Adult and Further Education

Debate between David Evennett and Katherine Fletcher

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)]

I am pleased to participate in this important estimates debate on post-16 education, as I am a great advocate and strong supporter of FE colleges. I am delighted to see the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), in his place. He has always been a champion for this sector and I look forward to hearing his response.

I pay tribute to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) for his brilliant speech, to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who chairs the Education Committee, and to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who opened the debate. We had a really good start to the debate and it has been very constructive.

In an age when we need to upskill our workforce, teach new skills to meet the challenges of the 21st century and develop staff, I believe colleges are a vital part of any Government’s plan for our economy and our future. We know our country has skills and labour shortages, as well as workers whose skills are out of date. We also have many working-age people who are not in employment. We need a constructive discussion and debate on the way forward, such as the one we are having this afternoon. The debate has not been partisan, but constructive and sensible, looking at the interests of our economy and our country.

The challenges for this Government, and any Government, and for businesses, organisations and communities are enormous. I had the privilege, opportunity and pleasure of working in the FE sector at Bexley College between 1997 and 2005, when I was out of Parliament. Bexley College was then under the dynamic leadership of the principal, Dr Jim Healy, who was forward looking, innovative and heavily involved with the local community and local businesses. Many colleges at that time were not as involved in the community and businesses as they should have been, but Dr Healy made sure that Bexley College was involved.

The college has now merged with others and is part of the London South East Colleges Group, which is progressive and forward looking under the great leadership of the principal, Dr Sam Parrett CBE. She has transformed the college to meet the challenges and opportunities of our area, but I am afraid she is restrained by the funding issues we have heard about from Members across the Chamber. I was privileged to teach and to serve. I taught courses to women returners, the unemployed, business groups, young students and many people who wanted to upskill, advance their careers and jobs, or change career direction. I saw at first hand what an FE college can really do and what it can achieve for individuals, communities and businesses.

I regularly visit and support the London South East College’s Erith campus. It offers an exciting and wide range of educational opportunities at different levels, including business and finance, computing, education and teacher training, health and social care, media, nursing, building development and many other courses. I believe in lifelong learning. We all spend our lives learning new skills and developing new opportunities. I always tell my grandchildren that when I left Parliament in 1997—not by choice, I have to say, but because of the election—we did not have mobile phones or computers. When I came back in 2005, it was quite a different world. I was fortunate to be able to learn the skills of how to use a mobile phone and computer at Bexley College, because as a member of staff I received some training.

I strongly welcome the Government’s Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill, which will increase opportunities to develop skills and knowledge at all stages of people’s careers. I believe FE colleges are fundamental to the delivery of that.

I agree with the Association of Colleges, which reports that the UK faces a range of challenges that will require workers to upskill or retrain. As we have heard, colleges play a vital role developing the skills required in the future and addressing longer-term productivity problems, which we in this country are suffering from.

The CBI reports that nine in 10 people will need to reskill, in large or small measure, by 2030. Every year there are significant changes in our economy and society requires workers to gain new skills, so that they can not only add to their own career development but contribute to their communities and the economy.

We must not always be too negative. The only criticism I have of the debate is that we have not been as positive as we should have been about some of the things that the Government have been doing. They invested £1.34 billion in education and skills training for adults through the adult education budget in the 2022-23 academic year. The AEB funds skills provision up to level 3 for eligible adults aged 19 and over, to help them gain the skills they need for work. The Government are also investing £1.5 billion to upgrade the estate of FE colleges. I know that that is not enough, and that we would all like more, but I am afraid that is the world in which we live at this time.

[Katherine Fletcher]

Leyland loves engineering. It has been famous for making trucks for hundreds of years. As my right hon. Friend mentions, the Government have been investing to help these legacy skills work for the 21st century. We have £3 million for a new Buttermere building at Runshaw College in Leyland for engineering, civil engineering and design T-levels. Does he agree that the future is bright as these skillsets hit the workforce?

[Sir David Evennett]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I welcome what she has told us: it is an exciting time. We are in an era of change and we should glory in that. She has raised an example of a college development in an area of the country that is looking to the future.

The Government have invested £286 million of capital funding in the financial years 2023-24 and 2024-25. I realise that we would all like much more per-student spending, but for 16 to 18 education, it is set to rise by 9% in real terms by 2024-25. In 2021, the Government allocated an extra £900 million in funding for adult education and apprenticeships. That is something else in which we should glory. We are creating more and more apprenticeships. We all know that our excellent Secretary of State for Education took an apprenticeship rather than going to university to start with, and then she subsequently went—and what a success she has been, and what a great job she and the Education team are doing! The Government’s extra investment will boost colleges’ capacity to train and upskill more and more students and improve facilities. It is not just the students that we have to think about, but the facilities, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) mentioned.

Of course, more needs to be done. I welcome what the Government are doing, but an increase in funding is necessary. Perhaps a three-year funding package is the answer, because that would help colleges and institutions to develop and know how much money they have to play with in the next couple of years. One-year funding is always difficult. We all know that from our own personal budgets. If we knew what we were going to get, things would be so much easier.

Recruitment and retention of FE lecturers remains a major challenge. Colleges such as our college in south-east London are dependent on skilled tradespeople and industry experts to teach their courses, but the salaries are not good enough to attract people in to do this work. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that 25% of college lecturers leave the profession after one year, compared with 15% of schoolteachers. I know that 15% of schoolteachers is too many, because we need good schoolteachers. We have good schoolteachers, but we must retain them. However, 25% in the college sector is a huge number, which is such a disappointment. The fact is that replacing them is a big issue; they are talented people.

We have heard that teachers earn much more than college lecturers. That cannot be right if we are looking at investing in young people and not-so-young people to develop their careers and be of real value to our economy. How can it be right that we do not offer a decent salary that is commensurate with what people can earn in a school? We have heard the figures. There is an £8,000 difference between schoolteachers and the average college lecturer, but college lecturers are also specialists. They are specialists in the field that we need—real life specialists. They are specialists in industry, in commerce and in veterinary skills, and we need those people who have practical experience to be able to enthuse our young people post 16. Dr Parrett from my college said:

“Staff pay is constraining colleges from delivering both on government priorities (including T Levels, Higher Technical Qualifications and apprenticeships) and from meeting employer need and learner demands.”

Those are key points that we should take on board.

Of course our south-east London colleges have been impacted by the lack of investment in further education and the current FE workforce crisis. I have highlighted the fact that we are losing staff and that we need talented people, with experience outside academia in the practical skills that we want people to deliver and learn. I will not repeat the list of wants from the Association of Colleges, although there are a couple that we have heard repeated across the Chamber. Reclaiming VAT seems to be an essential part of what we are looking for, as well as increasing the prices. Everything is going up and yet colleges’ funding rates are not going up in line with inflation.

That is a huge disadvantage if we want to encourage colleges to be innovative and to develop as fast as they can to meet the challenges of our economy and our society. My right hon. Friend the Minister, who has been a friend of mine for a long time and has always talked sense on education—on higher and further education—needs to be supported. We are trying to do that, and to encourage him to ask the Treasury to look at the very important points that we have all raised this afternoon.

Further education colleges work superbly and effectively in the community and make a huge difference. Mine covers the boroughs of Bexley, Bromley and Greenwich, and it is pivotal to the success of south-east London that we have colleges training the workforce that we need in those areas.