College Funding

Andrea Jenkyns Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Jenkyns (Morley and Outwood) (Con)]

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

Every young person should have access to an excellent education, and further education colleges play a vital role in achieving that. In my constituency of Morley and Outwood, 111 people, including myself, signed the petition. I made the decision to sign it because I recognise that more needs to be done to address and highlight this important issue. As co-chair of the all-party group on education and vice-chair of the social mobility all-party group, I understand the importance that education has as the best way to improve one’s lot in life. That is why the issue is so important and why I felt compelled to sign the petition.

The Government will have raised funding for school pupils aged five to 16 by more than 50% in real terms by 2020, compared with 2000. That is to be praised and is a record we should be proud of. However, from looking at the House of Commons Library figures, it is clear that funding for the 16 to 19 age group has fallen. The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ annual report on education spending in England stated that the equivalent of 16 to 19 student spending has fallen from £6,208 in 2010-11 to £5,698 in 2017-18. The average funding per student for the 16 to 19 age group is now less than that for secondary school-aged students and for higher education students. The IFS estimates that it is about 8% lower than spending per pupil in secondary schools. I hope that parity is something the Government will consider in their response to the debate.

The fact that local authority maintained schools, academies and sixth-form colleges have to pay VAT was mentioned. Schools and academies are subsequently reimbursed for those costs through VAT refunds; however, no such scheme exists for sixth-form colleges. That is another area that I hope the Government are looking at, because it has been argued that that anomaly places sixth-form colleges at a disadvantage.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association claims that the average sixth-form college lost about £385,000 in 2015-16 because of that anomaly, and in November 2018 the Association of Colleges argued that the Treasury should use the opportunity afforded by Brexit to extend the VAT refund scheme to all publicly funded sixth-form level education. Again, I hope that the Government are looking closely at Brexit and any dividends that it could offer.

It is not all bad news, and the Government deserve praise where it is due. Investment has been announced to strengthen education for 16 to 19-year-olds in certain academic areas. As we have heard, a further £600 for additional students participating in level 3 mathematics will be available, and two payments of £600 may be made if, for instance, a pupil is taking two years of maths study. Moreover, it was announced in the 2017 autumn Budget that £40 million of funding has been allocated to establish centres for excellence in mathematics. Ministers have also made £300 million of restructuring funding available to colleges, and half of that has already been spent.

However, I feel that my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), in his role as Chair of the Education Committee, was accurate in saying:

“Successive governments have failed to give further education the recognition it deserves for the role it plays in our national productivity puzzle.”

The Prime Minister has said that austerity is coming to an end. I hope that the Government are looking closely at this area, because it certainly needs to be addressed. We need to invest in our young people if we are to achieve our ambitions for our economy. I agree with the “Raise the Rate” campaign when its advocates say that if we are to meet our

“objectives for a strong post-Brexit economy and a socially mobile, highly educated workforce”,

we need to increase funding in this area. This is not the time to point fingers and play party politics—not with our young people’s future. Let us now increase college funding to sustainable levels and see greater parity with secondary schools.

I thank the education leaders in my constituency, including the fantastic Elliott Hudson College, which I recently visited, for the great work that it does in educating our constituents, both young and old.