More revelations of alleged wrongdoing by FE leaders in the Sunday Times and FE Week last weekend should give professionals and leaders working in the sector a serious pause for thought.
If it wasn’t for FE Week’s excellent investigative journalism and the brave whistle-blowers who informed my Substack – a journal which has helped expose the scandalous sale of City & Guilds – the public would not know that Lord Docherty and Dame Ann Limb were allowed to climb in social status on the back of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ (Docherty) and CV lies (Limb).
Unfortunately, English further education has quietly developed its own sub‑genre of public scandal. Colleges that were once wheeled out as exemplars of “world‑class governance” have appeared in these pages as case studies in terrible leadership and bad governance ethics of how not to run a public institution!
The college names and locations vary – Weston, Gateshead, Hull, Hadlow – but the underlying story is depressingly consistent: hero-worship leadership cultures, weak board challenge, excessive marketisation and regulatory attention that arrives late, often long after the public money has gone.
The FE Commissioner and DfE counter‑fraud investigators found “funding irregularities” and “governance failures” around undeclared payments to former principal Sir Paul Phillips. He has kept his Knighthood, as have so many other recipients of “gongs” in the sector who have subsequently been caught up in scandals. Yet, in what moral universe can it have been ethical for Philips to be awarded £2.5 million more in remuneration than was ever officially declared?
Similar moral questions now face former senior charity executives, Kirsty Donnelly MBE and Abid Ismail. They both “cashed out” with million-pound bonuses only days after the transfer of all the commercial assets of City & Guilds. The entire delivery body that once formed the core of a 148-year-old non-profit Royal Chartered institution was sold off to a foreign-owned buyer. The charity’s original purpose was hollowed out in the pursuit of profit and individual greed.
The story is not too dissimilar in the independent training provider (ITP) sector.
The Education and Skills Funding Agency’s 2023/24 accounts revealed a £5.7 million write‑off linked to the insolvency of the training group Middleton Murray. In the same period, the ESFA reported that about half of the 142 new fraud or irregularity allegations it received related to ITPs, compared with 20 FE colleges and 47 academy trusts. Time and again across the sector, we see examples of “ghost learners” being claimed for and directors abandoning limited liability companies long before any taxpayers’ money can be reclaimed.
FE Week has repeatedly shown how little of this ever sees the light of day. Out of at least 193 ESFA financial investigations into FE providers since 2017, only two reports – both involving colleges – had been published at the time of their investigation. The rest, including many concerning ITPs, remain entirely opaque: contracts are terminated, companies fold or rebrand, directors may quietly get disqualified, but the narrative rarely reaches learners, employers or the wider public.
In my 30-year career as a CEO and former sector leader, I have seen wrongdoing up close and called it out whenever I encountered it. But it always extracts a career-limiting price. Senior civil servants close ranks and deflect responsibility. Boards oust troublesome executives who ask too many pertinent questions, usually by gagging them and booting them out the door through the overuse of legal non-disclosure agreements. Of course, it is dressed up as protecting an organisation’s reputation. In fact, it is to protect spineless leaders and board directors at the top who want to cover up so they can continue ingratiating themselves with the sector.
Power, at its core, is held in trust. It is lent by institutions that must have confidence that the person holding it will not turn it against them. Ethical leadership in FE is not a management style. It should be a moral commitment wrapped up in uncompromising integrity. And to lead in today’s world is to be perpetually uncomfortable. Our current stock of “sector leaders” have become far too comfortable; some of them need to take a hard look in the mirror.
These latest revelations should be a wake-up call. The silence of some sector leaders when a scandal breaks needs to end. Journalists should not face threatening legal letters or be spied on by private detectives for simply doing their jobs.
As the famous saying goes, sunlight is the best form of disinfectant.
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