Ministers have ordered the FE Commissioner to investigate a principal’s “deeply concerning” corporate credit card use after her college was forced by FE Week to reveal £150,000 was spent in just four years.

Over 500 receipts obtained by this newspaper following a year-long freedom of information battle with Highbury College have lifted the lid on the lavish spending of its boss Stella Mbubaegbu.

College funds were spent on first class flights and five-star hotels in London and around the world.

“I have already asked the FE Commissioner to urgently look into this matter”

She racked up a £350 bill – including a £45 lobster and nearly £100 on cocktails – at a Michelin star restaurant.

Mbubaegbu also travelled in luxury cars, including a Cadillac and “executive chauffeurs” and spent £434 on a pair of headphones.

It comes at a time of redundancies at the college, in Portsmouth, which axed its sixth form two months ago, amid deteriorating finances and its Ofsted grade plunging from ‘outstanding’ to ‘requires improvement’. The last time staff got a pay rise was in January 2013.

Department for Education minister Lord Agnew, who oversees the FE Commissioner, said he and education secretary Gavin Williamson were “deeply concerned by these revelations”.

“I have already asked the FE Commissioner to urgently look into this matter,” he added.

“School and college leaders must treat taxpayers’ money with the utmost care and in a way that benefits their students. Where this does not happen we take the strongest possible action.”

The college’s board appears to have recognised the excessive spending. Minutes published from a meeting in May show they have restricted international and first class travel, as well as banning lunch and alcoholic drink claims.

A £2,000 limit has now been placed on the principal’s corporate card. The college would not say whether this was a monthly or annual limit.

A college spokesperson said the expenses released to FE Week were “approved and authorised and were then subject to independent audit, as is usual practice”.

The receipts acquired and analysed by this newspaper covered the academic years 2014/15 to 2017/18.

The highest spend was for travel – totalling over £70,000. That included first or business class flights and trains, as well as luxury car rides including in Cadillacs.

Mbubaegbu claimed for over 30 flights, 17 of which cost over £1,000 – with an average of £3,170 – to several destinations for an annual conference in the USA, as well as trips to Canada, India, Germany and Dubai.

The most expensive single flight was for £6,202, purchased on May 3, 2018, to Saudi Arabia – where the college runs Jeddah College.

The findings prompt questions over the extent of international travel, as the college does not have ventures in the majority of the countries visited. FE Week is investigating this further.

The college refused to say if any of the flights were not first class.

Receipts from the principal’s travels also show taxi rides including the use of “executive chauffeurs”.

One shows that after landing in London Heathrow on November 16, 2016, Mbubaegbu paid £175 for a firm called Connect Executive Cars to take her to the Hilton Birmingham Metropole hotel, while another firm, Aqua Cars, picked up her luggage and took it back to her home address in Hampshire.

Accommodation was the second highest expenditure. In total she spent more than £60,000 on hotel stays and reached Hilton Diamond status – which typically requires 60 or more night bookings in a single year.

Hotels were mostly four or five stars and ranged from stays across America, Canada, Germany, South Africa, Dubai, China and Saudi Arabia, to four separate nights at the Portsmouth Marriott Hotel – located less than a 10-minute drive away from the college and 20 minutes from her home address.

The principal’s international trips haven’t gone unnoticed by staff as the board minutes from May state: “Staff wanted management, especially the principal, to be more visible within the college. Staff wanted to feel valued and heard.

“The chair believed morale was low and that staff felt disempowered.”

A chunk of expenses were claimed for activities in England. In July 2018, the principal spent £356 for a meal with three other guests at Quilon, a Michelin star restaurant in London.

The receipt shows that the drinks bill alone, including cocktails such as mojitos and margaritas, cost over £100. A £45 lobster main course was also included in the order.

The day before the meal Mbubaegbu travelled to London and stayed at the Hilton Hotel in Euston for one night at a cost of £313. On the night of the meal she checked into the five-star Conrad St James hotel in Westminster. Her one-night stay cost £385.

Another standout monthly corporate card expense, for November 2016, shows that Mbubaegbu purchased BeoPlay H8 Headphones at an Apple Store in Washington, America for $528 (£434).

Elsewhere, in January 2015, she paid for a $655 (£445) dinner for six people at Ruth’s Chris Steak House while out in Orlando. It included a $56 (£44) bottle of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc and multiple $50 (£40) ribeye steaks.

