), Elton D’Souza (chair, West Suffolk College), Sandra Prail (chair, Brighton, Hove and Sussex Sixth Form College) and Rob Lawson (chair, Education Partnership North East) are the new NLG appointments.
The rest of the NLG team is made up of Shirley Collier (governor, York College), Heather Cross (clerk, Wiltshire College), Carole Drury (clerk, Kendal College) and Simon Perryman (governor, Barnsley College).
Atkins said the additions would help the office “support more colleges” and share “best practice”.
He added: “My team and I look forward to working alongside these outstanding college leaders, governors and clerks in ensuring that colleges are in a strong and sustainable position to provide an outstanding quality of education.”
The aim of the programmes is to proactively help tackle issues in colleges before they become a major problem and reduce the need for formal intervention across the sector.
Pictured from left: New NLFEs Amanda Melton, Angela Williams, Phil Cook, Sam Parrett and Colin Booth
The new boss of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is “excited to step out of the confines” of the Department for Education and have “more of an independent voice”.
Civil servant veteran Jennifer Coupland made the admission during her first sit down interview with FE Week today.
She pledged to instil “collaboration” into the institute’s operation, after she replaced Sir Gerry Berragan at the helm of government quango in November.
“In terms of my leadership style I have a track record in apprenticeship and technical education policy and working with the sector, colleges, the Association of Colleges, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and others in a really collaboratively way.
“I think I recognise that you need to have people on board to deliver significant change and if you don’t do that then that change doesn’t get routed into the system. I will be looking at how we embed that more into the way the institute works in a collaborative way going forward.”
This was a big step-change to what she has been allowed to say in public in her roles at the Department for Education.
Asked if she felt liberated by leaving the department, she said: “One of the reasons I was interested in the job was I thought it would be an exciting move for me to step out of the confines of the department if you like and have a more independent voice in the system.”
Reflecting on her predecessor’s time at the institute, Coupland said Berragan “did a fantastic job in his two years here”.
“We doubled in size and he brought a degree of order and systematised the whole operation in terms of standard approvals,” she added.
“Looking ahead over the next five years my priorities are really going to be around making sure that we are operating as efficiently as we can, making sure we are as collaborative as we possibly can be, but also using the fact that we have this unique suite of employers.
“We’re working with 6,000 employers on an annual basis, it gives us a degree of authority I think in the system to speak on behalf of employers about the things they’re telling us that matter for apprenticeships and technical education going forward.”
She said the IfATE has an “exciting year ahead” and revealed they will launch two consultations in the spring: one of funding and the other on external quality assurance.
“Of course we are launching the new T-levels in September so I think it is going to be a really exciting time for the institute and I’m really looking forward to 2020,” she added.
Coupland was formerly the director of professional and technical education in the Education and Skills Funding Agency, and was previously acting chief executive of the Standards Testing Agency.
Prior to that Coupland spent three years as the deputy director of the Apprenticeships Unit.
New College Stamford has been part of the capacity and delivery fund piloting industry placements: they met their target of putting 74 learners on placements last ear; but Meenaghan believes that while well over 100 will be placed this year, they will struggle to meet their target of around 142.