As 2019 draws to a close, we are taking a look back at the stories of the year, as told through the medium of FE Week’s cartoons.

Sir Gerry Berragan, boss of the Institute for Apprenticeships, and prime minister Boris Johnson, racked up the most appearances, with six and five respectively.

Other sector figures to have been immortalised in cartoon form this year by the talented Bill Houston include former skills minister Anne Milton, shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman.

Read on to recap on the year in FE Week cartoons.

Edition 266 – January 11: Former FE Week senior reporter Jude Burke provided some mystic guidance for the year ahead in FE.

Edition 267 – January 18: The Department for Education wrote to schools ignoring the Baker Clause by not offering careers advice and preventing FE providers from talking to students about technical education.

Edition 268 – January 25: The Education and Skills Funding Agency U-turned on plans to bar 16- to 19-year-olds who passed GCSE maths and English from following level one study programmes. Julian Gravatt, deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said it was a “good move”.

Edition 269 – February 1: Develop, one of only two independent training providers which were set to deliver the first three T-levels from 2020, warned it might have to pull out after being frozen out of infrastructure funding by the DfE.

Edition 270 – February 8: A tender was launched by the Department for Education for suppliers to research whether apprenticeship delivery is being adjusted to account for apprentices’ prior learning, a sign that funding over-claims could be clamped down on.

Edition 271 – February 15: College leaders applied pressure on the chancellor for a raise on Valentine’s Day. FE unions joined the Association of Colleges in paying a visit to the Treasury to hand-deliver a card to raise the profile of the Love Our Colleges campaign.

Edition 272 – March 1: Labour launched its second National Education Service consultation in the space of a year to explore how to move to a system “empowered” by “local accountability”.

Edition 273 – March 8: The government was “strengthening” the approvals process for its register of end-point assessment organisations to make conditions more vigorous to ensure there will not be “any rogues slipping through the system”.

Edition 274 – March 15: FE Week’s editor Nick Linford and managing director Shane Mann joined a team from South and City College Birmingham to cycle the 100-mile Velo Birmingham and Midlands and raise funds for the charity Cure Leukaemia.

Edition 275 – March 22: The Public Accounts Committee grilled officials about “the value” of the apprenticeships programme and the effectiveness of its “oversight”.

Edition 276 – March 29: Headhunters claimed the chief executive of the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education would step down when his contract is up. A job advert was posted on the Civil Service Jobs website earlier in the month.

Edition 277 – April 5: The skills minister and the chair of the education select committee, Robert Halfon, clashed after Anne Milton refused to say how much extra FE funding she requested from the Treasury.

Edition 278 – April 26: An end-point assessment organisation was facing a potential fine of £50,000 after “technical issues” affected its delivery of apprenticeship assessments. The notice of intention to impose a monetary penalty on the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives was the first such fine floated by Ofqual.

Edition 279 – May 3: The government had to promise a last-minute gift of £4.55 million to avoid the National College for High Speed Rail being unable to sign off last year’s accounts. The college then announced plans to ditch “high speed” from their name.

Edition 280 – May 10: A leading manufacturer of heavy trucks and buses warned that cutting the funding band by £3,000 for an apprenticeship that it helped to develop threatens its industry’s long-term skills strategy. Scania (Great Britain) Limited, the parent company of which has nearly 50,000 employees globally, addressed an open letter to Damian Hinds, Anne Milton and Robert Halfon.

Edition 281 – May 17: The ongoing financial scandal which engulfed Hadlow College led to it becoming the first to be taken through the new college insolvency regime.

Edition 282 – May 24: Chief executive of WorldSkills UK, Dr Neil Bentley-Gockmann, discussed how the competition has been a springboard for some countries to reform and develop their skills training.

Edition 283 – June 7: Skills minister Anne Milton and schools minister Nick Gibb backed Conservative leadership contender Michael Gove to be the next prime minister.