The principal’s card was also used to purchase a £219.99 Kenwood dishwasher from Curry’s on September 11, 2017. The college would not say whether this was bought for personal or college use.

Multiple books for the senior leadership team were also bought on Mbubaegbu’s corporate card, including one single £750 purchase for 50 copies of Mission: How the Best in Business Break Through.

Other titles of some of the books include: Governance of Financial Management and Check The Ego: Operate with a high degree of humility by admitting mistakes and taking responsibility.

Highbury College’s latest accounts, for 2017/18, show a deficit of £2.48 million and state that its financial position has “deteriorated over the last three years”.

The board minutes from May 2019 state there “was a very limited safety net if cash ran out”.

They added that “in the light of budgetary constraints”, all foreign travel must now be authorised by the chair or vice-chair; all travel to be 2nd class unless authorised by the chair/vice-chair; and no lunch claims or alcohol claims can be made.

The college spokesperson added that Highbury “maintains continuous review of its procedures” to ensure that it “achieves good use of public money to meet the needs of our students and the community”.

The college declined to comment on whether any of the expenses were reimbursed by the principal.

Highbury College blocked its staff from accessing FE Week’s website in January after we reported published board minutes had revealed its lawyers were trying to recoup a £1.4 million debt in Nigeria.

The college lifted the block following outcry from then skills minister Anne Milton and chief Ofsted inspector Amanda Spielman, and after the Press Gazette reported the hypocrisy of a college restricting access to the media whilst promoting high quality journalism courses.

The college also attempted to keep the expenses a secret by refusing our FOI request, a decision that the information commissioner investigated and then overturned.

Agnew said: “The attempt to block disclosure in this instance, which was rightly overturned by the information commissioner, was shocking and FE Week should be commended for their dogged pursuit in this matter of public interest.”

Mbubaegbu as the principal of Highbury College 18 years ago, and was awarded a CBE in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to further education.

 

Halton report is useful precedent as Atkins gets to work

The FE Commissioner, Richard Atkins, is now being sent in to investigate the use of Highbury College’s principal’s corporate card.

Atkins was a college principal when the government funding agency investigated “extravagant” college credit card spending at Halton College 20 years ago.

So in terms of a precedent, it is well worth dusting off the ‘Report of the Investigation into Alleged Financial Irregularities at Halton College’ published in April 1999.

The report author, David Melville, chief executive of the Further Education Funding Council, wrote: “I have identified a number of inappropriately extravagant items of expenditure on certain trips…staying in expensive hotels, eating in restaurants with costly food and wine, and incurring excessive or unnecessary expense. None of this expense has been properly related to the benefit of the college…I find that expenditure on college credit cards was not adequately controlled.”

But like Highbury in recent months, the Halton board had begun to tackle the problem.

“I am pleased to note that the college has now amended the financial regulations to state that the use of college credit cards should be reduced to an absolute minimum and that expenditure on credit cards should be claimed with the same receipting procedures and with the same frequency as any other expenses claim.”

The Halton report concluded that: “The level of accommodation or class or means of travel, whilst appropriate to business needs, should not be capable of being regarded as lavish. In addition, colleges should ensure that the use of college credit cards is covered by their financial regulations and monitored carefully.”

And “the findings of these investigations indicate that the principal has not properly discharged his duties as accounting officer of the college, and therefore raise sufficient doubt for the board to consider his future as principal of the college”.

Shortly after publication, the BBC reported on 15 April 1999 that the principal and deputy principal had “resigned after a damning report on its finances”.

“Martin Jenkins and Jenny Dolphin quit their posts at Halton College in Widnes, Cheshire, with immediate effect,” it said.

“They left, citing ill health, within 24 hours of the publication of a report which found the college was unable to justify spending more than £6m of public money.”

In September 1999 the BBC reported the college auditors had been sacked after further investigations by the National Audit Office and Public Accounts Committee hearing.

And in 2006 Halton College and Widnes and Runcorn Sixth Form College merged to create Riverside College.

One of the five government flagship national colleges plans to “dissolve” and hand over its courses to a college and private training provider after failing to recruit enough students, FE Week can reveal.

National College Creative Industries was set up in 2016 with £5.5 million of government funding, and despite bailouts to stay afloat is now consulting on moving to a licensing model in which it quits as a provider.

