Working “unusual” hours and claims in excess of actual expenses have been listed as indicators for training providers that staff may be committing fraud in new government guidance.

The document from the Department for Education, published today, also warns that signs that employees are potentially committing fraud include aggressive responses to questions and “too much forgetfulness”.

The list is split into several areas: personal motives for fraud; organisational motives for fraud; weaknesses in internal controls; transactional indicators; possible methods used to commit and/or conceal fraud; record keeping/banking/other.

Personal motives include where staff believe they get inadequate rewards, have an expensive lifestyle, or personal problems such as gambling or an alcohol addiction.

The guidance also warns another indicator among organisations are where they are dominated by one person, have a for-profit component or face pressure to use or lose funds to sustain future funding levels.

The FE sector has been subject to potential fraud in recent times: Aspire Achieve Advance (also known as 3aaa) was referred to Action Fraud by the Department for Education in October following an investigation into alleged success rate “overclaims” at the provider.

3aaa received over £31 million in government funding in 2017 and had the largest allocation for non-levy apprenticeships – standing at nearly £22 million.

Three senior staff at Team Wearside were jailed in March for defrauding Sunderland College and training provider Springboard of a total of £460,000 through the use of false data on registered learners.

Four people were found guilty on fraud charges after it was found provider Luis Michael Training used the personal information of real people to claim apprenticeship funding, without their knowledge.

Additionally, over 3,000 learners, all aged 16 to 19 and were either vulnerable or not in education, employment or training, were enrolled on coaching courses, but were instead made to hand out match-day programmes and sweep floors at Premier League football clubs.

In its first review of apprenticeships in 2016, the National Audit Office warned the government’s apprenticeship reforms could lead to “market abuse” in the FE industry, of the sort which took place under the Individual Learning Accounts system, which was scrapped in 2001 after abuse by unscrupulous providers led to a reported £67 million fraud.

To see the list, click here.

Six more providers have received temporary bans on recruiting apprentices as Ofsted continues its scrutiny of new provision, with four others now completely removed from the approved register.

The inspectorate is monitoring all new apprenticeship providers, and any deemed to be making ‘insufficient’ progress in at least one area faces being suspended from taking on new apprentices by the government unless there are “extenuating circumstances”.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency updated the register of apprenticeship training providers on Wednesday, which shows there are a total of 23 providers currently on the barred list.

Added to the list are: Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, Premier Nursing Agency, T.M.S Learning and Skills Support, The Development Fund, Ultima Skills and Vortex Training Solutions.

They will now be prevented from recruiting apprentices until they have received a full Ofsted inspection and been awarded at least a grade three for apprenticeship provision.

A total of four providers have now been fully removed from the government’s apprenticeship provider register since Ofsted began its early monitoring visits in February last year.

The Key6 Group was one of the first to receive an ‘insufficient’ monitoring report, which was published in March last year, but the ESFA lifted the ban after two months when it was found to be making ‘significant’ progress in safeguarding and provided a “robust improvement plan”.

But, in a further twist, the Liverpool-based provider has now been entirely removed from the register. FE Week has been unable to contact Key6 to find out why it has been removed despite multiple attempts.

Premier People Solutions, a cabinet office-approved apprenticeship provider to government departments, has also been removed from the register of apprenticeship training providers following a damning monitoring report in November.

Kashmir Youth Project, which received two of the low ratings, has been removed, as has AMS Nationwide which went bust after Ofsted gave it two ‘insufficient’ ratings and the ESFA found it was claiming payments “incorrectly”.

ESFA guidance on monitoring visits, published in August, states that the agency will not remove an organisation from the register after a monitoring visit unless Ofsted has raised concerns about safeguarding and “identified a significant risk to apprentices”.

Removal from the register ends all current and future apprenticeship delivery, and means all apprentices must be moved to other providers.

However, if the provider was only found to be making ‘insufficient’ progress in its safeguarding, it can be reinspected and will have the restrictions removed on it if safeguarding has improved.

This was the case for N-Gaged Training and Recruitment, which was stopped from recruiting after its safeguarding was criticised in a report published in August. However, this was reversed after a reinspection in November found its safeguarding to be ‘reasonable’.

The FE Commissioner has intervened at the Hadlow Group as its deputy chief executive hands in his resignation, FE Week can reveal.

Mark Lumsdon-Taylor, who was paid up to £210,000 in 2016/17, left his role on January 31.

He had been Hadlow College’s finance director since 2003, before taking on the wider role at the Hadlow Group in August 2016 when it took over West Kent and Ashford College.

The group has now appointed an interim chief financial officer to handle some of Mr Lumsdon-Taylor’s day-to-day duties.