Edition 284 – June 14: Conservative leadership favourite Boris Johnson said he would “do more to fund our amazing FE colleges” if he won the race to be the country’s next prime minister.

Edition 285 – June 21: Steve Frampton continued as president of the Association of Colleges for a second year, after his only challenger pulled out at the last moment. Trafford College Group principal Lesley Davies withdrew on the last day of voting due to “personal reasons”.

Edition 287 – July 5: The chair of major high-street employer Ryman, ex-Dragon’s Den star Theo Paphitis,  accused the Institute of Apprenticeships and Technical Education of “damaging” apprenticeship quality.

Edition 289 – September 13: A college’s future was in doubt after officials demanded it paid up to £20 million back to the government following investigations into a major subcontracting scandal. Brooklands College was told to pay the funding clawback owing to its dealings with mysterious training firm SCL Security Ltd.

Edition 290 – September 20: Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, repeatedly refused to rule out scrapping Ofsted and said Labour was “looking at all options” for an overhaul of the school and college accountability system.

Edition 291 – September 27: The University Vocational Awards Council,  the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and the Association of Colleges united to call on the government to fund 16 to 18-year old apprentices through general taxation.

Edition 292 – October 4: FE Week editor Nick Linford and managing director Shane Mann jokingly offered Boris Johnson some advice at the Conservative conference. 

Edition 293 – October 11: Addressing the first day of the Federation of Awarding Bodies’ annual conference, Ofqual’s chief regulator Sally Collier criticised the “rather superficial media coverage” of a recommendation by the independent commission on exam malpractice around banning watches in exams.

Edition 294 – October 18: Colleges will have to keep on running T-levels for at least 20 years if they want to avoid handing back millions in capital funding.

Edition 296 – November 8: Ofsted praised the environment in new inspection reports. Language was one of the most significant changes to reports since the framework was rolled out in September. A spokesperson explained that the new style was intended to give a better “flavour” of what it was like for students at the provider.

Edition 297 – November 15: Political parties promised billions ahead of the general election. Tories pledged £1.8bn capital funding to colleges, questions were raised over Labour’s lifelong learning ‘education escalator’ and the Lib Dems offered £10k skills wallets for adults.

Edition 298 – November 22: Ofsted was criticised by an experienced turnaround principal for inspecting colleges just before mergers at the Association for Colleges’ annual conference. He compared Ofsted to “a sword of Damocles for a college in intervention”.

Edition 299 – November 29: FE Week editor Nick Linford questioned the Conservative election pledge for 50,000 more nurses, saying it sounded similar to a previous manifesto target for 3m more apprenticeships.

Edition 300 – December 6: Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden said Labour would not prevent independent providers from accessing public funding if the party won the general election, even though its manifesto pledged to “reverse the privatisation” of FE. He added “it will be a mixed universe of these various bodies”.

Edition 301 – December 13: Gordon Marsden and Anne Milton were two high profile FE casualties as the Conservatives secured a 76 seat majority in a dramatic general election. The Conservative party and prime minister Boris Johnson now have a number of new FE promises to fulfil, including a £3bn National Skills Fund.

A college has rescued an independent provider from going bust, saving around 70 jobs and the learning of “hundreds” of students and apprentices.

Middlesbrough College has purchased the business and assets of its neighbour TTE Technical Institute for an undisclosed fee.

TTE had run into financial difficulty, largely due to a “significant” deficit in its defined benefit pension scheme. Martyn Pullin, David Willis and Iain Townsend of FRP Advisory were appointed as joint administrators on 13 December.

The private provider’s brand, its existing workforce and facilities will now transfer to Middlesbrough College’s ownership and continue to operate, which will be welcomed news to learners and staff ahead of Christmas.

Zoe Lewis, principal of Middlesbrough College, said: “TTE has an incredibly strong reputation for providing skills locally, nationally and internationally – and we’re going to build on that.

“The TTE team is highly respected for delivering world class training and that will continue as normal while we invest in staff, equipment and facilities.

