Post-16 Students

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a clear and cogent point and draws on another case study from another very good college, this time in his constituency. In many ways he makes the same point as the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) about how entitlement funding helps to develop the whole person and is crucial to the thrust of our education service and to what colleges have done so well for so many years.

[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

May I reinforce the point made in the two previous interventions and speak about social mobility? When I discuss the issue with the principals of Darlington college and Queen Elizabeth sixth-form college in Darlington, they say that although they are getting better and better at producing the right grades to get their students into good jobs and good universities, their students are still unable to access the same opportunities as other young people because they do not have some of the softer skills and wider experiences in life that young people from different backgrounds have been able to access as a result of their family’s income. It is so important that our colleges are able to give young people those opportunities and experiences while they are at college.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She mentions two more very good colleges, both in her constituency. The point that she makes about social mobility builds on the points made earlier by the hon. Member for East Hampshire and my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson). What entitlement funding has done so well is provide experiences that enrich and expand young people’s experiences so that they gain greater confidence and are able to aspire to go on to greater things. The education system post-16, building on the building blocks of the pre-16 experience, has done that so well over recent years. The proposed cuts to entitlement funding call into question colleges’ ability to maintain that momentum.

At the same time as entitlement funding has been cut by 12%, the maximum funding for each student has been reduced from 787 hours, or 1.75 standard learner numbers, in the jargon of post-16 funding, to 702 hours, or 1.56 standard learner numbers. That is a 10% reduction in that part of the funding formula. I warned hon. Members that the debate would get rather technical at certain points.

Some of the money saved by these measures will be returned to colleges and schools with higher numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with low entry qualifications, but details are not yet available of how the £150 million of disadvantaged funding will work. As the hon. Member for East Hampshire said, the lack of clarity and lack of understanding are causing concern in the sector. Those in the sector understand what is going, but they cannot see what might be coming back into the picture.

Transitional funding, which is being put in place to dampen the effect of the cut in entitlement funding, means that the maximum cut in funding per student next year will be 3%, but there is a lack of clarity about how this funding cut will be profiled in future. Many college principals are working on the assumption of a 3% cut each year for the next four years. Many are drawing up radical proposals to address the shortfall, which might be disastrous for the student experience and result in job losses in the sector.

Many colleges are telling me that if the cuts go ahead, they are likely to lead to a severe reduction in the amount of tutorial, guidance and enrichment available. That will probably be reduced to less than an hour’s tutorial session a week for students, and nothing else will be able to be resourced. Colleges will be in danger of becoming nothing more than exam factories, unable to spend time on developing the whole student, a job that they are recognised as doing extremely well at present. Interventions from Members on both sides of the House tonight have evidenced the effectiveness of the job that our colleagues in the post-16 education system are doing on behalf of those students who, after all, are our future and the country’s future.

It is likely that providers will now struggle to offer a broad range of extra-curricular activities that have for so long been a key characteristic of sixth-form education. Team sport, orchestras, drama productions, sign language, community volunteering, rocket science and magazine editing will all be put at risk.