Richard Atkins, the FE Commissioner, and his team are understood to have gone into Hadlow Group last Thursday, but the reason behind the visit has not been revealed yet.

It is, however, likely to be related to its finances, after the Hadlow Group told FE Week it was granted an extension for submitting its 2017/18 accounts, with a new deadline at the end of February, by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

A spokesperson said the group’s principal Paul Hannan, who was one of the highest paid college leaders in 2016/17 after taking home a pay packet of £264,000, will be staying on for the foreseeable future.

Separate published accounts for West Kent and Ashford College and Hadlow College, for 2016/17, show a combined turnover of £45 million.

The Department for Education said: “The ESFA and the FE Commissioner are working closely with the governing bodies of Hadlow College and West Kent and Ashford College.

“As part of this, the FE Commissioner and his team are visiting the colleges.”

The spokesperson for the college group added: “The ESFA and FE Commissioner are working closely with the governing board of West Kent and Ashford College.”

The college group said West Kent and Ashford, rated ‘requires improvement’ by Ofsted, is still under an ESFA notice of concern from when it was trading as K College in 2012 which had amassed an £11 million deficit.

Following the issuing of this notice, West Kent and Ashford campuses of K College were taken over by Hadlow College, which was rated grade one by Ofsted in 2010 but hasn’t been fully reinspected since.

The Hadlow Group was formed in 2014 and also includes Betteshanger Sustainable Parks, Broadview Garden Centre, Saplings Rural Nursery and Pre-School, Hadlow Rural Community School, Produced in Kent, and Rosemary Shrager’s Cookery School.

Image: West Kent and Ashford College campus

A cross-party letter has been signed by 164 MPs and handed to the chancellor demanding an above inflation increase to FE funding in the upcoming spending review.

Co-authored by Conservative MP Richard Graham and Labour MP Nic Dakin, the letter tells Phillip Hammond that “while government policy has protected the incomes of schools and universities, colleges have been dealt an average funding cut of 30 per cent over the last ten years”.

“We believe this constraint on FE resources has had an impact on the teaching, courses and above all opportunities for young people and skills of all ages,” it adds, and describes FE as the “Cinderella” of education spending.

The letter, which was given to Mr Hammond by Mr Graham and Gloucestershire College principal Matthew Burgess on Friday, was backed by 89 Conservative MPs and 72 Labour MPs, as well as two Liberal Democrat MPs and one Green Party MP.

It adds that the chancellor’s departmental spending review is a “chance to announce an above inflation increase which would boost skills, productivity and social mobility”.

The letter follows two high-profile campaigns to boost FE funding over the last year – Raise the Rate and Love Our Colleges.

Both are calling for funding for all 16 to 19-year-olds to increase to £4,760.

Funding for 16 and 17-year-olds has been frozen at £4,000 per student since 2013, while per-student funding for 18-year-olds was cut to £3,300 in 2014.

The campaigns have been gathering momentum in recent weeks and led to over 50 MPs taking part in a Westminster Hall debate in January when members from all sides of the House of Commons called for an end to six years of real-term FE funding rate cuts.

After signing the letter, Mr Dakin said: “From my years as a college principal, I know how important this issue is. Our colleges are the engines of social mobility, transforming the prospects of our young people and delivering the skills our local businesses want.

“It is vital that the government invests in our colleges.”

James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “This year’s spending review is a pivotal one for colleges so we are pleased that so many MPs are backing calls for an increase in funding.

“If the government is serious about improving social mobility and increasing productivity, raising the funding rate for 16 to 18 year olds should be one of the Chancellor’s main priorities.”

The Association of Colleges chief executive, David Hughes, added: “There is now very strong cross-party support for the 2.2 million people who study and train in FE colleges each year. It’s vital the government helps those tasked with helping to solve the skills gap.”

Main image: Richard Graham MP handing over the cross party letter to Chancellor Philip Hammond beside Gloucestershire College principal Matthew Burgess

The 164 MPs that back the call for more FE funding:

 