“We will also continue to deliver and grow TTE’s international business – which works with companies in West Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia.”

TTE Technical Institute, which incorporated as Teeside Training Enterprise in 1989, claims on its website to be the UK’s “leading provider” of technical training to the oil and gas, process, manufacturing and engineering sectors.

It had direct contracts with the Education and Skills Funding Agency worth £1.6 million in 2018/19, £1.5 million of which was for apprenticeships. The provider is currently rated ‘good’ by Ofsted.

A spokesperson said Middlesbrough College has renegotiated the lease on TTE’s premises, which are also based in Middlesbrough, “securing a future £250,000 investment in the buildings”.

The college, rated ‘good’ by Ofsted, is one of the first to have been selected to deliver T-levels – from 2021. A spokesperson said the college is also in the “final stages” of being selected as the Tees Valley hub of the North East’s forthcoming Institute of Technology.

Lewis added: “TTE has played an absolutely central role in developing the skills that grow the engineering, oil and gas, process and manufacturing sectors here in the Tees Valley and further afield.

“And Middlesbrough College, as a specialist STEM college, is already poised to deliver cutting edge T Levels and host the Institute of Technology facility – the match is perfect.

“We’re extending a very warm welcome to the TTE team and now our focus is on growing TTE’s strong brand and building on its outstanding legacy for skills training.”

Martyn Pullin, joint administrator, said: “We’ve been working with the management team at TTE for a number of weeks in an effort to find a way forward for the business and have been liaising closely with the Pension Protection Fund during that time.

“We’re delighted to have secured a deal with Middlesbrough College which will ensure that TTE continues to provide vital training and apprenticeship programmes for the North East.

“We wish the team at Middlesbrough College every success as they take the business forward.”

 

Gordon Marsden and Anne Milton were two high profile FE casualties as the Conservatives secured a 80 seat majority in a dramatic general election.

The Conservative party can now form a majority government for the first time since 2015, and prime minister Boris Johnson will have a number of new FE promises to fulfil.

This includes a National Skills Fund which will put £600 million a year, £3 billion over the life of the parliament, towards creating a “right to retrain”.

It is expected the fund will include money for a range of courses, including apprenticeships; and a proportion of it will be reserved for further strategic investment in skills and it comes on top of existing skills and training programmes.

The full details of the fund will be set out in the government’s first spending review.

Johnson had also promised to put £1.8 billion into capital investment for further education, which the party said would make sure the entire FE college estate would be in “good” condition.

However, colleges will have to match that funding with 21 per cent: so for every £1 the government puts in, the college will have to put in 21p.

And in August, chancellor of the exchequer Sajid Javid announced a £400 million boost for learners aged 16 to 19 that will come into effect in 2020/21.

What was missing from the Conservative manifesto at this election was a solution to the apprenticeships budget or a new numerical starts target.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson told FE Week last month the government did want to see a “substantial” increase in the number of people taking apprenticeships, but the focus was on “delivering on quality apprenticeships that lead to long careers”.

When questioned about the fact T-levels were not mentioned in the manifesto, he said they were “absolutely the centre point of what we are doing in technical education” and is something the government  will be “backing up with cold, hard cash as well”.

It is not yet known whether Gavin Williamson will be kept on as education secretary following the election, but he said after being reelected in his South Staffordshire seat: “Thank you to all of you who supported me in my election campaign in South Staffordshire, but also everyone who supported the Conservatives at this election.”

He will have to look for a new special adviser, however: his aide Richard Holden has been elected MP for Durham North West, taking the seat from Labour.

In fact, it is not yet known if any of the education ministers will remain in place in the next government.

One person we know will not be returning to the front benches is Labour’s shadow FE minister Gordon Marsden, who lost his Blackpool South seat last night.

Marsden lost out to the Conservative Party candidate Scott Lloyd Benton, 12,557 votes to 16,247.

