Fraud and error in FE are getting “worse”, according to the Education and Skills Funding Agency’s director of finance, who has revealed there was £50 million worth of clawback last year.
Andrew Thomas, who heads up the agency’s provider market oversight division, said clamping down on misused funding was his “top priority” at this week’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers autumn conference.
He told provider leaders that his agency doesn’t want there to be “any clawback”, to give the assurance to parliament that taxpayers’ money is “being used as intended”.
Thomas said the “vast majority” of the £50 million funding taken back from education organisations by the agency last year was mostly retrieved from independent training providers.
