A free school sponsored by England’s largest college group, and which is led by some of its top people, is closing down.

The Discovery School in Newcastle, which cost £9 million to set up, opened in 2014.

It will shut this year over “capability and capacity issues” that have concerned ministers.

Last July, the school was rated ‘inadequate’ at its first inspection by Ofsted, while it expects to receive another in its next, imminent visit from the watchdog.

Three high-ranking NCG employees have been “members” of Discovery ever since it opened. Their responsibilities included appointing the school’s board of trustees – who ultimately oversaw its collapse and failed to turn it around.

These include NCG’s current chief executive Joseph Docherty, its group director of strategic partnerships Chris Payne, and its director of property services Jeff McCall.

On top of this, Discovery’s chair of trustees, is Gerard Garvey – the principal of Newcastle Sixth-Form College, which is part of NCG.

The group has attempted to distance itself from criticism and lay blame with the trustees.

“As sponsor NCG is only responsible for the appointment of the board and has no further powers to interfere in the running of the school,” a spokesperson said.

“It is the board of directors of Discovery Learning Ltd that has total responsibility for all aspects of running Discovery School, including the design of the curriculum, the quality of provision, safeguarding of students, and the appointment or dismissal of all staff, including the principal.

“This is a very clear and deliberate legal separation of responsibilities.”

Mr Garvey’s roles at Discovery and as principal of Newcastle Sixth-Form College are meanwhile “completely separate”, she added.

Discovery was heavily criticised by Ofsted, has suffered from low student numbers, and was forced to launch an urgent review of its safeguarding procedures after a pupil was left in London following a school trip to the capital.

The 14-year-old was left at King’s Cross station when the rest of his group boarded the train two months ago.

Mr Garvey helped appoint a new headteacher last July, Gareth Rowe, even though he knew he didn’t have the full capabilities for the role.

“Governors asked if the newly appointed headteacher had the experience to deal with the current issues faced by the Discovery School,” read minutes from an NCG meeting in June, attended by Mr Docherty and Mr Payne.

“The Newcastle Sixth-Form College principal explained that he did not but they were confident that he had the ambition and capabilities to undertake the role effectively.”

It added that Mr Docherty was “confident that he would be able to deliver”.

This is a crunch time for the nation’s biggest college group, which is cutting staff and had Ofsted breathing down its neck during a full inspection last month over poor achievement rates.

The watchdog took the highly unusual decision to extend its visit, suggesting not all went well.

Discovery is a specialist science and technology free school.

In a statement, the school said the decision to close had been taken “based on well-documented issues at the school including safeguarding problems, poor teaching and leadership and the results of a recent Ofsted which is expected to deem the school ‘inadequate’”.

Year 11 or 12 students are being offered places at Newcastle Sixth-Form College or Newcastle College – both members of NCG.

A spokesperson for the Department for Education said the school had “let down” pupils, parents and teachers.

Highbury College has dropped two grades from ‘outstanding’ in an Ofsted report that brands its teaching “uninspiring” and raises concern over low attendance.

The verdict was a serious blow to a heavily criticised leadership team led by Stella Mbubaegbu (pictured above), who maintains that the college has “already embarked on our journey back to ‘outstanding’”.

In addition to her role as principal of the Portsmouth provider, she is also a director of several high-profile FE bodies: Collab Group and the notorious Gazelle Colleges Group.

Ofsted rated the college ‘requires improvement’ overall, in a report that gives grade threes in headline fields including effectiveness of leadership and management, quality of teaching, learning and assessment, 16-to-19 study programmes, and apprenticeships.

It was ‘outstanding’ when Ofsted last inspected in 2011.

“Leaders and governors have been slow to reverse the college’s decline in performance,” the new report warned.

Leaders’ and managers’ “evaluation of the quality of provision, particularly teaching, learning and assessment” is “overoptimistic”, though governors were recognised for having a “good oversight” of most areas of the college.

Inspectors warned that “overall performance has declined and they have not been effective in challenging and supporting senior leaders to stem this decline”.

“Too much teaching is uninspiring and attendance at most lessons is low.”

Too few teachers and assessors “encourage students on study programmes and apprentices to gain the skills and knowledge they need to achieve well”.

The report recognised that the college, which taught almost 7,000 learners last year, was “undergoing a period of some turbulence” at the time of the inspection.

“Leaders were tackling significant financial challenges but had yet to reverse the decline in performance of the past few years,” it said.

The college declined to comment on its current financial position, but according to the 2016/17 ESFA accounts, it had a deficit of £1,663,190.

Ms Mbubaegbu preferred to focus on the more positive elements of the report.

“We are enormously proud of our students and pleased that Ofsted recognises their motivation, work-related skills and their enjoyment of learning,” she said.

“The improvements outlined in the report are well underway and we have already embarked on our journey back to ‘outstanding’. Our focus will remain on enabling all our students to succeed.”

Inspectors did recognise that “students and apprentices are well behaved, confident and respectful, and a strong culture of safety permeates the college”.