Also not returning to the Commons is ex-skills minister Anne Milton, who lost her Guildford seat, where she stood as an independent after losing the Conservative whip.

She also lost out to her Conservative opponent, Angela Richardson, who won with 26,317.

Milton was pushed into fourth, behind Labour and the Liberal Democrats, with 4,356 votes.

Elsewhere, Tom Bewick, chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies, was unsuccessful in his bid to become the MP for Dagenham and Rainham for the Brexit Party.

He secured 2,887 votes, behind Damian White for the Conservatives with 19,175, and then Labour’s Jon Cruddas who won with 19,468 votes.

Other leading education figures such as shadow education secretary Angela Rayner and Robert Halfon, the chair of the education committee in the last Parliament, both held onto their seats.

“Genuine ineptness” has led to a surprise £10 million deficit at a large London college group, its chief executive has told FE Week.

Capital City College Group (CCCG) had budgeted for a £750,000 surplus for 2018/19, which was revised downwards by July to a deficit of £5.1 million and following an independent investigation in September now sits at an eye-watering £9.7 million.

This latest revelation comes after an already rocky few years for CCCG, in which unplanned multi-million-pound deficits of £5 million in 2016/17 and £6 million in 2017/18 have already led to job cuts.

“It was honestly like a punch to the head”

And its boss, Roy O’Shaughnessy, said he is expecting Ofsted to come knocking for the group’s first ever inspection between January and July 2020, and he’s trying to “dim the expectations” by self-grading at ‘requires improvement’.

He joined the college group as chief executive from the charity sector in September 2018 and, despite the historic deficits, persuaded the board in November to end pay disputes by agreeing that staff on the lowest wages would receive a rise of up to five per cent.

In what the University and College Union described at the time as a “landmark pay increase” the college chair, Alastair da Costa, boasted that “we are fortunate that as a group with some financial strength, we are in a position to do so”.

And at a board meeting the following month the governors were told “there was nothing to indicate that the budget breakeven position prior to taking into account the impact of the recent pay award, should not be achieved”.

O’Shaughnessy says he was alerted to concerns by a new finance director and immediately called in the accounting firm Ernst & Young to conduct a forensic two-week audit in September.

They found that the previous finance team were not matching the right costs into the correct financial year and around half of invoices had no purchase order, leading to final costs coming in much higher than was planned for.

According to O’Shaughnessy, Ernst & Young also discovered that short term agency staff costs had ballooned, the group was over optimistic on some of its income streams, and there were unforeseen additional redundancy costs.

CCCG’s board of governors met to discuss the final financial statements today and agreed to sign off on the accounts.

“The fact that we were operating in the blind was a very serious warning”

In a sit-down interview with FE Week, O’Shaughnessy says the news hit him like a “punch to the head” when he found out, and said he felt misled by former staff in some cases.

He added that there were no signs of fraud, but described the issues as “genuine ineptness”. Five top management posts in the group’s finance team have been replaced over the course of this year.

Speaking candidly, he said the “single biggest learning” for others across the sector is that “if you are going to create these mega groups, you can’t just take the personnel who have been running something one third of the size, move them up, not have the software systems and infrastructure in place and expect those people to do it.

“In any commercial activity where you’ve got a £130 million organisation you’ve got to be pretty certain that your four to six key people are really up to the task and [our] finance was incredibly under-experienced for that.”

CCCG’s total operating deficit for 2018/19 actually reached £16.5 million after its pension adjustment was added.

O’Shaughnessy said he has been in communication with the Education and Skills Funding Agency over the shock deficit and they are happy with the actions CCCG has since taken. The group will not be put into formal intervention, but “light touch” monitoring will be in place.

No bailout funding has had to be requested as the group has “no borrowings, a strong balance sheet and a strong asset base”.

He said the board has taken the financial situation “very personally” but questioned how it wasn’t spotted by the group’s own auditors “much earlier”.

“I’m not sure that if your auditors do not give you a good heads up and your executive team is not on the ball that the governors could know about it.”

