Wednesday April 20 2005
Over a third of the money spent on the now closed Individual Learning Account Scheme went on fraud or payments which broke the rules of the scheme, Parliament has been told.
A statement from the National Audit Office said the mis-spent money was estimated as likely to total some £97m.
The Department for Education and Skills is still unable to estimate how much if any it will be able to recover.
The amount spent on the scheme was over £70m more than its budget.
According to the audit office report, the cost of fraud and serious irregularities, based on estimates and extrapolations by the department, may be up to £67m.
In addition, the department estimated it had made irregular payments of some £30m.
This is where good quality learning was delivered but the payments did not fully meet the rules.
An example would be where the learning provider did not seek from the learner the full contribution they were supposed to make to their training course
World Education News
