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Freedom of Information - A Sectorwide Report

Who really cares about compliance with Section 19 of the Freedom of Information Act? The Tertiary & Adult Education Sector's 30.4% noncompliance is a pretty strong indicator that applied policy is lacking.

This could certainly be considered an unfair opinion based upon an unfairly limited slice of the very broad portfolio of legal responsibilities that tertiary colleges and local government adult learning services must meet. This could also be considered unfair and that hard pressed and underfunded institutions and council adult and community education departments need sympathy and not have their insignificant oversights noted and publicised.

There are many counterarguments that should be obvious to everybody but the best place to begin is to ask the simple question; are sectorwide comparative assessments of any use? Is there any evidence that they ‘move the needle’? Helpfully there is, and that it is pretty irrefutable should be very pleasing because it confirms that plurality of opinions and diversity of perspectives are essential to optimising outcomes of educational governance, and management, teachers and students.

This report focuses on examples of learning providers that do very well in their Freedom of Information presentations. It details the virtues and includes an easy to use checklist so that learning providers with a care for the law, or even better, want to offer curated non‑curricular learning resources, or best of all, see value in a public demonstration of their technical sophistication, can bring their presentations up to the level of the best. This table shows the best presentations by category:

Category	Subcategory	Best Presentation Currently
Freedom of Information Presentation	HTML	South Eastern Regional College Despite not providing intra-category navigation, it is the most well presented offer. There are lots of other notable instances of practices that should be emulated, such as including a contact form, or showing the previously requested data etc.
Freedom of Information Policy	PDF	Borders College It is a small thing but the inclusion of a diagram that shows the processing of requests for information, is so useful that I would include one in the main HTML presentation.
Freedom of Information Policy	HTML	East Durham College No contest, and the prominent presentation of the metadata is outstanding.
Publication Scheme	PDF	Ayrshire College The choice to use a landscape orientation where tables are heavily featured is only done by a handful learning providers with Ayrshire College's presentation being the best.
Publication Scheme	HTML	Cornwall College By far the best publication scheme presentation.

See the Freedom of Information Presentations Report

Governance - A Sectorwide Review

The headline results of this review of governance presentations are that, of the 477 colleges and adult education services, with their own websites (the majority of adult education services do not have their own websites):

58 (12%)	Do not publish on their websites any details about the membership of the governing or advisory board
92 (19%)	Do not publish on the website their vision, values, and mission statement
140 (29%)	Do not publish on their websites any of the minutes of the meetings of the governing board
131 (28%)	Do not publish on the website their strategic plan (this total rises to 184 (39%) inclusive of the many out of date strategic plans), and
323 (68%)	Do not publish on the website their triennial external review of governance report.

Admittedly it is just an assumption to expect learning providers to have governing or advisory boards to exist, to have members, that they meet and that minutes are taken. The assumption extends to expecting a corporate vision, values, or mission, or a strategic plan, but this assumption seems, by any standard at all, very, very modest.

See the Governance Presentations Report

UK Register of Learning Providers - Test Results

From 396 unique Tertiary and Adult Education Provider entries (and 3 non-entries) on the UKLRP that were tested: 228 Pass (57.58%) (including 3 uncertain Ayes) 168 Fail (42.42%) (including 2 uncertain Noes) There is no requirement for Providers' entries on the Registry to be kept up to date, and on asking for a copy of the guidance that is made available to Providers, it turns out there is none. Some Providers are actually extremely prompt and ensure that their entries are updated as soon as their Primary Contact has announced their retirement and so credit again to Basingstoke College of Technology, this time for presenting an excellent example of a real-time update to their entry on the Register.
FE/6F/AE Colleges, February 2026	UKPRN	Primary Contact	QC
City College Norwich	10004772	01603 773773 info@ccn.ac.uk	Fail.
City College Peterborough	10045106	Mrs. Tanya Meadows Vice Principal 01733 555197 tmeadows@citycollegepeterborough.ac.uk	Fail.
City College Plymouth	10005128	Mrs. Jacqueline Grubb Principal 01752 305300 info@cityplym.ac.uk	Pass.
City Literary Institute	10001463	Mr. Mark Malcomson Principal 020 7831 7831	Pass.
City of Bristol College	10001467	Mr. Richard Harris 01173 125000 enquiries@cityofbristol.ac.uk	Fail.
City of Glasgow College	10013192	Mr. Paul Little Principal 01415 666222	Pass.
City of Liverpool College	10003955	Ms. Laura Rowan Director of Education 01512523359 laura.rowan@liv-coll.ac.uk	Fail.
City of Portsmouth College	10007945	Miss Katy Quinn Principal & Chief Executive 023 9238 3131 principal@copc.ac.uk	Fail.
City of Stoke-on-Trent Sixth Form College	10065146	01782 848736	Fail.
City of Westminster College	10001476	Mr. Stephen Davis Chief Executive Officer & Group Principal 020 7723 8826	Pass.
City of Wolverhampton College	10007578	Ms. Louise Fall Principal and Chief Executive Officer 01902 836000 mail@wolvcoll.ac.uk	Pass.

See the UK Register of Learning Providers Data

Every Financial Document & All 2024/25 Financial Data

Manchester College Annual Financial Statement 2025 cover

Marine Society College Annual Financial Statement 2025 cover

Newcastle College Group Annual Financial Statement 2025 cover

See the Full Financial Statements Table 2009-Present See the Full 2024/25 Financial Data

All Current Reports

19 June 2026 Content Reviews New