He added, however, that from an executive staff point of view, he has been “absolutely amazed” by the “complete lack of anyone who is willing to say that they are in any way responsible for this from the day this group was put together”.

CCCG’s landmark five per cent pay rise costs the group over £2 million per year. Knowing what he does now, does O’Shaughnessy regret the substantial award?

“The fact that we were operating in the blind was a very serious warning to any group, but I don’t think that the pay award has in any way contributed to this massive problem,” he said.

“I believe the FE sector is deceiving itself if it believes it can go year in, year out without balanced, sustainable budgets that include pay awards. I think for us it was right.”

Asked if his board agrees, O’Shaughnessy said: “The chair does. I would say the rest of the board haven’t expressed strongly that it was a big mistake, but I would completely understand half of them maybe even from the beginning wondering whether it was the right thing to do.”

Staff were not given another pay award this year.

Breaking down how last year’s deficit suddenly grew by £4 million over the summer, CCCG’s new finance director, Rachael White, said around £500,000 was redundancies “where we’d been through some restructuring and had additional costs over and above what we originally forecast”.

In addition, £1.1 million was for agency costs where a short term or casual worker filled a post. Westminster Kingsway was the main culprit for this and spent £8 million plus VAT on agency staff in 2018/19. O’Shaughnessy said “someone probably dropped the ball” on this spending and White added that oversight of those costs during the financial year was lacking.

The “single biggest failure”, which cost the group an extra couple of million pounds, was that around 52 per cent of invoices had no purchase order record.

“I think that’s where there was, maybe not a culture of deceit, but a culture of just not being aware of the consequences of not putting on the table the honest truth and figuring out how the group sits around and solves it,” O’Shaughnessy said.

“In some cases I think I was misled but that is probably the case in any organisation where you don’t have good leadership management structures.”

Lastly, commercial income was down by around £400,000.

White said internal controls were missing, which she put down to the three individual colleges coming together – City and Islington College and Westminster Kingsway College merged in August 2016, with The College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London joining them the following year.

“I think a lot of it has been where colleges have merged and there’s probably been no re-alignment or reassessment of what is an efficient or controlled environment to work within.”

After discovering the issues, White and O’Shaughnessy put in “really quick controls” to “drive our costs down”.

“Roy and I have since physically signed every single purchase order,” White said.

“We’ve had to put a freeze on recruitment of non-teaching roles. We’ve been stripping back non-pay expenditure that is non-essential and doesn’t affect the student experience. We’ve been moving agency staff over to substantive posts, so a lot of good stuff.”

For 2019/20 CCCG had originally planned for a breakeven position, but following recent months they’ve revised this figure to a £2.5 million deficit, excluding pension adjustments.

This would be some achievement considering last year’s £9.7 million deficit, but O’Shaughnessy has a plan in place to reach it.

“It doesn’t look like it was fraudulent, genuinely ineptness”

Firstly, CCCG has a house near Arsenal football stadium on its books which it rents out. It has taken the decision to sell it this year, but only if it goes for £1 million.

The group is also planning to consult on a restructure which will mostly impact management, corporate services and back office staff.

“We are now going systematically through our back office services and bringing them down to really benchmark standards rather than what has probably grown with the three groups just throwing people together,” O’Shaughnessy said.

“We don’t want to be using taxpayer money for any role that is not actually contributing to the student experience.”

He added: “We’re taking this very burdensome senior structure that starts with the group and goes down to deputy principal level, really fine tuning that and making it lower cost.”

Andy Forbes, who was principal of City and Islington College, left in November and his position hasn’t been replaced. Meanwhile Kim Caplin, the principal of Westminster Kingsway College, is retiring in April.

An advert for a new “executive” principal will go out in January but CCCG’s new “best” structure, the model of which is still to be decided on, could involve having two principals leading the three individual colleges, with O’Shaughnessy leading the group.

