College raked in almost £1million of taxpayer funding for 'ghost' students
The first clues all was not well at the grandly named London College Of Global Education were there for anyone to see in the dodgy English on its website.
Its mission, it proclaimed, was “To create and provide a high quality of learning journey which inspire”.
And it boasted: “London College of Global Education is established in 2010 to offer specialised coursed in teaching and education”.
Perhaps it’s not surprising that a college that’s unable to spell “courses” should turn out to be a sham.
But what a pity that this only became apparent after it was paid almost £1million of taxpayers’ money to fund apprenticeships.
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That’s a vast amount to hand to a college whose latest published accounts at the time it began receiving the money showed net assets of just £2,650.
Run by sole director Narayan Sah, it claimed to offer face-to-face tuition in Barking, East London, and also distance learning.
The schools watchdog Ofsted carried out an inspection in June 2021, the year after the college began getting money from the Education and Skills Funding Agency, an executive agency of the Department for Education.
The resulting report makes for shocking reading.
“Inspectors found examples of people on the list of apprentices who were not studying at the provider,” Ofsted states and, incredible as it sounds, “Staff have not ensured that apprentices know that they are on an apprenticeship programme.”
The tuition can at best be described as haphazard.
“Leaders and staff do not have sufficient oversight of apprentices’ attendance at training sessions or of the progress that apprentices make,” read the report.
“In their reviews of apprentices’ progress, staff do not record accurately for each apprentice what they have learned, and what remains to be learned. For each reporting period, records of reviews are identical for apprentices within the same cohort, with no personalisation of information.”
I’ve asked what checks the Education and Skills Funding Agency carried out before so much money was given to this basket case but all I got was the cop-out: “We do not comment on individual provider cases.”
Further damning details are contained in a report from the Insolvency Service into 50-year-old Mr Sah from Nepal who has just been banned from being a director for seven years.
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This report states that there were 471 enrolled learners when he was told that the college was being investigated, and he then axed all but eight of them.
That meant that the money paid by the Education and Skills Funding Agency for the 463 that were removed needed to be repaid.
Some of it was, but £429,189 was still outstanding when the college went into liquidation.
It had also pocketed a Bounce Back Loan to help it through lockdown and £20,700 of that remains unpaid.
The final sentence of the Insolvency Service report is most damning of all.
“None of the learners enrolled with the college completed an apprenticeship qualification for which funding was obtained.”
In the latest annual report by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, the accounting officer John Edwards gamely writes: “Following assurances received from my predecessors, I am content that processes, controls, risk management and fraud prevention strategies delivered good financial management, propriety, regularity, and value for money during 2021-22.”
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