Under the plans Access Creative College will take over running the apprenticeships, while South Essex College will take over classroom provision and the running of The Backstage Centre, the commercial production and rehearsal venue where NCCI is based.

A spokesperson for the NCCI said “the existing FE Corporation will dissolve to form a new Company Limited by Guarantee and deliver provision through its partners, this is similar to the successful model demonstrated by the National College for Nuclear.

“The National College vision will continue to be promoted and strengthened through the new legal structure.”

A new company, NCCI Ltd, will “steer the development of new curriculum at higher levels to address sector needs, while also ensuring the quality of its licenced provision”, added the spokesperson, much like the Baker Dearing Trust manages licences for university technical colleges.

Sue Dare, NCCI’s interim principal, said: “We are aiming for a seamless transition to our new way of working and are confident that these new arrangements will enable us to continue to improve our delivery and support for employers, apprentices and learners, while also enabling us to extend our capacity and reach for creative industries employers across the country.”

Its plans will need sign-off from the Department for Education of they are to go ahead on January 31.

Angela O’Donoghue, the principal of South Essex College, said the partnership would “create further opportunities to engage with providers from across the sector,” and would make The Backstage Centre “a magnet for industry and industry training in the southeast”.

NCCI started to look for partner organisations after it made it through 2017-18 as a “going concern” after a £600,000 bailout from the Department for Education, as FE Week reported in June.

It also received a £1.25 million working capital loan, £745,000 of which was paid out during 2017-18, with the remaining £505,000 drawn down in 2018-19.

The DfE also reprofiled loans and deferred the repayment start date from March 2019 to March 2023.

NCCI opened in 2016 as one of five centres the government promised would train an estimated 21,000 students by 2020 in “industries central to the productivity agenda such as digital and high-speed rail”.

Yet NCCI started with just 16 learners and has struggled to meet its target of 1,000 learners a year since then – recruiting only 167 between May 2018 and May this year.

The DfE revealed in a written answer in May that NCCI was looking for potential partners as part of a structure and prospects appraisal.

The National College for High Speed Rail has also had to move from its original model and is looking to change its name to the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure to broaden its offering.

This is after it needed a £4.55 million DfE bailout to avoid being unable to sign off its 2017-18 accounts.

The National Colleges for Digital Skills and Nuclear are both open, but the National College for Onshore Oil and Gas has not started yet.

The DfE, which has sunk £80 million into the colleges, late last year launched an evaluation of the scheme.

The first FE provider to be inspected under the new Ofsted framework has given it the thumbs-up, but warned: if you’re in it for the money, you’ll be found out.

Apprenticeship and adult learning provider Woodspeen Training, based in Huddersfield, had a full inspection last week after Ofsted began using the new framework this month.

“It was very different,” said managing director John Deaville. “I thought this was going to be an incremental change, but it felt like a pretty significant shift in focus and emphasis on the inspection process.”

The watchdog’s focus has shifted from outcomes to the “quality of education” and what is being called the three I’s: intent, implementation, and impact.

Six inspectors were at Woodspeen from Tuesday to Friday, interviewing around 25 to 30 per cent of the around 500 apprentices and 1,200 learners and quizzing members of its 50-odd staff.

There were no lesson observations, or sifting through success rate data: at most, the inspectors spent 40 minutes talking about success rates, but had “endless conversations” with staff about impact.

“They really get under the skin of why you’re doing it, how you’re doing it and what the impact is of what you do,” Deaville found.

Inspectors were asking whether a learner who had achieved went straight into employment, or improved their skills, and how Woodspeen is evidencing that.

“It was a real focus on what have you done for these people, not just did they get a piece of paper and a qualification, and that was hugely different,” Deaville said.

“It kind of suited my organisation because we’re at the lower end of skills, we do more levels two and three, so we find it quite easy to demonstrate we’re really adding value to some learners and we’re not just accrediting existing skills.”

Deaville always thought the old emphasis on outcomes for learners was wrong, saying: “You could stage manage it, put on a few good lessons, and be almost home.”

He warned other providers might not be so fortunate now, as inspectors speak to so many learners and ask so many staff about their methods, they get a pretty comprehensive picture of a provider.

