Ofsted watch: Inspectors find learners unaware they are on an apprenticeship

A new provider that has learners on its programme who did not even know they were apprentices overshadowed a ‘good’ week for FE, especially colleges.

Welcome Skills Limited received three ‘insufficient progress’ grades in an early monitoring report, with inspectors finding leaders do not “design or plan” programmes that enable its 329 apprentices to make good progress or gain substantial new skills and knowledge.

The provider became a prime contractor in June 2017 and began recruiting its first apprentices in January 2018 after previously offering hospitality training to the Asian restaurant sector as a subcontractor. It now offers the level 2 hospitality team member and production chef standards.

Ofsted said more experienced apprentices, such as restaurant owners, “complete the same programme over the same time as those newer to the industry”.

Not all apprentices were “aware” that they are on an apprenticeship programme. Others “do not know when their end-point assessments will take place or that they can achieve high grades”.

Ofsted noted that no apprentice had completed an apprenticeship so far at the London-based provider, even though the programme should last 12 months.

However, Welcome Skills Limited was praised for a “strong commitment” to reach young people from the Bangladeshi community who have low educational attainment and “redressing staff shortages and helping to professionalise the sector”.

In contrast, Gateway Sixth Form College was graded ‘good’ in every category this week following a full inspection after previously being rated ‘requires improvement’.

The Leicestershire college offers programmes from level 1 to level 3 to 1,214 students.

The inspectorate reported the large majority of students were “very happy” with the education they receive and many said staff “go beyond their expectations and provide extra help and support”.

It also stated a high proportion of students participate in useful work experience.

Teachers understand what students are likely to do after college, and they “help them to develop their study skills alongside relevant subject knowledge”.

Warrington and Vale Royal College also moved up to grade two from grade three, receiving ‘good’ in every theme assessed except apprenticeships, for which it was graded ‘requires improvement’.

The general further education college formed following a merger in August 2017.

It has 1,440 learners on education programmes for young people, 1,634 on adult learning programmes, 75 learners who have high needs and 743 apprentices.

The report said the range of courses on offer at the college meets “local and regional needs very well”.

Inspectors found an “inclusive learning environment,” with learners and apprentices benefiting from using industry-standard equipment and those with high or special educational needs or disabilities receiving “early help and individual support”.

Most learners and apprentices “quickly develop” new knowledge, skills and behaviours, which prepares them “well” for further study, employment or promotion at work.

Chadsgrove Educational Trust Learning Centre, an Independent Specialist College which was previously graded ‘requires improvement’, made ‘significant progress’ in one assessed theme in its monitoring visit and ‘reasonable progress’ in the other three.

The Bromsgrove-based centre, which opened to provide provision for young people with a physical disability and/or complex medical need, currently has 10 students on programme working at pre-entry level to level 1.

The education watchdog found managers and tutors ensure that learners make “positive progress in terms of their readiness to participate in the community and their own healthcare, developing independence and moving into adulthood” and have “clear and personalised targets” for improvement.

The report stated most learners are now motivated and engaged in learning but that tutors do not focus sufficiently on the development of literacy for adulthood.

Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council, an Adult and Community Learning provider, maintained its grade two rating following a full inspection.

Inspectors said the adults studying courses “delight” in learning new knowledge and skills.

“They are enthusiastic about their courses and how they are improving their chances of getting a job.”

All of the other providers that received early monitoring reports this week scored ‘reasonable progress’ across the board.

These were: Harriet Ellis Training Solutions, Learnmore Network Limited, One To One Support Services Limited, Springfield Training Limited and The MTC – Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre Limited.

