Further Education Colleges (North-east)

Chi Onwurah Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jones]

Yes, I will. It is a good example of how local colleges are taking the lead, not by just putting on courses that they hope people will come to, but by working with employers to ensure that the courses they offer are needed by young people and adult learners and by local businesses. This might be an old-fashioned thing, but in our region, the colleges and the education sector are raising awareness that careers in engineering and manufacturing are a way forward and not a thing of the past.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend raises an important point: further education colleges in the north-east already work together and are forward-looking. Newcastle College is engaging with new industries, such as the aeronautical industry and the energy industries. Does he share my concern that the area-based reviews may take the focus away from what is best for our industry and our young people? Too much time may be spent focusing on how to respond to the review. I would like to see more work on adult education in the north-east, particularly given the cuts to local services.

[Mr Jones]

I agree with my hon. Friend, because one of the important points is collaboration between colleges. Looking back, one of the problems in the further education sector was where we had competition between different colleges. That network of working together, which provides opportunities for young people and adult learners, is important. Speak to anyone in the industry and they will say that the 16-year-old leaving school today is unlikely to be in the same job when they retire at 65 or 67 or whatever the retirement age will be when they come to retire. They will need constant on-the-job training and will need to re-access the education system, so the further education sector is vital.

I chaired a meeting last night at an event organised by the Industry and Parliament Trust to talk about the aerospace sector, which has huge potential for growth not only in engineering skills, but in the soft skills of process management and other areas as well. All our colleges, certainly in Durham, are encouraging not only engineering apprentices, who are vital, but the growth sector of tourism in the north-east. I know that Houghall college and also Northumberland deal with land skills and agriculture, which people might think are industries of the past, but they are very important to rural communities in the north-east, and certainly the tourism sector is a growth area across the north-east.

I understand that the Government will want to tackle bad performance, and I support that. If a college or any institution is failing its learners, it needs to be dealt with, but I am not sure how the review will fit in with the rest of the education system. For example, I have already mentioned New College’s sponsorship of two academies, because it saw a clear need to link back into education. The sector is not separate from the rest of the education system, so I want to know how local schools and suchlike will be involved in the process.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland mentioned travel, which is a stark issue in my area and many rural areas. Many young people have to travel quite long distances to access courses. It might be easy in large cities such as London or Birmingham where there is a choice of providers close together, but in my constituency and in hers—for example, in Northumberland—people have to travel long distances, so the issue is not just about the number of colleges, but where they are. I totally agree with her that the abolition of the education maintenance allowance had a huge effect on young people’s ability to access courses.

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[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this important debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

I am not opposed in principle to area reviews, and it is right to assess from time to time the post-16 education on offer to young people and adults in any locality. We need to do that now because resources are scarce and colleges have been under immense pressure—more than they have ever been—in the past five years.

As a result of the environment the Government have created in recent years, I have seen some quite sharp practices taking place between colleges. In my area, we have the ludicrous situation that students have been enticed by offers of free travel to study at colleges further from home, when they could just as easily have studied the same courses in their home towns. That is not a sensible use of public money. Colleges are incorporated, but they are funded by the state, and taxpayers would expect such practices to be discouraged. My fear is that area review actually encourages such a lack of co-ordination and collaboration and that, once colleges agree whatever they agree with the area review team, the situation will deteriorate. I want to know what area review will do to cement collaboration between colleges.

I am all for student choice. I have no objection at all to Darlington students travelling further afield to access courses that are not on offer in the town or that are offered to a higher standard elsewhere. In fact, I would encourage that, and a small number of students from my area travel to Hartlepool to study on the courses mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright). I am pleased that they do that, and it is great that they can, but the lamentable state of public transport in the Tees valley is becoming an ever bigger obstacle to that happening more often. However, I do not like the gimmicky enticement of students who have not had the benefit of independent, well-informed advice about what is best for them.

College funding mechanisms certainly need to be looked at. Currently, colleges can do well as long as they can attract enough students on to their courses and keep them there, but they are not held to account adequately for the destinations of course leavers. Colleges operate in a market, but that market does not work sufficiently well for students.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool was absolutely right to refer to social mobility. There is a lack of quality advice and guidance for young people. Students are therefore not savvy consumers able to shape the market in the way that I am sure the Minister would wish. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission put it well:

“There is a jungle of qualifications, courses and institutions which students find hard to penetrate. Quality is variable and there is little or no visibility about outcomes. Nor is the system working as well as it should for the economy with skills shortages in precisely those areas—construction, technical and scientific skills—that vocational education is supposed to supply.”

In the north-east, we have seen thousands of older potential students lose their jobs in the public sector—and now in steel, too. How will area review take account of the needs of older learners? I ask that because I looked at what happened in Scotland, which undertook an area review—indeed, I was expecting a Member from Scotland to be here. The number of colleges in Scotland fell from 37 to 20. At the same time, there was a reduction of 48% in the number of part-time students and of 41% in the number of students aged 25 or over. That is deeply concerning to those of us from the north-east, given the job losses I referred to.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about adult education and the capacity of our further education colleges to meet a growing demand for which there is less support. As the chair of the all-party group on adult education, I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance that the destruction of adult education will not continue.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The review could do serious damage if we are not mindful of the impact on older learners, given the experience north of the border.

One of the real problems is the confusion about courses, funding streams and where courses lead. A UCAS-style website could be created for vocational education, so that any learner can see for themselves what progression they are likely to undergo and what employment and earnings opportunities they are likely to have, as a consequence of choosing any course.

It would be remiss of me not to refer to my two local colleges—Darlington College, which is ably led by Kate Roe, and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, which is led by Tim Fisher. The heads of both colleges are fantastic individuals, but they are both grappling like mad with how on earth to take their colleges forward, given the context that we are likely to see. Colleges in Darlington are really struggling with what Darlington needs to look like in the 21st century. What should the course mix look like? Who are the students of the future? What will they want? What will the skills needs be not just in our local area, but in the region, in the country and internationally? I want students in Darlington to get the same opportunities as students in the Minister’s constituency, because that is not the case now. That is what we are meant to be aiming for. Those are the right questions for my colleges to be asking, and the Government should be focused on helping them to find answers.

Many of our colleges collaborate well, but there are too many examples of competition. I fear that the area review process will cement that counterproductive behaviour between colleges. As well as three-year funding security, colleges need external leadership. Unless we cement in some form of governance change—I do not know whether that should be done through city deals or some other means, but we do need strategic leadership on a wider scale—and force colleges to accept a direction that builds in employers’ needs, it is inevitable, given the likely future funding context and the competition for students, that different institutions will embark on wasteful enterprises and use novelty gimmicks to remain viable. That is in nobody’s interests: it is bad for the economy, bad for taxpayers and, worst of all, bad for our students, who need well-informed advice that is given without prejudice and based on a sound knowledge of the jobs market.

I am afraid that so far area review has been conducted away from the gaze of students and parents, and away from employers. That has to change. The colleges are our colleges. They are vital local employers and community resources, and they undertake a vital task. We all feel great ownership of our colleges and do not want that to be lost. As I have said, I am open to change, as are my colleges, but the Minister needs to understand that the rationale for that change must have the students’ best interests at heart.