To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how many notices to improve were issued to further education colleges in each of the last three years; how many of these have been made public; and if he will make a statement. (134417)

Nine Notices to Improve (Notices) have been issued to further education colleges in the last three years. Four were as a result of an Ofsted inspection judgement of overall inadequate. The remaining five were issued as a result of the colleges failing to meet the minimum levels of performance.

Notices were introduced in 2006 following the commitment to eliminate failure set out in the White Paper, Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances. Notices are a process for setting additional conditions of funding to address underperformance within a specified time frame.

The LSC have not made any notices public and do not intend to do so.