Independent Learning Providers Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Harriet Ellis Training Solutions 26/09/2019 04/11/2019 M N/A
Learnmore Network Limited 16/10/2019 04/11/2019 M N/A
One To One Support Services Limited 03/10/2019 08/11/2019 M N/A
Springfield Training Limited 03/10/2019 06/11/2019 M N/A
The MTC – Advanced Manufacturing
Training Centre Limited
09/10/2019 05/11/2019 M N/A
Welcome Skills Limited 02/10/2019 08/11/2019 M N/A

 

Sixth Form Colleges (inc 16-19 academies) Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Gateway Sixth Form College 11/10/2019 04/11/2019 2 3

 

Adult and Community Learning Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Wigan Metropolitan Borough Council 11/10/2019 05/11/2019 2 2

 

Specialist colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Chadsgrove Educational Trust Learning Centre 16/10/2019 06/11/2019 M 3

 

General FE colleges Inspected Published Grade Previous grade
Warrington and Vale Royal College 11/10/2019 08/11/2019 2 3

Troubled Manchester sixth form college in merger rescue talks

Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College is looking to merge with the Trafford College Group, after the former’s leaders were told it could not survive as a stand-alone.

The move, announced this afternoon, comes three days after a report by FE Commissioner Richard Atkins was published and said the sixth form college’s finances were now “terminal”.

It had already transferred half their apprentices to Trafford College by June.

Chair of Cheadle’s board Alison Hewitt said: “Our proximity to Trafford as well as the complementary provision means a potential merger would be extremely beneficial to students.”

The FE Commissioner’s report found Cheadle and Marple had generated “substantial” deficits since 2013/14, and said it was “unlikely” the college could continue alone.

Merging Trafford College Group and Cheadle and Marple Sixth Form College would create a single college group working across the existing college sites.

Trafford College already merged with Stockport College in April 2018, a move which required a £30 million bailout from the Department for Education.

Chair of Trafford’s board Graham Luccock said he was “delighted” to see how Cheadle and Trafford could work together.

According to him, initial discussions have already taken place.

Profile: Zamzam Ibrahim

Zamzam Ibrahim took over at the National Union of Students in turbulent times. But the new president is far from a stereotypical drum-banging student leader

Zamzam Ibrahim is burning the candle at both ends and illness forces her to cancel our first interview. But she valiantly battles through by phone from a London café a few days later – with the background noise and a crackly phone line doing little to dim her character and conviction in a startling 50-minute conversation.

It’s been a turbulent time for the National Union of Students, which Ibrahim has led since April. Faced with the union’s looming £3 million deficit, Shakira Martin, the former president, wrote a Facebook post saying she didn’t give “two s**ts” about local unions critical of her cost-cutting decisions and they could “f**k off” (the post has since been deleted).  Martin had taken over from Malia Bouattia, who left after calling her university a “Zionist outpost”. Both women were dogged by racist and sexist abuse on social media during their terms in office, Ibrahim watching it all during five years at the union, most recently as vice-president of society and citizenship. Further education needs all the champions it can get, so have students chosen the right leader to navigate the choppy political waters?

“We need to do much more about access to courses”

As we move through my questions, it seems they may have made a shrewd choice. I start off lightly, asking what her priorities are.

“We need to re-think education – the way we talk about education and the ability of students to progress into different schemes, to train and re-train. The way we access further education has been the same for a very long time. There aren’t that many provisions available. So we need to do much more about access to courses.”

For this reason she supports a national education service with its emphasis on lifelong learning. Her own experiences of post-16 education in Bolton have also made Ibrahim an advocate for parity of esteem of FE colleges with sixth forms. “Where I lived if you passed your GCSEs you went to the sixth-form college, like I did. If you failed your GCSEs, you went to Bolton College. They were next door to each other, but if you went to one it was like you’d failed. There’s this cultural shame around some FE. That needs to change.”

Ibrahim is also determined to take politicians to task over FE funding. “The budget has been hugely cut over years, but the expectation of a ‘world-class service’ hasn’t gone away. They’re on a shoestring budget. It’s ridiculous.” Also in her line of fire, as it was for her predecessor, is the removal of the education maintenance allowance by the coalition government in 2010. I ask her if she had needed it. “Honestly, the difference EMA made to me when I was at college! It was £30 a week and it paid for my travel. But I would walk if the weather was all right, so then I could eat. To think that option isn’t available anymore is terrifying.”