Conservative	Labour	Lib Dem	Green
Richard Graham MP – Gloucester	Jack Dromey MP – Birmingham, Erdington	Wera Hobhouse MP – Bath	Caroline Lucas MP – Brighton, Pavilion
Alex Chalk MP – Cheltenham	Christian Matheson MP – City of Chester	Vince Cable MP – Twickenham West Derby
Sir Roger Gale MP – North Thanet	Lillian Greenwood MP – Nottingham South
Robert Courts MP – Witney	Nik Dakin MP – Scunthorpe
Philip Davies MP – Shipley	Wes Streeting MP – Ilford North
Ben Bradley MP – Mansfield	Diana Johnson MP – Kingston upon Hull North
Mark Garnier MP – Wyre Forest	Anna Turley MP – Redcar
Peter Aldous MP- Waveney	Melanie Onn MP – Great Grimsby
Andrea Jenkyns MP – Morley & Outwood	Lisa Nandy MP – Wigan
William Wragg MP – Hazel Grove	Louise Haigh MP – Sheffield
Damien Moore MP – Southport	Gareth Thomas MP – Harrow West
Sir Nicholas Soames MP – Mid Sussex	Dan Jarvis MP – Barnsley Central
Martin Vickers MP – Cleethorpes	Karl Turner MP – Kingston upon Hull East
Jeremy Lefroy MP- Stafford	Jeff Smith MP – Manchester, Withington
Will Quince MP – Colchester	Stephen Timms MP – East Ham
Charlie Elphicke MP – Dover	Lucy Powell MP – Manchester Central
Scott Mann MP – North Cornwall	Chi Onwurah MP – Newcastle Upon Tyne
Richard Drax MP – South Dorset	Ruth Cadbury MP – Brentford & Isleworth
Mark Prisk MP – Hertford & Stortford	Vernon Coaker MP – Gedling
Maria Caulfield MP – Lewes	Daniel Zeichner MP – Cambridge
Dr Sarah Wollaston MP – Totnes	Alex Cunningham MP – Stockton North
Neil O’Brien MP – Harborough	Paul Blomfield MP – Sheffield Central
Dr Julian Lewis MP – New Forest East	Alex Sobel MP – Leeds North West
Dame Caroline Spelman MP – Meriden	Jonathan Reynolds MP – Stalybridge & Hyde
Andrew Percy MP –  Brigg and Goole	Stephen Kinnock MP – Aberavon
Boris Johnson MP – Uxbridge & South Ruislip	Dr Alan Whitehead MP – Southampton, Test
Sir Robert Syms MP – Poole	Shabana Mahmood MP – Birmingham, Ladywood
Philip Dunne MP – Ludlow	Andy Slaughter MP – Hammersmith
Marcus Jones MP – Nuneaton	Rosie Duffield MP – Canterbury
Sir Hugo Swire MP – East Devon	Seema Malhotra MP – Feltham and Heston
Laurence Robertson MP – Tewkesbury	Rushanara Ali MP – Bethnal Green & Bow
Neil Parish MP – Tiverton and Honiton	Liz Twist MP – Blaydon
Sir Henry Bellingham MP – North West Norfolk	Clive Efford MP – Eltham
Maria Miller MP – Basingstoke	Luke Pollard MP – Plymouth, Sutton & Devonport
Julian Sturdy MP – York Outer	Sharon Hodgson MP – Washington & Sunderland West
Andrew Selous MP – South West Bedfordshire	Karyn Smyth MP – Bristol South
Stephen Metcalfe MP – South Basildon & East Thurrock	Kate Hollern MP – Blackbum
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP – The Cotswolds	Karen Buck MP-Westminster North
Bim Afolami MP – Hitchin & Harpenden	Richard Burden MP – Birmingham, Northfield
Damian Collins MP – Folkestone and Hythe	Liam Byrne MP – Birmingham, Hodge Hill
Jacob Rees-Mogg MP – North East Somerset	Helen Goodman MP – Bishop Auckland
Simon Hart MP – Carmarthen West & South Pembrokeshire	Roberta Blackman-Woods MP – Durham
Daniel Kawczynski MP – Shrewsbury and Atcham	Stephen Twigg MP – Liverpool
Andrew Lewer MBE MP – Northampton South	Thelma Walker MP – Colne Valley
Mark Menzies MP – Fylde	Eleanor Smith MP – Wolverhampton South West
Damian Green MP – Ashford	Stella Creasy MP – Walthamstow
Anne Marie Morris MP – Newton Abbot	Mohammad Yasin MP – Bedford
Pauline Latham  MP – Mid Derbyshire	Alison McGovern MP – Wirral South
James Gray MP – North Wiltshire	Emma Lewell-Buck MP – South Shields
Zac Goldsmith MP  -Richmond Park	Anneliese Dodds MP-Oxford East
Ian Liddell-Grainger MP – Bridgwater & West Somerset	Paul Williams MP – Stockton South
Gordon Henderson MP – Sittingbourne & Sheppey	Matt Western MP-Warwick and Leamington
Chris Green MP – Bolton West	Afzal Khan MP – Manchester, Gorton
Conor Burns MP – Bournemouth West	Rosie Cooper MP-West Lancashire
Andrew Griffiths MP – Burton and Uttoxeter	Bambos Charalambous MP-Enfield, Southgate
Mark Pawsey MP – Rugby	Marsha De Cordova MP-Battersea
Anne Main MP – St Albans	Yasmin Qureshi MP – Bolton South East
Anna Soubry MP – Broxtowe	Grahame Morris MP – Easington
Robert Halfon MP – Harlow	Julie Cooper MP – Burnley
Giles Watling MP – Clacton	Alex Norris MP-Nottingham North
Crispin Blunt MP – Reigate	Thangam Debbonaire MP – Bristol West
Bob Stewart MP – Beckenham	Jared O’Mara MP – Sheffield, Hallam
Royston Smith MP – Southampton, ltchen	Jack Dromey MP – Birmingham, Erdington
Marcus Fysh MP – Yeovil	Naz Shah MP – Bradford West
David Tredinnick MP – Bosworth	Vicky Foxcroft MP – Lewisham, Deptford
Nick Boles MP – Grantham and Stamford	Gill Furniss MP – Sheffield, Brightside, and Hillsborough
Michael Tomlinson MP – Mid Dorset and North Poole	Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi MP – Slough
Antoinette Sandbach MP – Eddisbury	Faisal Rashid MP – Warrington South
Kevin Hollinrake MP – Thirsk and Malton	Catherine West MP – Hornsey & Wood Green
Eddie Hughes MP – Walsall North	Yvonne  Fovargue  MP – Makerfield
Dan Poulter – Central Suffolk & North Ipswich	Steve McCabe MP – Birmingham, Selly Oak
Heidi Allen MP – South Cambridgeshire	Mary Glindon MP – North Tyneside
Gillian Keegan MP – Chichester
Iain Duncan Smith MP – Chingford and Woodford Green
James Heappey MP- Wells
Anne Marie Trevelyan MP – Berwick-upon-Tweed
Rebecca Pow MP – Taunton Deane
Tracey Crouch MP – Chatham & Aylesford
Henry Smith MP – Crawley
Bill Cash MP – Stone
Sheryll Murray MP – South East Cornwall
Nigel Mills MP – Amber Valley
Mike Penning MP – Hemel Hempstead
Craig Mackinlay MP – South Thanet
Sir Bernard Jenkin MP – Harwich & North Essex
Keith Simpson MP – Broadland
Andrew Bridgen MP – North West Leicestershire
Nadine  Dorries MP – Mid Bedfordshire
Steve Double MP – St Austell & Newquay