 

O’Shaughnessy warns of ‘too cosy’ FE sector

Roy O’Shaughnessy joined CCCG in September 2018 following a 20-year career in the charity sector.

He spent the previous 10 years at Shaw Trust, which helps disabled and disadvantaged people into employment and independent living.

Speaking as an “outsider”, he said he has found the level of staff commitment to be “absolutely incredible” but warned the FE sector is “too cosy”.

During his interview with FE Week, he offered the following advice for improving the sector.

“I’m really glad I took the opportunity [to join CCCG], I haven’t doubted it except for a brief moment when Rachael told me about the new deficit in September.

“The power of FE to transform lives is incredible – as strong as anything I’ve seen in the charity sector.

“My belief is it is still too cosy in FE”

“The challenge we face – and it cannot be impossible to solve – is to balance our budgets whilst providing appropriate pay awards and ensuring effective wraparound services for our most complex (roughly 25 per cent) learners, to ensure all of our learners are given the high quality education and support they need to succeed and to transform their lives.

“My sense is this problem of chronic underfunding has been building for ten years and so anyone thinking that there can be an instant answer has got their head in the sand.

“At the same time, if we are able to come up with fit-for-purpose models going forward, there is no reason why FE shouldn’t lead all of the private training. I think the fixed costs that we have, which constrain how agile and flexible we can be, are a much bigger challenge.

“FE still feels quite a lot like a traditional charity sector model whereby you are paid by inputs or processes. In Shaw Trust, we made the shift to an outcomes-based funding model in 2009 with the Work Programme, and I think it will be important to do the same in FE now.

“People are very afraid of losing the heart of FE. My belief is it is still too cosy in FE, people don’t realise the world is changing around them and if we don’t adapt others are going to take our space. We need to lead the way rather than saying ‘why we can’t lead the way?’

“I am a fan of being held accountable for what you’re paid and what the results are. I think there should be a very strong correlation between what it costs and what the outcomes are.

“This is a hard thing to say, but I don’t think people in jobs in FE actually have had to deal with as much change as the private sector and charities and all those who were dependent on their performance judging what they were going to get next.

“It can sometimes feel like there is a ‘them and us’ culture in the sector between managers and teaching staff. To win the day we will need to work as one and trust each other that we are trying to achieve the same thing. We will only do this by being open, transparent and honest with each other.”

Two providers scored highly in the first run of Ofsted early monitoring reports for specialist colleges, in a week that saw a struggling general FE college receive its ninth inspection report in just six years.

From autumn 2019, Ofsted started to carry out monitoring visits to independent specialist colleges newly ESFA-funded from August 2018 onwards.

The first of these reports was published on Tuesday, when Aurora Boveridge College, a day and residential college for 46 16 to 25-year-olds, made ‘significant progress’ in all three areas judged.

Inspectors found its leaders “have very high expectations of what students can achieve,” and have introduced a level three maths programme for learners who enjoy the subject and want to do it at A-level.

They reported the provider used high needs funding “very effectively” and a lot of learners found its location in rural Dorset conducive to their learning.

The other specialist provider which received one of these new monitoring visits, which were set out in Ofsted’s new inspection framework, was Lighthouse Futures Trust.

It received ‘reasonable progress’ ratings in all areas, with the inspectorate praising its supported internship scheme for young people aged 18 to 25 years in Leeds.

Most of the interns have autism spectrum conditions or emotional or mental health needs and leaders work “relentlessly” to ensure programmes lead to “meaningful and sustainable employment”.

Ofsted said it had decided, as with other new private providers, to do a monitoring visit within 24 months of the specialist colleges beginning to operate. These monitoring visits will be covered by the inspectorate’s existing budget – no new funding has been made available.

Fellow specialist RNIB College Loughborough had a short inspection following a grade two rating in 2017, which it has retained this time around.

Elsewhere, general further colleges had a mostly negative week.