It becomes clear that Ibrahim has identified her priorities as things she wants to improve, not lingering for a moment on what she hates or what she wants to do to The NUS. This, it turns out, is a deliberate strategy.

“The reason I ran for president is I was thinking, ‘why aren’t we campaigning for things like better education and more funding?’ We were spending so much time saying, ‘this shouldn’t happen’, we were fighting things all the time and not offering a vision.”

She does not say that too much time was spent in-fighting, but she could. “We’d stopped being about what was important, and it was more what we were against.”

Even when I ask her how she’s going to campaign for all these changes with a much-reduced budget, she manages to keep things positive and praise her membership. “It’s going to be a balancing act. We might have to go back to being a grassroots organisation. But we have 550 student unions, so we can have huge impact without having to move too much money around. Yes, I’m the face of the organisation. But it’s the unions doing the work. They’re incredible.”

“We were fighting all the time and not offering a vision”

This determined, upbeat approach is working. Ibrahim has been in No 10 and says conversations with Chris Skidmore, the higher education minister, have been particularly good. She says he supported her when she pulled out of the Conservative Party conference about a month ago. Reports had emerged that a panel debate hosted by Policy Exchange on September 29 called Challenging “Islamophobia” included jokes and a lack of proper engagement with the issue (as the title rather gives away). When she withdrew she says Skidmore said he “understood and respected” her decision. It’s all about carefully deciding where to draw a line, she tells me.

“I’m always willing to stand up and fight the case. But sometimes I think it comes down to the principles of the NUS and what we stand for. These people were making jokes at our very life experiences. For me, it was ‘what are the lines here?’ I got solidarity from all the students.”

Where has she learnt to balance passion with perspective? The answer becomes clear, and, at times, desperately moving.

“Coming from a working-class background, and my parents being migrants, they taught us education was everything.” Ibrahim was born in Sweden to a Somali family, with four brothers and a sister; her parents moved to England when she was in year 5. “My mother taught me resilience. Whenever I came to her with a problem, she said, ‘what’s your solution?’ And my dad was the biggest advocate of education I’ve ever known in my life. He said ‘your knowledge is the only thing they can’t take away from you. If you want to get anywhere in life, you have to educate yourself. If there are issues, you need to be in that room’.” Admiration creeps into Ibrahim’s voice. I tell her that it sounds like her dad is an important person to her. There is a long pause and it takes me a moment to realise she’s holding herself together.

“My dad passed away two months ago. He was such a champion for learning. When I was being taught English as a kid, there was a refugee family near by, and he would make me go and teach them what I had learnt. What’s a noun, what’s an adjective, what’s an adverb. His thing on education was, ‘pass it on’. I remember when I started college he’d say to me, ‘tell me what you’re learning in science’. When I was studying for my GCSEs, I bought revision CDs for all my subjects. My dad spent all night making copies of them and he gave them out free to all the people who couldn’t afford them. For him it was about, give back to the person who doesn’t have what you have. Even when we had so little, I was constantly reminded we had so much.

“He knew what I was doing with the NUS. The last time I saw him, I was running for president. He would always call me and say, what part of the world are you in today? He would google me and send me anything with my name in case I hadn’t seen it.”

Ibrahim’s parents appear to have nurtured in their daughter a passion for change that comes not just from indignation, but humility too. It strikes me as a promising recipe for leadership.

“After my dad passed away, it came back to me again and again about education.

“Yes I’ve had institutional barriers, but I have got here. Now I have a lot of work to do to help people who think they can’t.”

