An awarding organisation is under investigation by regulators for the second time in two years after an anonymous tip-off.

Ofqual was alerted in May to irregularities at Focus Awards, an AO based in Rotherham, and official inquiries began on September 11.

In a statement, it said it was “currently investigating allegations made to us in relation to Focus Awards Limited”, but refused to make further comment.

Last year, the AO was investigated by the Northern Irish exams regulator, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, between February 2016 and June 2017, following a complaint from Leisure Industry Academy, a private training provider based in Belfast which went into insolvency last November.

It was alleged that Focus moved LIA students onto courses that they had not registered for and sent them the wrong awarding certificates, meaning many never got their qualifications.

CCEA’s report found that it was in compliance with its general code of operating rules, but that its learner registration system did not have “sufficient controls for the maintenance of learner numbers that allows learners to be clearly and uniquely identified”.

“Focus Awards became aware on September 11 that Ofqual is investigating a purported issue raised by an unidentified party,” Joshua Cole, the owner, sole director and chief executive of Focus, told FE Week.

“This is of course its duty as our regulator and we would expect nothing less. Ofqual can expect to receive our full cooperation.

“In a recent investigation carried out by our regulators in Northern Ireland, we were found to have acted in compliance with the general code of operating rules and in the interests of learners. We are confident Ofqual will draw the same conclusion.”

A spokesperson for CCEA told FE Week that it was aware of Ofqual’s new investigation and that both regulators were cooperating.

“Since Focus Awards is an English-based awarding organisation, it is appropriate that Ofqual leads on this investigation,” she said.

Mr Cole also runs a private training provider in Rotherham called My Distance Learning College.

This hit the headlines back in 2014 when FE Week reported that 32,000 paying learners might not get their certificates after a number of awarding organisations pulled their approval due to payment issues.

NCFE claimed it had around £20,000 of “outstanding invoices owing”, while the Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education claimed the provider had been reselling its qualifications through other firms without permission.

Mr Cole disputed both claims but Reed, a major recruitment agency, decided to stop reselling the troubled provider’s courses.

He describes himself on his AO’s website as “an inspirational, visionary leader with a unique blend of entrepreneurial skills and business acumen”.

He says he employs more than 25 staff across his various enterprises, and is “skilled at managing and controlling multidisciplinary teams. Some of the staff operate remotely from Ireland, Spain, India, Serbia, Pakistan and the USA”.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has missed its own deadline to make sure new providers approved to deliver apprenticeships are up to scratch.

Even though its programme director outlined the checks and balances the ESFA was planning for untested firms on the register of apprenticeship training providers in June, FE Week has learned that no firms have been visited.

Keith Smith, director for funding and programmes at the ESFA, told delegates at the AELP’s annual conference in June that the ESFA would visit any providers which did not have prior experience of apprenticeship delivery by September.

FE Week understands that no new provider has actually received a visit – even though some of them already have hundreds of apprentices.

The Department for Education was criticised by the National Audit Office a year ago for sluggishness in managing risks to the system.

“Past experience of market-led reform in the education and skills sector suggests that significant behavioural risks can materialise when changes are made in the market at a fast pace,” the NAO report warned, urging the DfE to “expand its work on behavioural risks” and to learn from “previous initiatives which have not turned out as planned”.

The ESFA announced additional audits for new providers after a much larger number of untested firms than expected made it onto RoATP.

In March we discovered that one person operating from a rented office in Cheshire had succeeded in getting three new companies onto the register.

And in May a three-month-old firm with one director and an office address registered to a semi-detached house in Birmingham was added to the list.

Mark Dawe, AELP’s chief executive, urged the ESFA to “keep to the commitment it made” in June.

“With the future of many good specialist providers now under threat because of the recent non-levy procurement, it would be more than unfair if cowboy operators were allowed to escape under the radar,” he said.

The ESFA’s presentation to the AELP conference acknowledged the sector’s concerns surrounding these new, untested providers.

“I hear lots of stories about people worried about some of these new providers working out of a shed in their back garden or the living room of a property,” he said.

He stressed that the register was just the “first hurdle” for untested providers, who would have to make it through a tough process of checks to keep their place.

The next stage would be mandatory training, followed by visits that would “look at these organisations and to test the things that they told us when they applied to the register”.

The final stage, which had been due to start this month, was to be audit visits to all new providers deemed medium- to high-risk.

A DfE spokesperson refused to say whether any of the visits had gone ahead.

“Over the coming months we will be testing new apprenticeship training providers to ensure they are compliant with their provider agreement and funding rules,” they said.