Education: Further Education Colleges

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Tuesday 9th October 2012 Grand Committee

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, it is excellent that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has secured this debate, and I add my thanks to those already expressed for her commission’s incisive work last year investigating the role of further education colleges in their communities. As the former chief executive of Universities UK, I cannot emphasise enough the enormous importance of further education to higher education, particularly at the local level. It remains my passionate belief that all who can benefit from a higher education should be given the opportunity to do so; and for a huge number of people, whether school leavers or mature learners, that opportunity comes via their local FE college. It provides accessible routes to HE for thousands who might otherwise not benefit, and who then bring their enhanced skills and their ideas back into the local community.

But the “HE in FE” role is perhaps not as widely appreciated as it should be. The higher education that is delivered in FE colleges is often local employer-led. Half of all foundation degrees are now taught in colleges, and students are much less likely to come from families with a tradition of higher education. FE colleges have been key to improving access to higher education for disadvantaged or under-represented groups. Ethnic minorities, for example, make up 21% of students in colleges compared with 13% of the general population. Nearly a quarter of young, full-time first degree entrants to colleges come from neighbourhoods with low rates of participation in higher education. This is more than double the rate for all such entrants starting at universities.

To take another example, a group I have spoken about on previous occasions are children coming out of the care system. They remain one of the most under-represented groups in further and higher education, although some modest improvement has been made over the last few years. Research by the charity Buttle UK has shown that FE colleges are the most common route for care leavers into higher education. Yet the National Care Advisory Service says that up to a third of leaving care services have been forced to scale back provision because of budget cuts, despite rising numbers of young people requiring support. Can I put in a plea to the Minister that she can reassure us that even the modest gains we have made are not lost and that care leavers are not left further behind?

Further education colleges offer people the opportunity, on their doorstep, to gain skills and qualifications that meet local economic and social needs. The commission’s report rightly emphasises the importance of partnerships in ensuring that FE colleges can meet the whole spectrum of education and training needs of local communities. But they need support, and it is regrettable that recent pressures on budgets have seen some partnerships face difficulties as funding, for example for lifelong learning networks, has come to an end and there is now a cap on student numbers.

A core area for all FE colleges is providing apprenticeships. I applaud the innovative development of apprenticeship training associations where the colleges themselves, not the SMEs, become the employers, and everyone benefits. I hope that the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing to popularise ATAs as a cost-effective way for SMEs to take on apprentices around the country.

Finally, we know from the commission’s findings that FE colleges make the greatest contribution where they can provide courses and qualifications that meet local need, providing local people with skills. This requires, above all, as almost everyone else has said and the commission itself emphasised, flexibility. I hope the Minister will tell us whether the Government will now take up the commission’s recommendation that up to 25% of colleges’ adult skills budgets should be made available to meet locally assessed needs. FE colleges really can change the lives of those failed by schools, who have lost jobs or who need a change of career. FE colleges at their best should be at the very heart of their local communities.