Managers “maintain a strong focus on promoting equality of opportunity and creating a culture that welcomes diversity”, resulting in a “respectful and harmonious college community”.

But efforts to improve the quality of teaching “have had limited success”.

Ms Mbubaegbu is listed as a director of Gazelle Colleges Group, which is still active according to Companies House.

The group, registered at Highbury College Portsmouth, was subject to an FE Week investigation in 2014 which revealed how the five founding member colleges had each paid more than £530,000 to the group since it was launched.

But it had drastically scaled down its operations by January last year, when we reported that its membership numbers had fallen from 23 colleges to six.

Despite its problems, the college still describes itself on its website as “a key member” of Gazelle.

Finding new work for apprentices left jobless in the wake of the collapse of Carillion cost the government around £3 million, a National Audit Office report has revealed.

A total of 1,148 trainee bricklayers, carpenters and builders suddenly found themselves out of work when the outsourcing giant went into liquidation on January 15.

A rescue attempt to ensure they were not left to find new jobs alone was immediately launched and the Construction Industry Training Board, an “arm’s-length body” of the DfE, assumed responsibility for finding alternative employers.

The apprentices had their wages paid until they were placed into new work.

A new NAO report, which focuses on the role of the government in preparing for and managing the liquidation of Carillion, has now revealed the official receiver expects to incur costs of around £3 million as a result.

This money is expected to be paid back to the government.

“The special managers expect to incur around £9 million in other costs that would not be incurred during a conventional liquidation and which must be borne by the taxpayer and not the creditors,” the report explains.

“One of these costs involves the CITB finding other providers for Carillion apprentices’ training. Carillion had 1,148 apprentices when it collapsed. At the end of March, 729 (64 per cent) had found or started work, or returned to education; 329 (29 per cent) remained without work, but are being paid by the official receiver; and 90 (eight per cent) could not be contacted.

“The official receiver expects to spend around £3 million in total on costs associated with apprentices.”

FE Week spoke with the CITB this week to get current figures for how many apprentices have so far been helped.

Gillian Cain, head of apprenticeships at CITB, said that 924 apprentices now have new jobs. 

“Our efforts to help Carillion apprentices find new work are unwavering,” she added. “Our dedicated team are constantly in touch with learners and working with employers, colleges and training providers, to create new job opportunities.

“We are optimistic we can place the remaining learners looking for employment as we enter our peak recruitment phase.”

The CITB is continuing its matchmaking service for the remaining out-of-work apprentices, who are still being paid by the government.

The success in sourcing new work for the apprentices has in part been put down to cash incentives of £1,000 which are being offered to employers.

The payments are part of a £1.4 million package that sees firms receive £500 up front, and a further £500 after six months if they’ve retained the displaced trainees.

Carillion was the UK’s largest employer of construction apprentices before it went into liquidation in January.

They were being taught at the company’s skills division, Carillion Training Services, which held a £6.5 million ESFA contract last year.

The Department for Education exceeded its own target for recruiting apprentices last year.

Ever since the apprenticeship levy was launched last April, public-sector bodies have been obliged to make sure at least 2.3 per cent of their workforce start and apprenticeship every year.

One year on and the DfE has met the target and then some. It is now giving all other eligible public bodies until the end of September to report their figures.

“At the end of March 2018, 2.9 per cent of the department’s workforce were undertaking an apprenticeship,” minister Lord Agnew revealed yesterday.

“The civil service has pledged to deliver 2.3 per cent of the workforce in England as apprenticeship starts annually. The department met its target in 2017/18.”

A DfE spokesperson told FE Week it had 178 apprenticeship starts last year out of the 6,068 staff that make up the DfE and the Education and Skills Funding Agency.

In response to a separate parliamentary question, which asked for the total number of public bodies to meet the target last year, Lord Agnew reminded the public sector that it has just over four months to submit figures.

“Figures on the number of public-sector apprenticeships are not yet available,” he said.

“Public-sector bodies in scope of the public sector apprenticeships target are required annually to publish and send to the Department for Education their progress towards the target. The first reports will be due by September 30.”

The public-sector apprenticeship target requires public bodies with 250 or more employees to have a minimum of 2.3 per cent apprenticeship starts relative to its overall workforce numbers.

It covers the period April 1 to March 31 each year.

It’s an average target across the years 2017/18 to 2020/21 to “give flexibility to organisations to manage peaks and troughs in recruitment”.

FE Week reported in March that government departments were failing to meet the mark, however.

At the time, for example, the Ministry of Justice had 224 apprentices, just 0.3 per cent of its 67,000 workforce.

For the Home Office, there were 135 apprentices or 0.46 per cent.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport had just six apprentices – which it said equated to 0.7 per cent of employees.

There were also just 18 apprentices working at the Treasury at the time, which represents 1.3 per cent of the total paid staff.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office had 73 apprentices amounting to 1.35 per cent of its workforce.