Leicester College to face demands to repay £4m in grant funding
The College say the pandemic is to blame.
Last week the Department for Education and Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) confirmed that there would be a lower reconciliation threshold for ESFA-funded providers to 90% for the 2020 to 2021 academic year.
This means that colleges will have to repay grants if they've fallen below the 90% threshold of delivered adult education. Leicester College say that this means they will have to pay back around £4 million in funding.
The College claim that they have been unable to reach the threshold due to circumstances created by the pandemic saying in a statement: "The rationale for setting the threshold at 90% appears to be that colleges should have been able to plan to deliver education and training online. In 2019/20, there was a recognition of the challenges faced by colleges and threshold was set much lower at 68%; however, 2020/21 has been an infinitely more difficult year because of the multiple lockdowns and restrictions and yet the Government has decided that colleges like Leicester College should not be supported."
"The under-delivery against the College’s allocation can largely be attributed to the various national lockdowns as a result of the pandemic, compounded by the local Leicester lockdown. Leicester College has been in continuous lockdown with the rest of the city since March 2020."
"We had no choice but to close the College to help keep students and the wider community safe. Indeed, this was something that we were ordered to do by the government. However, as a consequence, we are being punished for not being able to recruit and train adult students during these closures."
City Mayor Sir Peter Soulsby has said: “There are few cities in the UK where the impact of the virus has been felt as keenly as it has been in Leicester. We have been under some sort of restriction since last March, often out of step with the rest of the country.”
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
“Our primary aim is to support providers to continue to deliver as much quality provision as possible, ideally above the 90 percent threshold, whether that be face-to-face or remotely delivered.
“Our latest data shows that this threshold is a fair representation of providers’ average forecasted delivery for the rest of the 2020/21 academic year.