Six university technical colleges received bailouts from the government totalling almost £1 million last year, with the ESFA’s funding chief warning she doesn’t want to create a “culture of dependency”.

The funding is given in “exceptional cases … where additional funding is absolutely necessary to stabilise the school’s finances and ensure minimal disruption to pupils’ education”.

Figures obtained by the Local Schools Network show two of the UTCs which received the grants – Sir Charles Kao UTC and Heathrow Aviation Engineering UTC – have since closed and reopened with a new sponsor under the fresh start process, becoming BMAT STEM Academy and Heathrow UTC.

They received £255,000 and £20,000 respectively. UTC@harbourside, which received £300,000, is set to close in August.

Eileen Milner, chief executive of the ESFA, told the Education Show conference on Thursday she did not have “a book of blank cheques to hand out” to struggling providers.

In response to a question from FE Week’s sister-paper FE Week on the grants, Ms Milner said it was “inevitable that we have a recourse to this”.

“We wouldn’t want a dependency culture, where people feel that we are going to be able to get this cheque, because the bar for getting access to this money is high.”

Three UTCs which remained open also received the grants last year. Wigan UTC was given £169,000 by the Department for Education, while the JCB Academy received £150,000.

Cambridge UTC, which ditched the UTC brand and renamed itself as Cambridge Academy for Science and Technology when it joined the multi-academy trust Parkside Federation Academies in 2017, received £101,000.

FE Week understands UTCs that remain open may be expected to pay back some of the money.

Phil Reynolds, senior manager at Kreston Reeves accountants, said the money was likely to be emergency grants “arisen from investigations or rebrokerage or strong negotiation”.

“It’s a shame that so much money is having to be used by the DfE to make sure children still receive an education where there have been issues with schools.”

The most recent government figures show that six UTCs have closed down entirely, while seven others have been rebrokered under the fresh start process, which involves finding a new sponsor and having their previous Ofsted grades wiped.

In November, FE Week reported that almost two thirds of UTCs overestimated their student numbers in 2017/18 and will have to repay funding to the government.

An investigation by this paper in October found that the DfE had handed over more than £2.3 million in the past five years to UTCs, studio schools and post-16 free schools that never even opened.

Julia Harnden, funding specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the grants were given to support providers in “challenging circumstances”.

“The intention is to safeguard the future of the schools involved and provide stability for their pupils, which is laudable.

“But we also need to be sure public money is being used well and if schools are later closing down that is clearly a concern. It also highlights the need to ensure that new schools are sustainable at the outset and that pupils and staff don’t end up with the anxiety and disruption caused by a school closing.”

A spokesperson for the DfE said deficit funding will be provided to trusts “in exceptional circumstances to protect the education of children”.

The Baker Dearing Trust, which represents UTCs, was contacted for comment.

Pressure is mounting on the government to resolve an FE loans scandal that left hundreds of students with huge debts but no qualifications, as one former learner warns he’ll take the matter to court.

FE Week has been campaigning since 2017 to have the advanced learning loan debt written off for blameless former learners whose training providers folded unexpectedly and who have been unable to finish their courses – often leaving them owing thousands of pounds.

The campaign secured a partial win in its early stages after the Department for Education and Student Loans Company agreed to defer repayments firstly until April 2018, and then again until April 2019.

I will let a judge decide what the law states

But as the reprieve draws to a close the government has told FE Week it is still yet to decide whether it will write off the debt, or begin forcing those affected to start repaying the loans which have been accruing hundreds of pounds more in interest.

The SLC, who the debt is with, would not provider a separate comment.

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden has been lobbying to write the loans off through parliament and believes it is a “disgrace” that, two years on from the scandal, a solution has not been found.

“If this were in the private sector it would be a classic case of mis-selling,” he said. “The DfE should find a solution now and not continue prevaricating.”

Mr Marsden promised to submit further parliamentary questions to keep the pressure on the department.

Loans learners have been unable to finish courses after three firms, John Frank Training, Edudo Ltd and Focus Training & Development Ltd, went bust in late 2016 and early 2017.

FE Week reported last February that just 129 of the 344 students affected had been transferred to other providers.

This means that the rest still have loans debt, some of which have topped £8,000, but no prospect of completing their qualifications.

Asim Shaheen (pictured), 51, was among the ex-learners at John Frank Training. The chef still had an outstanding debt of £8,000, plus interest, when the firm collapsed.

The ESFA offered to send him to South Cheshire College to complete his training at the time, but this wasn’t viable because it is over 20 miles from where he lives.

He told FE Week this week that the student loans company is “still after us, they are saying I’m liable for it” but he will “argue that in court”.

“The leaders and administers need to sort out who is actually liable for this,” he said.

“They sent the whole lot of the money before I even finished the course directly to a provider.

“I haven’t got any qualification to show for it so the product that I loaned for doesn’t exist.

“I will let a judge decide what the law states when you are taking money or loaning it.”

Mr Shaheen offered this message to government: “Hold the people who have defrauded you responsible. Do not come to the normal working-day people who are not responsible for this situation.”