“I think if someone is in the business for the wrong reasons, and they’re chasing money and genuinely not providing the level learners require, I think they will be found out.

“You have to back up your intent. ‘Why you’re doing what you’re doing.’”

As for implementation, in place of lesson observations, inspectors instead attended sessions and interacted by asking teachers why they were teaching that now and how was that building upon what learners studied last week.

They also asked learners how they felt about the sessions: “We reckon one inspector spoke to 40 of our learners, so that was a big difference.”

Another big difference was the focus on staff workload, questioning staff on whether they have the right support, and how much work they have on.

There was very little attention paid to self-assessment reports or previous inspection outcomes, and inspectors spent only a few hours discussing leadership and management preferring to observe its effects in the classrooms.

Asked whether they were prepared for the new inspection, Deaville said: “I’m not sure we were in terms of how the inspection would run. And it was very different. We were quite confident our learners would speak highly about us.”

But they struggled on impact because although they had done learner destination surveys after three and six months, “it was just not robust enough when it came to really describing to Ofsted what the impact of our curriculum had on these people”.

He does prefer this new system, however, especially the focus on intent and impact, where he thinks the sector needs to “raise its game and demonstrate the impact we have on learners”.

His advice to providers fretting about an inspection was to get the three I’s right: “If you get those, you will fly through.”

Deaville felt the inspection went well, after Woodspeen was rated as ‘requires improvement’ in August 2017.

“We had a failed entry into the manufacturing market which cost us a grade three, so we pulled out of that and refocused on West Yorkshire and that was really, really useful actually,” he explained.

“I came in 12 months ago, and there was a real focus on strategy so it meant our intent was really clear.

“We had done a lot of work on who are we, what should we be doing so there was really clear rationale to our curriculum and what we’re doing.

“I think potentially that was really useful going into this process.” 

A whistleblower reported the £20 million Brooklands College subcontracting scandal to the Education and Skills Funding Agency in 2017 but no action was taken until FE Week exposed it nearly two years later.

Former chancellor Philip Hammond, who is the MP for the constituency the college is based in, said the revelation was “very concerning” while shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden has demanded an “urgent” independent investigation into this lack of oversight.

It comes as the owner of the subcontracting firm involved, SCL Security Ltd, has broken his silence and claimed the college was “made aware” that he would pay employers a “finder’s fee” for apprentices, which would ultimately pay their wages and is strictly against the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s funding rules.

“I am very concerned about the situation”

FE Week has seen evidence that a former employee of the recruitment firm involved in the investigation, which was subject to an FE Week exposé in 2016 – Workforce Staffing Ltd (formerly e-Response) – blew the whistle about its relationship with SCL Security and Brooklands College in early 2017.

A senior auditor at the ESFA was handed the information but seemingly chose to ignore it. Millions of pounds of public money continued to go into the hands of SCL Security through its subcontracting arrangement with Brooklands College as a result.

The agency did not launch the investigation, which has involved three separate audit firms, until FE Week reported in November 2018 that the subcontractor was working with Workforce and no evidence could be found that the courses were advertised, who the apprentices at SCL Security were, or where it trained them.

Speaking on the record to this newspaper for the first time since the scandal came to light, Andrew Merritt, the owner of SCL Security, appeared to be in the dark about the ESFA’s investigation other than meeting an agency worker around a month ago.

He admitted that he paid Workforce Staffing Ltd a “finder’s fee” each month that the apprentice was on programme and didn’t see anything wrong with this, although admitted he was not aware of any other providers doing the same.

And he claimed that Brooklands College was aware of the payments to employers, but never challenged it.

“Staff at Brooklands College were aware we made finder’s fees payments to employers who recruited their own apprentices and it has never been raised as being anything other than above board,” Merritt said.

Asked about this, the college said it was “unable to comment on ongoing ESFA investigations” and it would be “inappropriate to go into any detail publicly at this time”.

One of the employers paid “finder’s fees” was Workforce, which recruited 16-18 year-olds who attended training facilities branded as SCL Security, but on Workforce premises.

Merritt refused to say how much these fees were or which other employers he worked with but did not deny the fees could have been used to pay wages.

The hundreds of apprentices trained by SCL Security were all aged 16 to 18 studying IT apprenticeships worth around £20,000 each in public funding. There is no employer fee for 16 to 18 year-olds and in addition to the “finder’s fee” some employers may have been eligible for a government incentive payment.