City of Bristol College, which has 2,900 16-18 students, just under 4,000 adult learners and 1,066 apprentices, received its ninth inspection report since 2013, when it was rated ‘inadequate’.

It moved up to ‘requires improvement’ in 2017, and its latest full inspection also provided a grade three.

Ofsted said the learning of many young people and apprentices has been “interrupted” by changes to the curriculum and gaps in teaching staff, but most are “optimistic” that leaders are tackling these problems this year.

Suffolk New College, which was rapped by Ofsted in July for failing to protect learners from “acute risk of self-harm”, was also handed a grade three this week for its provision to 2,254 study programme learners, 1,000 adult learners, 208 learners with high needs and 500 apprentices.

This is partly because managers did not assess the needs of learners on supported learning courses accurately on their entry to the college, so many of them are on programmes that are too easy for them.

Managers “lack aspiration” for what supported learning course learners can and want to do, and their students do not rapidly learn the skills they need to become more independent.

But leaders and managers were commended for securing the financial sustainability of the college, and for the “effective” use of subject experience by well-qualified teachers.

Colleges’ one bright spot was Cheshire College – South and West achieving its first ‘good’ score since it was formed from a merger of South Cheshire College and West Cheshire College.

Governors were commended for continuing to securing improvements in quality of education during the merger process.

Employer provider North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust achieved a grade two in its first full inspection. Its 251 apprentices “come to work and want to make a difference,” inspectors wrote.

The provider places the apprenticeship programme at the heart of its workforce development programme and plan off-the-job training in a “logical” way to help employees link theory to practice.

Independent training providers have had a ‘good’ week: The Derbyshire Network, The Lightbulb Limited, L.I.T.S. Limited all kept that grade from a previous inspection.

Gower College Swansea was found to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in safeguarding after originally being rated ‘insufficient’ at an early monitoring visit.

However, TVS Education has been found to have made ‘insufficient progress’ in two areas of an early monitoring visit.

Leaders do not intervene when an apprentice, of which it has 88, is at risk of not completing their programme.

Governance arrangements at TVS are “weak” and “nobody holds senior managers to account for their performance”.

Several other providers had early monitoring visits and made ‘reasonable progress’ in every area: Floortrain (GB), Merlin Supply Chain Solutions Ltd, Wildes Education Limited, YH Training Services Limited, Zenith People Limited, Catch 22 Charity Limited.

GFE Colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Cheshire College – South and West	15/11/2019	10/12/2019	2	N/A
City of Bristol College	12/11/2019	11/12/2019	3	3
Suffolk New College	12/11/2019	13/12/2019	3	M

 

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Floortrain (GB)	21/11/2019	09/12/2019	M	N/A
Gower College Swansea	26/11/2019	11/12/2019	M	M
Merlin Supply Chain Solutions Ltd	21/11/2019	10/12/2019	M	N/A
The Derbyshire Network	12/11/2019	11/12/2019	2	2
TheLightbulb Limited	29/10/2019	12/12/2019	2	2
Wildes Education Limited	21/11/2019	10/12/2019	M	N/A
YH Training Services Limited	14/11/2019	12/12/2019	M	3
Zenith People Limited	21/11/2019	12/12/2019	M	N/A
Catch 22 Charity Limited	20/11/2019	13/12/2019	M	3
L.I.T.S. Limited	11/11/2019	13/12/2019	2	2
Makers Academy Limited	21/11/2019	13/12/2019	M	N/A
TVS Education Limited	27/11/2019	13/12/2019	M	N/A

 

Adult and Community Learning	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
BOSCO Centre	13/11/2019	13/12/2019	2	2

 

Employer providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust	12/11/2019	13/12/2019	2	M

 

Specialist colleges	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Aurora Boveridge College	07/11/2019	12/12/2019	M	N/A
Lighthouse Futures Trust	13/11/2019	12/12/2019	M	N/A
RNIB Charity trading as RNIB College Loughborough	20/11/2019	13/12/2019	2	2