“Students have been left in the lurch,” he continued. “The government needs to go back to the roundtable and say ‘hang on, is this a viable thing that we are doing for our public?’.”

Lukasz Pacuk, a 34-year-old former carpentry learner with Edudo, said he has had no contact from the DfE or SLC since the provider’s collapse but still has a large loan of nearly £5,000.

“It is unfair for the government to make us repay the loan with interest,” he told FE Week.

“It has caused me a lot of stress and depression. A very sad, bad situation. There’s still the pressure that I have to pay a large sum of the loan.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “We have already committed to offering a practical solution for every learner with an Advanced Learner Loan whose training providers have ceased trading, including deferring loan repayments while alternatives are considered.

“We are considering how we can further help learners that may be affected by the closure of training providers.”

Apprenticeship starts are up 15 per cent for the first quarter of 2018/19 compared with the same period in 2017/18.

There were 132,000 starts from August to October 2018, a rise of 17,700 or 15 per cent on the 2017/18 figure of 114,300, according to figures published by the Department for Education this morning. 

But starts are still down from where they were for the same period in 2016/17, before the levy was introduced.

First reported starts for the first quarter of that year were 155,700, so the current year’s figures are 15 per cent – or 23,700 – below those figures. 

According to the commentary published alongside today’s figures: “Apprenticeship starts in the first quarter of the 2018/19 academic year have increased in comparison to figures reported at this time in 2017/18, but are below equivalent figures reported at this time in 2016/17 and 2015/16”.

Skills minister Anne Milton said she was “thrilled” to see the latest statistics. 

“Since we overhauled the apprenticeship system in 2017 more and more employers including leading firms like Royal Mail, Ernst and Young and Channel 4 are recognising the huge benefits apprentices are bringing to their workplaces,” she said.

“Apprenticeships offer people, of all ages and backgrounds, a high quality route to skilled employment with the option to train at every level. You get paid while you train and can start a great career in a huge range of professions like accountancy, nursing, teaching and law.

“I want as many people as possible to know about the amazing apprenticeship opportunities out there. Our new campaign, ‘Fire It Up’ is playing a vital role in this, helping to challenge outdated perceptions around apprenticeships and raising awareness of the huge variety of apprenticeship options available.”

The number of people taking out advanced learner loans in the first quarter of the academic year has fallen for the third year in a row – with stats for 2018/19 down 19 per cent on 2015/16.

Meanwhile, the overall number of learners starting a loan during 2017/18 fell by 13 per cent compared to 2016/17 – 83,900 dropping to 72,800, according to new figures published by the Student Loans Company today.

It comes despite the Student Loans Company lowering the eligibility age for a loan from 24 to 19 two years ago.

The number of people taking out an FE loan between August and October has fallen steadily ever since 2015/16, when 25,900 loans were taken out.

This number dropped by 10 per cent for the same period in 2016/17 to 23,200, and by a further two per cent in 2017/18 to 22,700.

From August to October 2018/19 just 21,100 people took out an FE loan, which represents and 8 per cent fall for the same period in 2017/18 and a 19 per cent drop on 2015/16.

Shadow skills minister Gordon Marsden said: “These stark figures show the Government’s loans system continues to fail. Year on year half the allocated money goes back to the treasury unused.

“We have consistently said, since their introduction, and I reiterated this only this week in Parliament, that expanding loans and scrapping grants was always going to have a negative impact on the take-up of vital adult courses.

“And as today’s awful statistics show, successive Tory-led governments have completely failed to understand the needs and concerns of mature learners and others who’s circumstances are likely to be very different to traditional entrants at 18.

“Government needs to rethink their policy now. Post-Brexit it’s crucial for people to retrain and reskill.”

The advanced learner loans policy hasn’t been a huge success since it was introduced in 2013.

At the end of 2017, FE Week revealed that a massive 58 per cent of FE loans funding – amounting to almost £1 billion – had not been spent since the policy was introduced.

The shocking figure, which was discovered after a Freedom of Information request, was confirmed by the Students Loans Company, which confirmed that just £652 million in loan-funded provision had actually been delivered since 2013, against a massive £1.56 billion in allocations.

FE loans, originally known as 24+ loans, were introduced in 2013/14 for learners studying courses at levels three or four and aged 24 and older.

Loan eligibility was expanded in 2016/17 to include 19- to 23-year-olds, and courses at levels five and six.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency had previously recognised they had a problem overseeing loans funded provision, particularly where much of it is subcontracted.

In August 2016 the agency banned new subcontracting contracts for advanced learner loans, with a complete ban coming into force last month.

In addition, growth requests for advanced learner loans were paused in September last year, while in November the ESFA introduced caps for how much loan money can be allocated to a provider.

The combination of all these points is likely to be the reason for the fall in the number of people taking out the loans.

 

The Greater Manchester Combined Authority has revealed the providers that have made it through to the final round of its adult education budget tender.

Ahead of its takeover of the AEB for its region in 2019/20, the authority is undertaking a two-stage process for procurement.

