Inspectors' first sting

North Area College has become the first casualty of the Further Education Funding Council's new inspection regime, which allows more self-assessment. The Manchester sixth-form college was found to have "assessed its own quality of provision more generously than inspectors did in the majority of areas". The FEFC inspectors deemed provision "less than satisfactory" in three of the ten. Fred Alexander, principal of North Area, said: "I have not been in this post long. There are issues we need to address, and we were in the process of addressing them."