MOVERS AND SHAKERS: EDITION 296

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


Andy Forbes: Principal, City of Bristol College

Start date: November 2019

Previous job: Principal, City & Islington College

Interesting fact: He worked for two years as a psychiatric nursing assistant before deciding to go into teaching.


Barbara Van der Eecken: Vice chair of the Society for Education and Training management board

Start date: October 2019

Concurrent job: Director of quality and service standards, Babington

Interesting fact: French is her mother tongue but she is also fluent in English, Italian and Spanish and has studied Dutch and Portuguese.


Jim Crompton: Chair of the Society for Education and Training management board

Start date: October 2019

Concurrent job: Second-in-command at the British Army’s Staff Leadership School

Interesting fact: He is a judo black belt and is the Secretary of Army Judo.

Upskilling our workforce means upskilling our teachers first

If we are to embed the increasing digital skills that industry demands in our teaching staff, colleges and businesses need to collaborate with a much more flexible and supportive approach.

I see first-hand, day-to-day how the world of work is changing. As executive chair at Weber Shandwick, I advise organisations from large international FTSE100s to small regional start-ups – and the vast majority are transforming, with increased automation and greater use of digital technology.

To embrace the opportunities and overcome the challenges these changes present, we need to overhaul our education system, embedding digital into tertiary education so we can train people with the skills that industry demands.

To do this, of course, we need students to gain digital skills, but if teaching staff cannot identify or do not have the right knowledge to impart, it is difficult to see how anyone will progress.

According to a survey of more than 6,500 of its teacher members published this week by Jisc (a not-for-profit organisation for digital services and solutions in the education sector), fewer than 15 per cent get time to innovate or are recognised for developing digital skills. Worse, just 14 per cent of those in further education agree that they receive reward or recognition when they develop digital aspects of their role.

This is a problem, not least because an equivalent Jisc survey exploring the digital experiences of students tells us that those in tertiary education look first to their teachers. Of the 13,389 FE students that responded, 48 per cent said their most likely source of digital support was the teachers on their course – much higher than fellow students, friends and family or online resources. How can staff meet that need if they are not given time, support and recognition for developing their own digital capabilities?

Work-based learning has to be embedded into the curriculum

I have long been in favour of closer collaboration between teaching staff and industry to ensure that what is being taught is relevant and up to date. Part of the challenge is that, by the time students get into work, the knowledge they have gained at college is redundant because technology has moved on.

Work-based learning has to be embedded into the curriculum. That goes for teaching staff as well as students. But that change is perpetual, and we need to look further ahead. Compared with successful OECD countries, UK investment in training is poor. We consistently underinvest in upskilling our workforce, which has led to a significant drop in productivity.

At Weber Shandwick, we tracked our investment in training over five years. It was no surprise to see that profitability and productivity increased in line with spend.

UK businesses cannot stand on the sidelines. They have to engage with the skills system to ensure that we embed digital within colleges and the workplace. If we want students to transition to employment “fully formed”, and workforces that keep up with developments, teaching staff must have up-to-date knowledge.

That is why the Independent Commission on the College of the Future is asking what we want and need from our colleges in ten years’ time. It is about ensuring we have the expertise across the college workforce and a comprehensive system of continuing professional development.

Introducing a greater focus on work-based learning models for students and teachers is a priority, and it requires industry to step up to the challenge. Systems-change, leadership and collaboration have been key themes identified across all of our investigations, and nowhere more so than in respect of digital.

Our whole education system has to change. What was right a decade ago is not right today, and what is right today won’t work ten years from now.

That is why we want to hear about what is, and isn’t, working. We need to think long-term and about sustainability. Ultimately, that means colleges and businesses adopting a much more flexible and supportive approach to teaching staff.

We are all responsible for acting on sustainability

Colleges must put sustainability at the heart of their teaching – and that means far more than tweaking the curriculum, says Cerian Ayres

Recent protests around the world demonstrate that communities are unifying on the need for sustainability in how we interact with our environment. But how should education respond, and what does this mean for technical and vocational education?