FE Week reported last week that the ESFA has now demanded a clawback of around £20 million from Brooklands, which threatens the college’s solvency.

Hammond, who resigned as chancellor to the Treasury in July, told FE Week: “I am very concerned about the situation. I am visiting the college next week to meet with the interim chief executive and principal.”

Marsden said: “It is extremely concerning to hear that despite a reported credible tip-off in early 2017, ESFA and the DfE seemingly didn’t follow up on it.

“That is why I will be writing to the Secretary of State demanding an urgent independent investigation into the lack of oversight from the department and how this activity was allowed to continue for over two years.”

Workforce is headed up by two brothers, Paul and Joe Alekna.

An FE Week investigation three years ago found they switched the ownership of a successful provider they ran from one parent company – eResponse – to another, before transferring out £6 million, liquidating it and leaving learners and creditors on the hook for millions of pounds.

Meanwhile, the brothers continued to run another provider called Options 2 Workplace. But when FE Week exposed the situation the ESFA cancelled its contract.

Workforce has recently been caught up in what has been described as the UK’s biggest ever modern slavery investigation (see below).

Asked about the Brooklands scandal, Workforce claimed it was not part of the ESFA’s investigation but does not deny their relationship with SCL Security.

“No part of Workforce Staffing or any other company within our group is responsible for government funded training,” a statement from the firm said.

“We do not operate as subcontractors and nor are we involved in any delivery or administration.

“As a recruitment business, and with no affiliation to the training industry we are not part of, or supporting any investigation with the ESFA.

“The sole focus of every single employee at Workforce is the sourcing, screening and selection of applicants for the many hundreds of employers we proudly represent across the Midlands.”

Since FE Week first exposed the scandal the DfE has repeatedly refused to comment.

 

 

Judge branded Workforce bosses ‘gullible’ in landmark human trafficking case

This month, e-Response, now named Workforce Staffing Ltd, featured in a BBC Panorama programme called The Hunt for Britain’s Slave Gangs.

The bosses of the recruitment firm involved in the Brooklands College subcontracting scandal were described as “gullible” by a judge after she convicted one their former employees for human trafficking.

Julianna Chodakowicz worked at Workforce until November 2015.

She was sentenced to five years in jail for her part in a Polish slavery ring on 5 July 2019. The case was described by Judge Mary Stacey as “the largest conspiracy of its type ever known”.

The gang trafficked up to 400 homeless people, ex-prisoners and alcoholics from Poland to the West Midlands, forcing them to work for anything from £100 to just £20 per week and live in “squalid and overcrowded” properties.

They relied on Chodakowicz as an “insider” at Workforce who signed-up dozens of the victims for work.

She was being paid £100 for each job she gave to slavery victims and a weekly payment of £20 from each of their wages by her gang partner. She denied being involved in the conspiracy after her arrest, but phone records and text messages seized by police discredited her account.

The judge at Birmingham Crown Court sentenced five people to a combined total of 35 years, a record for a human trafficking case.

When approached by FE Week about the case Workforce claimed that its “systems played a key role in helping the case against the ringleaders and our databases and stringent registration processes have since helped to thwart other instances of trafficking”.

Joe Alekna, the firm’s managing director, also shared an email from the West Midlands Police that thanked the owners for their help and said they had been “instrumental in obtaining the information we needed to put the matter to court and it was very much appreciated”.

However, the Judge said Chodakowicz was often “praised as a high performer” by her “gullible” bosses at Workforce for her stand-out recruitment performance, believing she had been able to recruit 20 or more workers at a time from her “wide social network” and “clever marketing skills”.

Chodakowicz advised the other conspirators on how to train the slaves on what to say and how to behave at work to avoid the conspiracies coming to light.

The court heard how she altered bank account details to deprive the workers of their wages and even stopped genuine job seekers from being registered so as to ensure there were sufficient vacancies for the trafficked victims.

Workforce describes itself on its website as an “award-winning recruitment, staffing and Workforce Solutions specialist”.

It is a member of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation as well as Gangmasters Licencing Authority and the Association of Labour Providers.

A spokesperson for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation said Workforce is “bound by our Code of Professional Practice” and if “we suspect that Workforce Staffing Ltd are in breach of the Code we will conduct an investigation under our complaints and disciplinary procedures”.