 

Around £470 million has now been allocated by the government to cover the costs of implementing post-area review changes for colleges.

The figure, which is 65 per cent of the £726 million on offer, was revealed in the latest Education and Skills Funding Agency progress report on the restructuring facility, which closed in September.

It said up to £435 million has been allocated for general FE colleges, including partnerships with universities, while up to £25 million has gone towards mergers between colleges and sixth form colleges, and up to £10 million for conversion of sixth form colleges to academy status.

Case summaries of providers that formally agreed restructuring facility terms by July 31, 2018 have also been published (click here to read the details). It doesn’t, however, reveal the values for individual applications.

Today’s announcement said the ESFA received 76 applications for the restructuring facility. Of these, 58 cases have been assessed and approved and five remain in the assessment and approval processes.

“Of the 58 applications assessed and approved, 32 include funding to support restructuring,” it said.

“Of the remaining 26, 17 include VAT funding only to meet VAT liabilities arising from the change of ownership of buildings and nine relate to conversions to academy trusts that did not require restructuring facility support.”

The restructuring facility, administered by the ESFA’s transaction unit, was designed to help colleges implement area review changes but has increasingly being used to support colleges in tough financial situations.

The application deadline was September 28, 2018 – although colleges will have until March to spend the cash.

In an updated guidance document for applying to the restructuring facility, the ESFA said in September that in order to ensure the “objectives of the programme can be best realised by March 2019 it is important that we prioritise funding to support those colleges and proposals that provide the greatest contribution to the restructuring facility objectives”.

“We are unlikely to be able to support all requests for funding,” it added.

FE Week has previously reported on a number of colleges in dire financial straits that have received multi million-pound handouts from the fund.

These include Hull College, which reportedly received £54 million from the fund in 2018, and Lambeth College, which applied for over £25 million to pay off its exceptional financial support and bank loans, according to its 2016/17 accounts.

GCSEs and A-levels should be scrapped and replaced with one “holistic baccalaureate” for 18-year-olds which recognises academic and technical skills and personal development, a senior Conservative MP has said.

