IMAGINE a world where over £100 million of public funds could be spent with what seems like virtually no credible controls, well, welcome to the Education Skills Funding Agency’s (ESFA) world of contract management.

Thousands of working class young people, unemployed workers and those hoping to get better skills or a foot in the door of work have suffered at the hands of profiteering training providers. We should also not forget the hundreds if not thousands of employees who have lost their livelihoods due to what could be described as inept ESFA contract management.

This is just what is known. Who knows what could be unearthed if some proper investigation took place across the public/private “partnership” arrangements spanning education, training, health, transport and the rest of the foundation infrastructure of our so-called civil society?

Remember, most of the audit controls and scrutiny for all the public/private partnership work are also “outsourced,” therefore true transparency and accountability have to be questioned.

Recently we have seen providers such as Learndirect, Positive Outcomes and, last week, 3aaa in crisis or gone bust and these are possibly the tip of a very costly iceberg. In other sectors you may recall Carillion or A4e — other significant recipients of public money going belly up at huge cost to the public purse. After all, what’s wrong with flushing hundreds of millions down the U bend of “private sector knows best?” It has to stop.

Meanwhile back at the ESFA, the latest incarnation of the ESFA, contract management and missing the bleeding obvious comes in the form of a training provider named 3aaa — the As stood for aspire, achieve, advance. A tad more apt would be 3bbb — bluff, blunder and now bankrupt, failing up to 3,000 apprentices and handing redundancy notices to 500 staff.

More shocking and worrying is that the ESFA has handed a file to the police for investigation, Ofsted previously heralded 3aaa as outstanding and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea recently used 3aaa to host an employer apprenticeship levy conference at the Arsenal stadium.

So how does the ESFA manage these contracts to ensure value for money, track provider performance and see that quality standards are met? It uses complex management information systems and data analysis developed by … you’ve guessed it, a private sector partner. All of this is done remotely via data analysis, with no actual visits or physical checks.

The same data is used by Ofsted to “measure” quality and provide assurances that the provider is “good” or better or requires improvement. Ofsted does carry out a cursory visit to check the data and maybe talk to a couple of learners.

Previously 3aaa was described by Ofsted as “outstanding.” Ofsted declined to publish its report from an inspection earlier in the year — it is rumoured that Ofsted was about to say well done to 3aaa. And then somebody thought better of publishing their report when “new” evidence came to light, thanks to what has been described as a whistle blower.

3aaa had a massive and rapid growth in contract values issued by the ESFA while other ESFA funding streams supporting public-sector based learning and skills has been shrinking.

It must be because it, the public sector, doesn’t engage in dodgy data practises, misrepresent (I’m being polite) who is learning with it and how many people it has as learners, doesn’t pay bonuses to senior staff and doesn’t spend £1.4m of public money on sponsorship, as in the case of 3aaa.

Surprisingly the ESFA didn’t spot any of this? Or if it did, it failed to do anything about it. It would appear that the ESFA doesn’t care how providers spend the money, as long as the data shows the outcomes it wants. After all, data never lies or gets manipulated and is entirely trustworthy, right?

Services for skills and learning in councils and colleges seem to put learner needs at the forefront of what they do. Yes, they as employers have questions to answer, but in comparison to the blatant and overt abuse of income from the public purse by private providers they offer far better options and outcomes for young people and others who want to gain genuine skills and training.

The complexity surrounding how skills and learning is funded, who handles the funding, how organisations register for funding, who receives funding is a labyrinth of outsourced IT systems that is approaching something beyond human comprehension. The same goes for health, transport and all the other public sectors.

So much government cash is used to prop up massively complicated and unaccountable dispersal and finance systems, known as agencies, before a single penny is spent actually delivering a single piece of training or learning. There is a massive ecosystem of consultants and businesses taking huge chunks of cash to “facilitate” best use of public funds.

At the same time the same ecosystem is passionate in advising all the agencies and government about the fantastic job they are doing via lavish conferences and events, best defined as protecting an extraordinary parasitic relationship.

So the questions at the end of this is, when will the government funding agencies start to be held accountable for use of public funds?

When will these agencies start to realise that they should invest in supporting councils and colleges to provide services instead of being at the forefront of the systematic demolition of what they offer? And when will government wake up, smell the coffee and realise it is being fleeced good and proper?

At the start, I spoke of £100m being misused. I think £100m is a drop in a vast sea of misuse of public money.

Access to learning, whether it be apprenticeships, skills, qualifications or other social engagement is vital for any society to develop, as important as access to decent jobs, with decent pay and yet here we are, giving lashings of public money for directors and others to spend on all sorts of pocket-lining ego trips, including sponsoring cricket grounds for hundreds of thousands of pounds as 3aaa did at Derbyshire County Cricket.

Yet it seems to be perfectly acceptable to cut the income of those with nothing. You couldn’t make it up! Well you can with this and other recent governments.

Matt Hallcock is a University and College Union member working in adult education.