Further Education Colleges (North-east)

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Thank you, Sir Edward. I will do my best, although I am less practised than my colleagues.

Northumberland is one of our largest counties geographically, covering more than 2,000 square miles, but with a population of only 320,000. More than 50% of the population live in the small south-east corner of the country, where our excellent Northumberland College is situated, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). For students in the Hexham or Berwick constituencies, the travel times and distances from local towns such as Alnwick, Hexham, Haltwhistle or Berwick are enormous. From Berwick the journey is more than 50 miles each way. The need for an excellent college to offer courses that the local school cannot is vital.

Northumberland College, under the fantastic leadership of Marcus Clinton, ably supported by a brave and determined board of governors, aims to provide a world-leading college for our students. A network of highly specialist centres is being built to provide a regional centre of excellence for hospitality, for tourism and for land-based training. A technology park, a STEM centre and a wind hub in conjunction with the Port of Blyth are also being created. Northumberland College wants to ensure that every student can access the training that they need in their chosen field, but my constituents face a challenge in even getting to the college.

Since our Labour county council stopped funding post-16 transport some years ago, the college has had to pick up the bill so that no student is lost. It is vital that there is stronger careers advice in our high schools, and that the sixth forms and colleges work together. Unlike in other parts of the country, in rural north Northumberland the pressure on schools is not too many pupils but too few. The schools are therefore keen to persuade their pupils to stay on for A-levels to help their cash flow, even though the college might be the better choice for a pupil. I ask the Minister, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) did, why the area review is not looking at provision in sixth forms as well as colleges and encompassing the whole post-16 sector. It is a small sector in Northumberland, but vital if we are to make the best use of resources and get the best for our students and for the future economic benefit of Northumberland.

A student who wants to specialise in construction, engineering or IT in our new STEM centre, or in land-based studies, which are so important to rural Northumberland, may be better off going to Northumberland College than remaining in a school setting, but that will be a problem as long as the battle for funds is an issue. Our college could not do more on rationalisation and working with local businesses to build apprenticeship programmes, but sparsely populated communities present real challenges, which I hope the area review and the Minister will shortly consider closely.

On apprenticeships, I, like the hon. Member for Hartlepool, would like the Minister to clarify how SMEs, which are the lifeblood of Northumberland—we do not have any large companies, and every company is an SME—will access levy funding to help them take on apprentices. We are struggling to get clarity on that, and I would appreciate having the Minister’s guidance so that we and every SME that wants to be part of the apprenticeship programme can get our heads around the issue.

As the only college in our county, Northumberland College welcomes the recent moves to stabilise funding over the coming period, to introduce 19-plus loans and to support apprenticeship funding—my point about SMEs notwithstanding—and it is keen to discuss that with the Minister. It also welcomes the increase in funding for those studying the land-based industries, and I hope Northumberland will continue to lead the way on innovative and modern thinking about farming practices. Those funding streams are allowing Northumberland College, at Kirkley Hall, near Ponteland—and, soon, I hope, at a satellite campus near Berwick, if we can persuade a local farmer to take on a bunch of students—to maintain a really specialist resource that is important for our agricultural county and for the whole north-east region. I look forward to hearing shortly from the Minister about how we can get some real clarity on that and the other issues I have raised.