Debt demo

(Photograph) - Students from Stoke-on-Trent College in Staffordshire protested in London last week about their college's Pounds 8 million debt, which built up through missing recruitment targets.

A delegation demonstrated outside the Department for Education and Employment and lobbied MPs, claiming the further education funding system was to blame and warning that other colleges could be hit if nothing was done to make college heads more accountable. College governors met on Monday to decide the future of director Neil Preston and his assistant Helen Chandler both on sick leave since September, but allegedly running a pub.