THE jury is still out or, more accurately, still waiting for prosecutions, to establish whether criminals really did defraud millions of pounds through individual learning accounts.

Sylvia Iwuagwu, a Nigerian of no fixed abode, has the distinction of being the only convicted ILA fraudster. She stole less than pound;10,000 and perhaps will one day be joined by bigger fish.

But one thing remains clear from the National Audit Office’s report into ILAs, published today.

The failure of ministers to set up proper safeguards turned the scheme into an Aladdin’s cave of public cash ready to be grabbed by any “training provider” with a job-lot of CD-Roms or cheap books to give away to unsuspecting “learners”. And such was the lax nature of the scheme, they could make a killing without breaking the law.

“So many things went wrong that it is hard to single one out for special mention,” said Edward Leigh, chairman of Parliament’s public accounts committee.

Quite apart from the failure to prevent fraud, or “abuse” of the system, the ILA scheme itself was destined never to know whether it had achieved many of its goals - save the key target of attracting a million account-holders. Size, it seemed, was everything.

“The only quantifiable targets were those relating to the number of accounts to be opened by March 2001 (500,000) or by March 2002 (one million),” said the report.

One target group was people aged 19 to 30 with “low qualifications”. The Department for Education and Skills, says the report, failed to define “low”. It added that: “Measuring success by age and level of prior qualifications is impossible from the management information collected.”

Another target group was “women returners to work”, but this was not clearly defined and ILA enrolment forms did not require women to identify themselves as such.

Non-professional school staff were also targeted but, again, the right questions were not asked. If these people were signing up in droves, the DfES would not have known.

The report said: “The absence of measurable or quantifiable objectives beyond the commitment to one million account-holders, together with limitations in the management information, complicated our assessment of whether the department met its policy objectives.”

The NAO said the relationship between the DfES and Capita, which administered the scheme, should have been clearer.

It recommended:

* Computer systems checked to make sure they are secure;

* Internal audits to ensure financial controls are adequate ;

* Plan to cope with ILAs attracting more people than anticipated;

* Monitoring of future programmes to make sure they are meeting their objectives;

* Government to take an active role in contract management;

* Schemes delivered through a private provider should ensure there are several credible bidders;

* System to check that e-learning students actually exist.

What made ILAs unusual was their reliance on market forces alone to ensure quality of provision.

Mr Leigh said: “This ‘buyer beware’ approach which the DfES expected its target learners to adopt contrasts strongly with that adopted by the department with respect to conventional education.”