A spokesperson for the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority said it would “not comment on individual licence holders unless they had their licence suspended or revoked”.

The Association of Labour Providers confirmed that Workforce is one of its members but did not comment on the human trafficking case.

A rapidly-expanding adult learning provider has been lauded by Ofsted, while one apprenticeship newcomer was censored for making ‘insufficient progress’ in all areas.

Best Practice Training & Development Limited made ‘significant progress’ in every area of its early monitoring visit.

After earning a funded adult learning contract in October 2017, 1,361 learners had attended courses in English, maths and ICT from entry level to level 2, in 2018/19.

Inspectors found these courses helped learners “to overcome personal and social barriers to employment by improving their self-confidence and by helping them to gain qualifications and skills”.

Tutors and managers plan courses to focus on skills their learners need to find employment, and link course content to everyday knowledge.

For example, tutors link developing digital skills and accessing Universal Credit.

They know their students “very well” and learners “enjoy their learning and feel valued by the supportive staff,” the report reads.

Learners gain confidence in their own abilities, improve their basic English, maths and digital skills and many move on to employment or further study.

Best Practice Training & Development also enrols learners on short work skills courses and on units in retail or warehousing. The inspectorate said managers need to develop a “clear programme of work experience” for these.

At the complete other end of the inspection spectrum this week was Kingswood Learning and Leisure Group, which earned three ‘insufficient progress’ ratings from its early monitoring visit.

This is partly because 100 apprentices are expected to be on unpaid leave for two months during a business shutdown while still on their training programme.

A spokesperson told FE Week: “We are clearly disappointed by Ofsted’s findings; we have been actively working on the issues highlighted.”

Having a better week is Encompass Consultancy, which has made ‘reasonable progress’ in all areas after a grade three inspection in August last year.

“Leaders have successfully reshaped the curriculum strategy for adult learning programmes since the previous inspection,” inspectors wrote.

Encompass has stopped providing business courses funded by advanced learner loans in the London area, after the previous inspection report said only half those learners completed the course as they found attendance requirements and written assignments “very challenging”.

Tutors work effectively with employers to co-ordinate the on and off-the-job training apprentices receive, however Ofsted found a small minority of apprentices do not receive the expected level of off-the-job training.

Encompass’ leaders and managers place a high priority on staff extending and updating their subject knowledge and expertise, so tutors recently undertook hot stone massage training, a popular treatment offered by many employers.

Folkestone and Hythe District Council was found to have made ‘significant progress’ in safeguarding, and ‘reasonable progress’ in the two other areas of its early monitoring visit.

Inspectors complimented “a keen awareness of safeguarding” which “permeates the culture” throughout the councils where its 40 apprentices work.

As a result, “consideration of safeguarding is well embedded into the apprentices’ daily activities”.

Accipio Limited, C & G Assessments and Training Limited, Encompass Consultancy Limited, Go Train Limited, Leadership in Action Limited, Real Skills Limited, Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust, and University of Bedfordshire all received ‘reasonable progress’ ratings in every area of their early monitoring reports.

Independent Learning Providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Accipio Limited	29/08/2019	17/08/2019	M	N/A
Best Practice Training & Development Limited	30/08/2019	18/09/2019	M	N/A
C & G Assessments And Training Limited	23/08/2019	18/09/2019	M	N/A
Encompass Consultancy	04/09/2019	15/09/2019	M	3
Folkestone & Hythe District Council	05/09/2019	20/09/2019	M	N/A
Go Train Limited	15/08/2019	19/09/2019	M	N/A
Leadership in Action Limited	08/08/2019	17/09/2019	M	N/A
Real Skills Limited	08/08/2019	17/09/2019	M	N/A

 

Employer providers	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust	08/08/2019	18/09/2019	M	N/A
Kingswood Learning and Leisure Group Limited	08/08/2019	18/09/2019	M	N/A

 

Other (including UTCs)	Inspected	Published	Grade	Previous grade
University of Bedfordshire	22/08/2019	19/09/2019	M	N/A

Newham College of Further Education has become the second college to be refused admission to the Office for Students’ register of higher education providers.

The universities regulator said the college had “failed to demonstrate it delivers successful outcomes”.

This finding was based on the college’s continuation data – the number of higher education students progressing from their first to their second year of study.

