The quality watchdog has upheld two concerns about standards at the UK¡¯s biggest private college, St Patrick¡¯s, finding drop-out rates of over 30 per cent and reports of fighting in the classroom.

However, following the report the government has given the green light to for-profit St Patrick¡¯s ¨C where students have received ?185 million in public-backed funding in the last two years ¨C for it to resume accessing public money. The college had fee payments suspended earlier this year.

The QAA¡¯s report, published under its ¡°Concerns¡± scheme on 30 April, found that practice was ¡°broadly acceptable¡± in four out of six areas examined at the college. The ¡°significant exceptions¡± were admissions procedures and student retention and attendance, where the QAA said the ¡°concerns raised are justified¡±.

According to the report, there is evidence ¡°indicative of recruitment errors and a failure to ensure that academic staff are equipped to cope with periodic disciplinary problems¡±.

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The QAA also says that the college¡¯s ¡°approach to student recruitment includes making cold contacts. Students accordingly reported having been approached by a representative of the college who described the programmes on offer, drawing attention to the potential availability of student loans.¡±

The report does say that the college has ¡°made progress¡± on student learning opportunities since a previous visit by the QAA.

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St Patrick¡¯s ¡°will provide an action plan¡± within six weeks, to be followed up by a full QAA Higher Education Review to ensure the report¡¯s recommendations are addressed, the QAA says.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills also investigated St Patrick¡¯s. Its investigation has been completed, but has not been published.

A BIS spokesman said this week that ¡°following the BIS and QAA investigations, the procedures put in place and the action plan agreed with St Patrick¡¯s International College, the department wrote to St Patrick¡¯s and confirmed that the Secretary of State [Vince Cable] has decided to¡­lift the suspension of fee payments to St Patrick¡¯s in respect of all students the college identified as actively participating in their studies¡±.

However, in a separate development this week, the É«ºÐÖ±²¥ Office has confirmed that St Patrick¡¯s licence to sponsor overseas students has been revoked.

In 2013-14, nearly 7,000 students claimed SLC fee loans to take St Patrick¡¯s sub-degree Higher National courses, awarded by Pearson.

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Current students told the QAA¡¯s Concerns team ¡°that they believed some students had joined only to secure the loan which was available and had submitted either no work or patently inadequate work¡±, the QAA¡¯s report says.

The report adds that there were ¡°examples provided¡± of ¡°poor classroom behaviour¡± which included ¡°students fighting in the classroom¡±.

And it says that students ¡°reported failures to protect their learning opportunities by managing the disruptive behaviour of unmotivated students. Such a situation, which sees also a minimum 30 per cent non-progression rate and a significant minority of students submitting no work (or submitting late), is indicative of recruitment errors and a failure to ensure that academic staff are equipped to cope with periodic disciplinary problems.¡±

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The QAA¡¯s report on St Patrick¡¯s finds that UK Quality Code for Higher Education expectation that ¡°admissions arrangements are clear, fair, explicit and consistently applied¡± was ¡°not met¡±. The expectation that ¡°every student is enable to develop as an independent learner, study their chosen subject(s) in depth and enhance their capacity for analytical, critical and creative thinking¡± was also ¡°not met¡±.

Daniel Khan, St Patrick¡¯s principal, said that the college was ¡°one of the few alternative providers to be granted ¡®subscriber¡¯ status¡±, meaning it had had to ¡°demonstrate to [the] QAA¡¯s satisfaction that it is a mature self-critical academic community¡±.

He added that ¡°as soon as we received a first draft of the report we moved to compose an ¡®action plan¡¯ and agreed it with QAA ahead of publication of the final report.

¡°The college will now concentrate its energies on implementing that action plan.¡±

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He also said that St Patrick¡¯s ¡°takes particular satisfaction from QAA¡¯s finding that the majority of the concerns raised cannot be upheld and its recognition that students speak positively about the helpfulness of teaching staff, person tutors, and unit leaders¡±.

john.morgan@tesglobal.com