Sustainability is more than just the latest hot topic and far more than a simple question of tweaking curriculum. It needs to be considered holistically, societally and educationally. This is the lesson of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), an increasingly important domain of educational thinking and practice.

The term brings an immediate response relating to environmental challenges and concerns, particularly human-induced climate change. This response is often directed by emotion, from well-intentioned knee-jerk reaction to fear-induced paralysis.

This is one area where we all probably agree we have achieved a reasonable degree of scientific literacy, so it is ironic that it has so far failed to galvanise any sustained action. The headlines in the media probably don’t help. Graphic imagery and frightful statistics from worst-case scenarios communicate unavoidable facts and press the idea of an environmental emergency. This may be necessary, but it can be dangerous.

Education is a prime ingredient in sustainability

We need to be made aware of key issues without feeling fearful and anxious. If the desired outcome is action, then we must be respectful of the wellbeing of potential actors to empower them. Where better to demonstrate this kind of knowledge-sharing and knowledge-creation than where it is already modelled daily? In our colleges.

It is becoming a cliché to say our students will be addressing UK and global sustainability challenges in the workplace. The trades and crafts they are learning will indeed be reshaped by that necessity. In fact, they will be reshaping them. But if we are to overcome this tendency to defer action, and to put the responsibility on young people themselves, we must ask ourselves: Who is responsible for civic leadership and the prioritisation of education for sustainable development?

The answer is both simple and complex: It is each and every one of us in the sector – lecturers, students, learning support assistants, college leaders, providers, apprentices, site staff and kitchen staff.

Education is a prime ingredient in sustainability; in challenging what is happening now and in establishing new ways of thinking and behaving that will stem from that. Central to Education for Sustainable Development are the principles of engagement, empowerment and ownership. We must accept the challenge, believe we can make a difference, and take action.

Progress is already being made within further education provider organisations through joint practice development and collaborative partnerships. Educators are working with employers to understand current industry practices. Staff and learners are working with a sense of agency. Leaders and managers are clearly sharing their vision, empowering others to act, and to taking ownership of experimental initiatives.

But this action is disjointed and piecemeal. “Think local, act global” is a recurring theme of ESD, but there is a difference between planned localism and fragmentation. Some guiding principles emerge in every college that begins on this journey, a sign that a common framework is already emerging.

That framework revolves around four Cs. Most colleges start with a curricular response, but quickly find that they cannot change curriculum in isolation. Quickly, it becomes evident that they must also reconsider campus, community and culture. What we learn can’t be separated from where, who with and how.

A fundamental attribute to each of these is respect. The new Ofsted framework leads us to consider curriculum. That is a fantastic opportunity for colleges to put sustainability at the heart of their teaching. The same framework highlights the importance of developing learners who have respectful behaviours. What better way to do that than to model that respect, by responding to their call for better care of our planet?

Ofsted praise environment in new inspection reports

“Two acres of peaceful gardens create a calm environment and help them relax, enabling all to concentrate fully on their studies.”

That might sound like a line of prose or a review for a relaxing country retreat – but it is in fact an excerpt from an Ofsted report under the new inspection framework.

Language has been one of the most significant changes to reports since the framework was rolled out in September.

Inspectors are more prominently noting the setting of the provider and what opportunities learners get outside the campus, alongside judgements on how well providers embed “knowledge” and set learners up for their next steps.

An Ofsted spokesperson explained that the new-style reports were intended to give a better “flavour” of what it was like for students at the provider.

In addition to the above example from People Solutions Training, Bedford College’s report observes how “community learning centres provide adult learners with a calm and purposeful learning environment”.

And the report for Walsall Studio School describes it as a “harmonious community”.

Similar language can also be seen in reports for schools, with one for Boldon School in the North East telling how “pupils get on well with one another and share a joke with their teachers”.