“This shows the college has failed to demonstrate that it delivers successful outcomes for all of its higher education students, which are recognised and valued by employers and/or enable further study for all of its higher education students,” the OfS’ decision notice reads.

One of the OfS’ conditions for initial registration is a provider must deliver well-designed courses that provide a high-quality academic experience for all students, and enable a student’s achievement to be reliably assessed.

The OfS said it is “working with the college in order for them to have the opportunity to apply to ‘teach out’ their current students”.

“Being granted designation for teach out would mean that continuing students would, subject to individual eligibility, be able to continue to access student support from the Student Loans Company.”

Newham College was approached for comment.

Refusal means Newham College will be denied access to HE public grant and student support funding, cannot recruit international students, nor apply for degree awarding powers.

It is not the first FE college to be refused admission to the OfS register: Waltham Forest College was denied admission in July for the same reason as Newham.

Colleges and sixth forms will need an extra £1.1 billion on top of the government’s recently announced spending boost to fully reverse cuts since 2010, new research has found.

This increases to £1.4 billion to “ensure that spending on T-levels is additional to an unchanged level of spending per student”, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ annual report on education spending in England.

Report co-author Luke Sibieta said chancellor Sajid Javid’s vaunted spending boost of £300 million (in 2019-20 prices) amounted to a “small rise” against the backdrop of cuts since 2010-11.

Between 2010-11 and 2018-19, spending per college learner fell by 12 per cent in real terms, after cuts during the 1990s and low growth in the 2000s.

In 2018-19, the IFS has calculated, spending per learner was £4,800 in sixth-form colleges and £5,900 in further education colleges.

The £1.1 billion that would be needed to reverse the cuts would include £320 million for 16–18 colleges and £730 million for school sixth forms.

The boost, meanwhile, will only lead to a real-terms per-learner increase of four per cent in 2020-21; seven per cent below the 2010-11 level for colleges, and 20 per cent for sixth forms.

Deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association James Kewin said the IFS findings highlight the “huge reductions in 16 to 18 funding that we have had to contend with since 2010”.

“But rolling back the funding cuts imposed since 2010 is the wrong target. The key issue to focus on is what level of funding is required to deliver a high-quality sixth form education now, and in the future?

“It is also important to shift the focus from T-levels onto the vast majority of 16 to 18-year-olds that pursue, and will continue to pursue, a non-technical course.”

Chief executive of the Association of Colleges David Hughes said the report shows “the reality of a decade of cuts to colleges”.

And while the chancellor’s spending announcement was “welcome”, “it must be followed by long-term investment to reverse ten years of continuous cuts and reform”.

The IFS also calculated spending on adult education has fallen by two-thirds since 2003-04, due to cuts of 32 per cent up to 2009-10 and 47 per cent since then; driven by a drop in learner numbers from 4.4 million in 2004-05 to 1.5 million in 2017-18.

What spending there is on adult education and training is increasingly focused on apprenticeships, with 54 per cent of the spend on adult education and training diverted to apprenticeships or work-based learning, compared to 21 per cent in 2003-04.

Policy director of adult education network HOLEX Sue Pember said the report “demonstrates adult education is under-resourced and the lack of government funding has led to a sharp decline in adult student numbers.

“HOLEX trusts the Treasury and DfE will now listen, take note and do something about it in the next spending review round.”

The IFS has also found over 60 per cent of apprenticeships are at A-level equivalent or higher, and FE Week has previously reported starts on higher-level courses, such as the level 6 chartered manager programme, have shot up since the levy was introduced and are soaking up available funds, leaving little for non-levy payers.

The CBI called on the government this week for a £100 million yearly top up to the levy to stop it becoming a “roadblock to the government’s wider and welcome efforts to modernise the skills system”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We recently announced a £14 billion investment in schools – the biggest cash boost for a decade.

“Alongside this, we announced a significant real terms increase in funding for 16 to 19 year olds in 2020-21 to make sure we can continue to develop world class education to rival countries on the continent. We also provided £700 million extra for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.

“Together this package will give all young people the same opportunities to succeed and access the education that’s right for them regardless of where they grow up. The Prime Minister is clear that education is one of his main priorities, and we want a system that boosts productivity, improves social mobility and equips children and adults with the skills and knowledge they need to succeed.”