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Christmas Adjournment

I wish to raise my concerns over allegations that institutionalised fraud took place at the former Manchester college of arts and technology, better known as MANCAT. Many unanswered questions remain, and I feel that the matter is relevant for two reasons: first, that further education colleges are calling for increased powers of self-regulation; and secondly, that the new Manchester college created by the merger of MANCAT and City college is run largely by former MANCAT senior management. To recap, allegations were made by several members of staff at MANCAT relating to the falsification of paperwork such as student registers and additional learning support forms, which, it was said, enabled the college to obtain extra money from the further education body, the Learning and Skills Council. Following my last speech on this subject, I submitted written questions on 2 June to the LSC chief executive, Mark Haysom. I was keen to know why MANCAT kept a secondary system of registers, not produced or signed by tutors, on which to base funding claims, but I received no explanation. One of my main concerns was the wholesale destruction of auditable documents by the college, which thwarted inquiries by the LSC's own investigator into the allegations. The documents included, among much else, original registers compiled by tutors. I asked Mr. Haysom who was responsible, who authorised the destruction, how long it had been going on, exactly what had been destroyed and why MANCAT had informed auditors that it had kept records for the requisite six years when it had not done so. I also asked whether any sanctions had been taken against MANCAT when it was discovered that the records had been destroyed. I received no answers to those questions. All that I was told by Mr. Haysom was:"““Failure to maintain and keep appropriate records was one of the issues taken very seriously by the LSC in subsequent dialogue with the college aimed at tightening and improving the college's audit systems””." In many spheres of work, destroying auditable documents would merit dismissal from post, but I am not aware of any senior managers at MANCAT having been sacked, nor am I aware of any disciplinary proceedings being taken against them. Indeed, the core of its senior management team, including the principal, Peter Tavernor, and the deputy principal, Barbara Forshaw, now run the new Manchester college, which was formed in August 2008. It is one of the two biggest further education colleges in the country, with an estimated annual turnover of £130 million. Shortly after my Adjournment debate speech of 22 May, I received a confidential letter from someone working in Manchester's FE sector, telling me:"““It is well worth pursuing your enquiries and a lot of people in Manchester would be greatly heartened by any public enquiry or investigation””." The writer also said:"““There is a great deal of nervousness regarding the forthcoming merger.””" Information has come to light about how the new Manchester college is being run, and it gives me cause for concern. One aspect is that several capable former members of MANCAT's administration staff, who left MANCAT years ago and joined City college because they were unhappy about MANCAT's record keeping, have now, following the merger, been made redundant at the new institution and asked to sign confidentiality agreements—better known as gagging clauses—as a condition of receiving the redundancy payments to which they are entitled. It is also my understanding that some of these staff had witnessed malpractice at MANCAT, namely the manipulation of student numbers. Students who had left part-way though a course remained on the database, and the college had continued to claim funding for them throughout the academic year. The Public Accounts Committee has long deplored the use of public money and gagging clauses to prevent people from revealing abuses in the workplace. That approach was routinely used by management at MANCAT to silence potential whistleblowers, which I raised in the Adjournment debate on May 22. It would appear that this pattern is continuing at the new college. Moreover, it is my understanding that the acutely sensitive posts of head of student records and head of management information systems at Manchester college are now being run by a husband and wife team with a close personal connection to the principal of the college, Peter Tavernor. It is the job of one or other of those employees to validate and audit data on which funding claims are based. I am not stating there has been impropriety, but surely that arrangement cannot be ideal, bearing in mind that there are so many unanswered questions surrounding Mr Tavernor's former college. I believe that the public have long been denied the rigorous investigation at MANCAT that they deserve. Mr. Haysom has made it clear that the Learning and Skills Council has no appetite for a further investigation, because the crucial records that constituted potential evidence have been destroyed, and because the events occurred several years ago. All that remains highly relevant, however, not only because the new Manchester college is largely being run by senior MANCAT personnel, but because the FE sector as a whole is calling for further self-regulation. According to the Association of Colleges website, a system is envisaged that will be"““characterised by a reduction in the regulatory demands placed on providers and single ownership of the regulatory framework facilitated by the single voice””." In so far as that tortuous sentence makes sense at all, I think that it means that it believes that FE colleges should be trusted to run their own affairs without too much scrutiny or interference from outside. It goes on:"““We envisage a self-regulation system in which providers””—" that is to say, colleges—"““become respected and trusted partners of Government by recognising their statutory