And in Lyme Community Primary School’s report, inspectors said: “One of the children gave me a ticket in the outdoor area used by nursery and reception children. The ticket allowed me to sit on a milk crate at the back of a makeshift bus. From this vantage point, I could see that the youngest children are happy at school.”

According to the new framework, lecturers “need to create an environment that allows the learner to focus on learning”.

Consequently, inspectors are bringing up the learning environment recommendations for how providers can improve, with Coventry College’s report pushing staff to  collaborate to “create a harmonious and calm working environment, inside and outside the college campuses”.

The National Union of Students welcomed Ofsted’s language changes.

“Student learning environments are changing spaces, gone are the four white walls and rows and rows of militantly-placed chairs,” said Juliana Mohammed Noor, the union’s vice president for FE.

“Enhancing learning environments can only bring a positive experience and colleges can be well placed to deliver provision innovatively.”

According to the new framework, inspectors will also be evaluating the extent to which the curriculum extends beyond the academic, technical or vocational.

Tyne Coast College was one provider to be commended after inspectors noted how learners and apprentices on maritime programmes have a uniform they wear “proudly” and call their lecturers’ “captain” to simulate life aboard a ship. 

And Coventry’s report logged how adults studying English as a second or foreign language had the chance to visit the local pantomime to become more confident in speaking and listening.

But its report added that apprentices “did not receive high-quality tutorial support to help them develop resilience, confidence and an in-depth understanding of how to prepare to be citizens of modern Britain”.

The new reports also reflect a greater emphasis on knowledge – a word used around 10 times in each report – and how learners use it to “succeed in life”, in line with the new inspection framework.

Inspection teams have written positively about two providers which run discussions on topics such as female success in male-dominated industries, euthanasia and cannabis.

Meanwhile CQM Training was told that it needed to improve how apprentices “recall topics and improve the storage and retrieval of their new knowledge”.

Ofsted’s changes will help parents to choose a college when their children leave school, according to John Jolly, chief executive of parent-teacher organisation Parentkind, who said: “We believe that it will help parents to get a broader understanding of the ethos of the college and highlight the ways in which this attribute can be achieved.”

Commenting on the language changes, an Ofsted spokesperson said: “We’ve made our inspection reports shorter and clearer, so that they can be more easily accessed and understood by different groups of people.

“As well as giving an independent view of how well a provider is performing, the new-style reports give a better flavour of what it’s like for learners.”

Vocational progression must be treated like more academic options

Prospects and public perception would be improved by reducing the gap between funding rates for young people in techinal and vocational education and those on more academic pathways.  

It may come as a surprise, but UK adults are among the most positive in Europe about vocational education. Of 28 European countries, the UK ranks third for its views on vocational qualifications. 

Sadly, our favourable views end there. When it comes to recommending this education route to a young person considering their post-16 options, the UK sits near the bottom of the table. This huge divergence makes us an outlier and captures the often-quoted perception that these pathways are for the children of “other people”.

One factor that may influence this perception is the difference in outcomes between young people following further educational pathways and those on more academic routes. Young people taking vocational or qualifications lower than A-Levels can, on average, expect to earn significantly less than those achieving a degree, and are likely to have worse health prospects and a lower life expectancy. 

Of course, the pathways themselves are not entirely responsible for these differences, as there are significant variations in the backgrounds of those following further education pathways and those continuing to university. But this does not mean we should overlook the outcomes of these students. 

New research from the Education Policy Institute (EPI), commissioned by the Health Foundation, examines the life outcomes of this student group and considers what can be done to improve them. 

One priority is to increase progression to higher levels. Currently, 79 per cent of 18-year-olds achieving A levels move onto a higher-level qualification by the age of 25, whereas only 42 per cent of students taking vocational or lower-level qualifications do so. Indeed, England is unusual in having such a tiny proportion of young people with an intermediate, level 4 or 5 qualification, despite high demand from employers and substantial salary returns.