The first stage was completed in December where providers submitted a “supplier assessment questionnaire”. From this, 36 bidders met the GMCA’s minimum scoring criteria and have made it through to stage two.

They will now be invited to tender for a slice of Manchester’s AEB funding, with the results expected to be revealed in April.

Although Greater Manchester’s devolved annual adult education budget will be over £90 million, only £20 million of it will be tendered for.

Like the last national AEB procurement, colleges and local authorities will be let off the hook as the rest of the budget will be grant funded to them.

A letter from the GMCA to one unsuccessful provider in stage one of the tender, seen by FE Week, points out that those who did not make it through to stage two still have the “opportunity” to be a part of the winning “organisations supply chains for their upcoming tender”.

Five other combined authority areas, plus London, will have the AEB devolved to them in September.

The 36 providers to make it through to the final stage of GMCA’s tender are:

• Access to Music
• Aspire Education Academy
• Babington Group Ltd
• Back 2 Work Complete Training
• Best Practice Training & Development Ltd
• Blue Apple Training Ltd
• Busy Bees Training Academy
• Gateshead College
• Gloucestershire College
• Groundwork
• HCT Group
• HIT Training Ltd
• Interserve Learning & Employment
• Jarvis Training Management Ltd
• LD Training Services Ltd
• LMR Recruitment
• Mantra Learning Ltd
• MAXIMUS People Services Limited
• Novus
• Pathway First Limited
• PeoplePlus Group Ltd
• Proper Job
• Rathbone
• Rochdale Training
• Seetec Business Technology Centre Limited
• Standguide Limited
• System Group Limited
• The Education and Skills Partnership Ltd
• The Growth Company Limited
• The Training Brokers Limited
• TMP Studios CIC
• Total People Ltd
• UK Curriculum and Accreditation Body (UKCAB)
• Warrington & Vale College
• White Rose School of Beauty and Complementary Therapies
• Workers Educational Association

Highbury College has unblocked access to FE Week on its internet servers following heavy backlash from government officials and the national media.

The Portsmouth-based college pulled the shutters down on this newspaper’s website last week following an exposé about its ill-fated venture in Nigeria.

But the fallout from the attempt to suppress the media coverage led to the story being published to a wider audience, following articles by the Press Gazette, Private Eye, and Portsmouth’s The News.

High-profile alumni from Highbury College’s renowned journalism centre even took to Twitter to condemn the action.

A spokesperson for the college confirmed today that access to FE Week has now been reopened on its internal internet servers, but would not comment further.

The college previously said that it blocked this newspaper’s website as it deemed the story, which revealed Highbury was locked in a £1.4 million legal battle with the Nigerian state and gave an insight its wider financial position, to be “inappropriate” and “inaccurate”.

This was despite and the story being based on the college’s own board minutes and accounts.

The college said it had a “duty of care” to protect its students and staff from such material.

Upon hearing about the unprecedented action, skills minister Anne Milton said she was “shocked”, while Ofsted’s chief inspector said the decision was “astonishing and concerning”.

Dominic Ponsford, the editor-in-chief at the Press Gazette, pointed out that Highbury College must have never heard of the ‘Streisand effect’ – “whereby attempting to hide or censor a piece of information you have the unintended consequence of publicising it far more widely than it would have been anyway”.

Following articles in Press Gazette and Private Eye, Tom Edwards, a broadcast journalist for the BBC and former Highbury student, tweeted that he was “embarrassed” for the college which “prides itself on training tomorrow’s journalists clamping down on press freedom”.

“Clueless and cringeworthy,” he added.

Deary me. @HighburyCollege, I’m embarrassed for you. A college which prides itself on training tomorrow’s journalists clamping down on press freedom. Clueless and cringeworthy. https://t.co/vWOHT5MR4w

— Tom Edwards (@tomedwardsbbchw) January 20, 2019

 

Mark Austin, a news presenter at Sky News and Highbury College alumni, tweeted: “I don’t think blocking legitimate news sites is a good idea. I support freedom of the press. I liked my time at @HighburyCollege.”

I don’t think blocking legitimate news sites is a good idea. I support freedom of the press. I liked my time at @HighburyCollege . How’s that? https://t.co/jfj8eFPORE

— Mark Austin (@markaustintv) January 19, 2019

It comes at a time when FE Week continues to press the college to respond to a Freedom of Information request submitted last year.

This newspaper requested the college’s corporate expense claims for the past five years nearly 70 working days ago, but Highbury has chosen not to provide the information.

This is despite FOI law stating responses should take no longer than 20 working days, or 40 working days if the organisation needs to apply the public interest test.

An FOI expert believes the repeated refusal to release the material is “skirting with a possible criminal offence”.

FE Week has reported the college to the Information Commissioner’s Office for their failure to comply with the Freedom of Information Act.

The spokesperson for Highbury previously said: “We look forward to having a positive conversation with the Information Commissioners’ Office about the vexatious nature of your FOI request.”

From a previous FOI, it was revealed that Highbury’s principal, Stella Mbubaegbu, used college cash to pay for a first-class return flight from London to Dallas at a cost of £4,132. The college has refused to say whether or not this flight was work related.