Robert Halfon, a former skills minister who chairs the parliamentary education committee, wants to mimic the international baccalaureate, which requires students to sit subjects from six different groups and a “core” curriculum comprising elements like knowledge and creativity.

But a union leader warned of “significant practical problems which we would need to overcome” if GCSEs were to be abandoned.

College funding has been salami sliced year on year making their task almost impossible

There have been growing calls for GCSEs to be scrapped since the participation age for education and training was raised to 18 in 2015, meaning far more students stay in full-time education beyond the age of 16.

In a speech to the Edge Foundation on “a 21st century education system”, Mr Halfon will say that “dry rote learning for exams is not the way forward and GCSEs have had their day”.

He said an IB-style qualification for 18-year-olds in England would “act as a genuine and trusted signal to employers and universities of a young person’s rounded skills and abilities”.

“Schools would then be measured on two things – completion of the baccalaureate at 18 and the destinations of their pupils in the years after leaving, with apprenticeships explicitly counted as a gold standard destination,” he will say.

The speech will coincide with the release of new polling by YouGov, which shows 73 per cent of parents in England and Wales believe there is too much emphasis on exam grades achieved at secondary school.

“We must remember that since 2015 all young people have been required to participate in some form of education and training up to 18,” Mr Halfon will say.

“Yet GCSEs remain just as much the high stakes tests that they were when many young people finished their education at this age.”

He will add that the “crucial role” of FE has “been largely overlooked” as the sector has been “subjected to decades of ‘initiativitis’ leaving it without a clear direction, meanwhile funding has been salami sliced year on year making their task almost impossible”.

Mr Halfon will call on the government to “take the opportunity to fundamentally reimagine this phase of education”, and carry out a simple data-led “progress check” at 16, instead of high-stakes exams that “drive so much perverse behaviour”.

Under the international baccalaureate diploma programme, 16 to 19-year-olds follow a curriculum made up of six subject groups; language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics and the arts.

The programme, currently used in just 112 schools in the UK, also has three core elements; theory of knowledge, creativity, activity and service, or “CAS”, and an extended essay.

Scrapping GCSEs would clearly constitute a significant change

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said there was “a lot of merit to the idea of scrapping GCSEs and having a single set of exams for 18-year-olds”, but warned of “significant practical problems which we would need to overcome”.

“GCSEs are a product of a different era when many young people left education at the age of 16, but this is no longer the case, and young people are now expected to remain in full-time education or training until the age of 18.

“It would therefore make a great deal of sense to replace GCSEs with some sort of light-touch assessment which would help determine post-16 routes rather than persisting with high-stakes GCSEs. Young people could then take qualifications at 18 tailored around their onward progression into higher education, apprenticeships and careers, and which could include a mixture of technical and academic subjects.”

Mr Barton said GCSEs placed students under “a great deal of pressure”, and said Mr Halfon was right to ask questions about “whether there is a better way”.

“Scrapping GCSEs would clearly constitute a significant change, and many practical issues would have to be addressed around any new system for progression between schools, sixth forms and colleges, but he is right to initiate the debate.”

The Baker clause has been labelled a “law without teeth” after it emerged the government did not take any action against schools for non-compliance in the first year of its existence.

The Department for Education also admitted it only wrote to half of the trusts it originally claimed to have contacted in relation to non-compliance. Around two-thirds of secondary schools are thought to be breaking the law.

 Introduced last January, the so-called Baker clause requires schools to publish a policy statement online to show how they ensure providers can access pupils to talk about technical education and apprenticeships, and details of their career programmes.

 In response to a freedom of information request from FE Week, the DfE confirmed “no action was taken against schools in England that failed to comply with the Baker clause” between January 2 2018 and January 2 2019.

It has also emerged that letters were sent to just five of the largest trusts last month to remind them of their duty, despite a claim by the DfE last month that skills minister Anne Milton would be writing to the 10 largest non-compliant trusts.

The department has now admitted this was an error, and only five were contacted.

Although “appropriate action” can include direct intervention in schools, a spokesperson was unable to confirm what this involves. Last month, the DfE said the letters were classed as a “reminder” rather than an intervention.

Charles Parker, pictured, executive director of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, said there “doesn’t seem to be much point in passing a law if you don’t follow it up” and called the clause a “law without teeth”.

“I’m afraid I don’t think they can do much more. The law is pretty toothless. There isn’t a sanction built into the way it’s drafted,” he said.

 “The best we can hope for, frankly, is to get the government’s weight behind its own law.”

He added that the government should write to every local authority and trust about their obligations, before sending “crisply worded letters” to those who do not comply.

A report from the Institute for Public Policy Research warned last month that two-thirds of secondary schools are still not compliant.