This looks exceedingly difficult within the sector’s financial constraints

The government plans to introduce a quality benchmark and HE-style maintenance loans for level 4/5 qualifications to increase progression levels, but it is questionable whether this goes far enough. 

The independent review led by Philip Augar of post-18 education and funding (to which the government is yet to respond) proposed that FE funding levels should match those in HE and the introduction of a lifelong learning loan allowance for  level 4-6 qualifications. But, without greater support for the most disadvantaged, the introduction of more high-quality progression options risks greater socio-economic segregation in our education system.

Those taking level 4/5 qualifications are more similar socio-economically to those taking a bachelor’s degree at a non-Russell Group university than they are to level 3 students. So increased access could leave the most disadvantaged level 3 learners stranded at that level, while their better-off peers progress. 

What is more, those qualified to degree level are 40 per cent more likely to undertake further training than those educated to A level or the equivalent, so the benefits of a lifetime loan allowance could mainly accrue to those already holding a degree.

Of course, this is not to say that there should not be increased progression to higher qualifications, but just that disadvantaged young people will need to be supported to make this progress. 

This looks exceedingly difficult within the sector’s financial constraints. Deficits have doubled over the past six years and, while the spending review committed an extra £400 million to further education, this one-year settlement only repairs around a third of the decline in per student funding since 2010-11. 

This means that there is still a significant gap with funding rates in higher education, leaving investment some way behind those on more academic pathways.  

Further education routes have the potential to boost a young person’s life chances by expanding the opportunities available, but without a long-term vision and more sustainable funding commitment, young people’s prospects may remain more limited, and public perceptions of their value are likely to persist.

Revealing the human cost of a disastrous FE policy

This week we report the case of Grzegorz Bogdanski, who was duped into a taking a £5,000 FE loan by a Southampton based training firm.

The firm, Edudo, had persuaded West London College (WLC) they could be trusted to be a subcontractor for this new source of funding.

So technically, Grzegorz Bogdanski and others like him, were WLC students although solely for government contracting purposes.

Here’s where things get complicated.

WLC is regulated by the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), an executive agency sponsored by the Department for Education (DfE), who manage the loan facility allocation to WLC and write the advanced learner loan funding rules and oversee compliance.

But the Student Loans Company (SLC), an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the DfE, actually pay WLC £5,000 for the loans funded courses.

WLC then passes around £4,000 of the £5,000 to Edudo, keeping the rest as a management fee.

Bogdanski, when SLC came knocking for the £5,000, tried many times to explain he has been duped by Edudo (now in liquidation).

But the DfE, ESFA and SLC point fingers at WLC as the loan funding contract holder, and until FE Week made enquires WLC were ignoring Bogdanski.

The ESFA subsequently banned all loans-funded subcontracting for all providers, but it was too late for Bogdanski.

After a campaign by FE Week, the government even introduced a law this summer to write off advanced learner loans when a provider goes bust and courses cannot be completed.

But Bogdanski’s loan was technically administered by WLC, which was paid the £5,000 and has not gone bust.

So Bogdanski is left with nowhere left to go and a government agency demanding he pay back £5,000 for a product he did not receive.

It is a shocking story of FE policy failure – shining a light on the direct impact it can have on individuals.

But it is not too late to put it right.

WLC should pay-off the loan for Bogdanski and others like him – and had Edudo not gone bust WLC should have taken them to court.

An independent investigation should review whether SLC knows enough about who they are really handing public funding over to and whether it is being used as intended.

The ESFA, as part of their current subcontracting review, should seriously consider extending the ban to other funding streams.

And the DfE?

The DfE signed-off on the disastrous ESFA subcontracting policy so the permanent secretary should take it on the chin and apologise to Bogdanski.

Note: Since publication the principal of WLC has been in touch to announce the college has agreed to pay the cost of the debt in full.

Pictured: Grzegorz Bogdanski.