responsibilities and their accountability for the effective delivery of national policy and the efficient use of public funds””." I particularly note the word ““trusted””, as trust was conspicuously absent in MANCAT's relationship with its former external auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, which was called in to investigate after a former lecturer raised concerns about the manipulation of student registers. Six months after that exercise, PricewaterhouseCoopers resigned, and the PWC partner, Lee Childs wrote to Peter Tavernor, stating:"““Frankly, I do not believe it possible to audit effectively without trust on both sides””." I am aware that MANCAT has always refuted allegations of fraud and malpractice even though detailed allegations of manipulated paperwork surfaced independently from different individuals in unconnected departments. After my last Adjournment debate speech, I received indignant letters from two MANCAT governors claiming that the allegations had always been unsubstantiated. They informed me that since those events the college has had an Ofsted inspection and an LSC review of its financial governance systems with exemplary results and that its maintenance of student records had been described by PricewaterhouseCoopers as a model of good practice. I have no doubt that much good work has been done at MANCAT, but I am also mindful that in 2002 it had had its previous Ofsted inspection just as allegations began to surface. A grade 1, which is ““outstanding””, was awarded to the English for speakers of other languages department, but it subsequently emerged in signed statements from several former staff that that department was allegedly riddled with the sort manipulation that I have described. Several tutors in ESOL and in the department of computer imaging were pressed to alter the registers on which funding was based. One tutor in computer imaging was reported as saying:"““If students were absent, we had to mark them with a zero, which meant they did not attend; did not contact college…The student would be withdrawn after three zeros, but I was told not to mark students who ceased to attend with a zero. It was explained to me that if a student were to be withdrawn before a certain benchmark date, the college would lose funding…I was told by a divisional leader to mark a student who had ceased to attend as being off with 'authorised absence' or AA in the register. I was very uneasy about this; I put A, or absent and from then on photocopied my registers each week””." Another former tutor in the ESOL department told of registers being altered after they had been handed into the departmental head, Marina Parha:"““Names unfamiliar to the class teacher had appeared and in some cases existing students had been marked present when they had, in fact, been absent…On showing my own registers to Marina Parha in the first term of the academic year 2001-02, I was asked by her what all the zeros were for. When I explained they indicated student absences, she replied: 'I don't like all those zeros—we'll have to do something about that'. In a subsequent meeting, she told me to change some of the zeros to ticks for a few weeks. I did not argue and neither did I alter my registers.””" I refer to what one former ESOL lecturer said in a statement prepared for a colleague who intended to take MANCAT to an employment tribunal for unfair dismissal. The lecturer said that"““in a meeting just before the Ofsted inspection at the end of April 2002... Marina Parha—who was in charge of ESOL at Mancat—announced to the teachers that the department had achieved a student retention rate of 100 per cent.””" The statement continues:"““Those present were stunned by what she said—we were, after all, the teachers of the classes and we knew that it was common for students to leave, sometimes without any warning, in the middle of their courses. It was common knowledge in the department that she had amended our registers to create a false impression of student retention.””" The former lecturer went on to say that he had been asked by a team leader to"““mark my absent students as present on my class register, in order (so she said) to avoid such absences casting a negative light on my performance as a teacher. I refused to do this.””" He described a conversation he had had with a colleague who had been sacked:"““I found out that he had been subjected to pressure into signing misrepresentative documents and had refused to do so. Marina Parha seemed to revel in her ability to deceive. She actually boasted to the teachers in a meeting how she was going to give an incorrect picture to the Ofsted inspector during the inspection””." He then described how Ms Parha said she would do this by carefully selecting files that showed the level of students' work in a good light. The colleague wrote in a statement that Ms Parha was"““contemptuous about the inspection process at Wednesday evening staff meeting. She was pleased we had only one inspector... who knew absolutely nothing about ESOL.””" He then described how Ms Parha told staff she wanted as many groups of students as possible to go out on trips during the week of the inspection, and"““focus his attention on certain classes””." He went on:"““I believe it is legitimate to speculate that the inspector's exposure to the reality of the department was carefully controlled ""and that he was not given a full picture of the classes, teaching, administration or staff morale within it.””" Ms Parha has continued to thrive since her department gained its grade 1: she is now head of department for language support at the Manchester college, but I would suggest that the Ofsted exercise of 2002 gives food for thought about how far such inspections can be relied upon to give a true picture. I also suggest that all those events should make the Secretary of State cautious about granting further education the increased self-regulation that it so strongly desires. May I wish everyone a happy Christmas?