College Funding

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker.

I welcome this debate; the number of signatures shows how important the issue is. It is really important to people in my constituency because we do not have school sixth forms, so students have no choice but to go to a sixth-form college. Wigan and Leigh College offers the vocational route, and does it very well, but I will concentrate on the two outstanding colleges in my constituency that offer academic qualifications for students who might want to go on to higher education. It is their problems with the chronic and sustained underfunding that I will talk about today.

In the last two years, Winstanley College has been named Educate North’s college of the year, Merseyside Educate’s most inspirational 16 to 18 provider and, in April 2017, the Times Higher Education sixth-form college of the year. In addition, it has been rated outstanding by Ofsted for the past 17 years, and has the matrix standard for excellence in support and guidance. It has no problems attracting students. This year, 16 students were offered places at Oxbridge, but it has had to cease offering German A-level. The principal said to me:

“We are lucky that, so far, we have not have to do more but we cannot carry on like this.”

Difficult decisions will be made in the future.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that children and young people from Knowsley travel to Winstanley College to do their A-levels and very much appreciate the education they get.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

Indeed, they travel from all over the north-west to attend Winstanley College. To have that college say that it does not think it can carry on offering those excellent qualifications is a tragedy for social mobility in the area.

St John Rigby College is the other college in my constituency. It is also an award-winning college. I am pleased to say that the title of Educate North’s sixth-form college of the year happily stayed in Makerfield, as it passed from Winstanley to St John Rigby, which has also won the award of most inspirational 16 to 18 provider.

The principal feels that, although students continue to get excellent qualifications, their experience is not as rich as that of their counterparts a few years ago, because every year something has to be removed from what was previously provided as part of the overall educational experience. Students are getting less specialist teaching than they did three years ago. St John Rigby is a highly inclusive college that really supports its students through the academic route, but students are now taught their specialist subjects for 20 minutes fewer per subject per week than three years ago. That is nearly three weeks’ worth of lost teaching per academic year.

There are increased class sizes, with approximately two extra students per group than four years ago. The college tries to support every individual student, but increased class sizes reduce the amount of time teachers can spend with students. They also increase the workload of the teachers, giving them more marking and making them less accessible out of lessons. Enrichment opportunities have decreased.

The college has maintained its focus on employability skills and career pathways, but that has been possible only because of the cuts that I have mentioned. The activities that have declined are the recreational activities, which play an important part in student wellbeing and mental health. St John Rigby has chosen to put its primary investment into teachers and quality of learning, but its capital investment has reduced to half of what it was four years ago. There has been a decline in the college infrastructure and the estate. That cannot continue much longer.

The principal said to me:

“It feels as though each and every year we are faced with an unpalatable decision of which priority (which just about survived the previous year’s prioritisation exercise) can no longer be provided”.

That is simply not good enough in an area where social mobility is extremely low. How are my students from the Wigan borough supposed to continue to have high aspirations and become more socially mobile when their access to further education courses, and support from the staff who teach those courses, is being continually restricted by lack of funding? More broadly, with the challenges of Brexit, how are we going to produce the competitive and educated workforce of the future if there is systematic underfunding of post-16 education?

Those colleges are doing their best to support students who wish to take an academic route. Investment in T-levels and vocational education should be applauded, but it does nothing for Winstanley and St John Rigby, and for those students who want to take a different route. Therefore, for the sake of our future, the Government have to look at raising the rate of 16 to 18 education to £4,760 per student and, crucially, keeping the rate at least in line with inflation.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

16-to-19 Education Funding

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) on obtaining this important debate. Given the statistics that we have heard, it is no surprise that the two exceptional sixth-form colleges in my constituency have both contacted me to express their concerns.

Winstanley College has a stellar reputation as a high-performing academic institution, but it has now cut German from its curriculum, meaning that that language is now lacking in my borough. St John Rigby College, judged outstanding in every aspect by Ofsted in February 2017, is rightly proud of its inclusivity—85% of its students reside in Wigan—whereas Winstanley is well-known across the north-west, and many students travel for hours to get there.

The Ofsted report particularly praised the extent to which St John Rigby provides extra support to enable students to achieve. That is vital in order for them to excel, but it is unfunded, and as teachers are being asked to teach larger groups for more hours, the capacity to provide such support is diminishing. In my constituency, raising aspirations and building confidence are crucial, but the college principal, Peter McGhee, believes that the funding cuts are having the biggest impact on marginally qualified students. To him, it is an issue of social justice and social cohesion.

To ensure that students who need support and are less independent in their studies receive that support, the college has decided to keep teaching groups at the right size for students, meaning that it cannot invest in the estate or new technology. As funding continues to fall in real terms, its only option is to remove some of the unfunded aspects of provision, but whether it is additional study groups, one-to-one support sessions or supported revision sessions, they are all vital to those students in my constituency. The students who need extra support are the marginally qualified, who just about managed in school. Perhaps they failed a bit or did not get on with the environment, or they have higher anxiety or mental health needs. Often, their only support is provided by the college, due to cuts to NHS and local authority provision.

Unfunded programmes that develop skills and values are also under threat. The Values for Living programme has been praised by Ofsted for changing students’ lifestyles and developing their personal, moral, social and employability skills exceptionally well. Is that not what we want for our young people—to be the best that they can be in all aspects and to have the groundwork laid for a happy, healthy, productive adult life? To do so, students in Wigan need to spend more time in college, not less, as they achieve best when they are busy and engaged in a structured programme. However, that is now unaffordable, and large numbers of my constituents will be deprived of the education and opportunities to which they are entitled. The colleges in Makerfield and I are ambitious for every student, but we need the Government not only to share that ambition but to take practical steps so that it can be achieved.

Education: Public Funding

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When we came into office in 2010, only one in five pupils took the EBacc combination of core academic GCSEs. The figure is now two in five, and we want it to rise further.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Eighty-nine per cent. of my primary schools and all my secondary schools have told me that they are planning for real-terms cuts over the next five years. In one school the nurture unit, where children who are under pressure can take some time out, is threatened with closure. How will that help children’s mental health in schools?

[Nick Gibb]

We take mental health in our school system extremely seriously, and we will publish a Green Paper on young people’s mental health before the end of the year. We want to ensure that every child is taught about mental wellbeing and the mental health risks posed by things such as the internet. We take the matter very seriously, but, as I have said repeatedly in my response to this urgent question, no school will lose funding under the national funding formula.