Further Education Funding

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this debate today. In the time I have available I cannot do justice to the multitude of speeches made, but Members have shown a sharp eye for details about travel, EMAs, keeping rural and other colleges going, unused space, capacity opportunities, FE in the global market and the drop in level 2 and 3 qualifications.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gordon Marsden]

No, I am not taking any interventions.

It is hugely important that FE is getting the attention it deserves; it is heartening and unprecedented in this year. Members have spent half the Session raising FE funding and raised related issues in recent education questions. The excellent Westminster Hall debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who is in his place, showed that not new challenges, not new issues, but new urgency was required from the Government, given the state of FE funding. The recent statistics from the Love Our Colleges and Raise the Rate campaigns have highlighted that brilliantly.

We know that the statistics are a standing rebuke to the failure of all three Governments in the past decade to fund FE adequately. The Institute for Fiscal Studies found that spending and skills fell by £3 billion in real terms between 2010 and 2011. Those needing second and third chances have been hard hit and adult education has seen its budget cut by almost half. According to the Association of Colleges,

“Over the last ten years, colleges have had to deal with an average funding cut of 30%...Further education is the only part of the education budget to have had year-on-year cuts since 2010.”

The skills Minister knows all that and, to her credit, has tried to push her colleagues in Government, the Secretary of State and the Chancellor, on the funding envelope, but so far answer comes there none. This is at a time when the massive uncertainties around Brexit and its future impact on our economy make the role of FE in delivering new hope and skills all the more essential than at any time in the past 20 years.

Despite a unified sector lobby of the Government last autumn on the need for the Government to reverse their damaging cuts, the Chancellor has persistently failed to acknowledge it. In his financial Budget of October 2018 he talked about schools getting little extras, but FE did not even get the crumbs. Both he and the Education Secretary cannot be oblivious to the demands not only of the colleges but of everyone else involved in the world of FE—the training providers who make up 60% to 70% of delivery; the employers who see skills programmes, both highly specific and generic, as essential to their success; and the LEPs, combined authorities and mayors, all of whom see such things as essential to success in the 2020s. As a consequence, the fabric of sustainability for colleges has become fretted and threadbare. Last year, the Department stated that there could be a best-case scenario of 80 colleges at financial risk and a worst-case scenario of 150.

The National Education Union’s briefing states that colleges have suffered from cuts in activities such as tutorials, enrichment activities and additional courses. The Sixth Form Colleges Association has said similar things. Students have progressively had financial support reduced since the education maintenance allowance went, and the bursary fund that replaced it was insufficient. I know that the principal and teachers at the superb Blackpool and The Fylde College are moving qualifications across the piece, and they think action is overdue.

The Government must reassess urgently how they fund their apprenticeship programme. Last week Government stats showed that the apprenticeship starts between August 2018 and January 2019, two years from the levy launch, are still beneath the number of apprenticeship starts for 2016-17. A large part of that is because level 2 apprenticeship starts have fallen by more than a third in the space of a year. It is increasingly apparent that the Government levy is not designed or fit for purpose for SMEs or non-levy payers, as the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and Mark Dawe have consistently argued. We need to have a situation in which non-levy payers can train apprentices for small businesses, as some are having to turn them away.

We have seen apprenticeship figures go up, but the costs go up as well, so we have a Government, as the hon. Member for Gloucester emphasised in his speech, who need to take action at both ends of the cycle. Qualifications at levels 5 to 7 need to work. We need to sustain the fuel for them, but, as we have heard, levy payers and SMEs are starved of cash. The Government will seek to address some of the drops in qualifications through T-levels, but the money will not be seen in full until 2021-22 and we have no idea whether it will be sufficient. If there is a capacity issue, and, as we hope, T-levels take off, what capacity will the colleges have to deliver them if no additional funding is allocated by the Chancellor? Where are the institutions supposed to deliver them? Even more crucially, how will we bring them to fruition in the 2020s? Our concern is that setting T-levels simply as a competitor to A-levels will be counterproductive to their take-up and viability. We have to focus on 16 to 18-year-olds at level 3 standard whose preparation has been largely geared towards taking A-levels. Assuming that that will fly for T-levels is a risky strategy.

The AOC has said that the Government need to have a base rate increase of £1,000 per student as a minimum, so will the Government commit to that? Successful delivery requires teaching staff, as we have heard, with specialist industry expertise, up-to-date equipment and smaller class sizes. Average college pay is £30,000 compared with £37,000 in schools, and it significantly lags behind industry. The University and College Union, nationally and its many excellent campaigns countrywide, has said the same for years. Who will actually teach the T-levels? Existing teachers who have received very little in funding for years for CPD or new teachers?

The UCU spelt out in crisp terms in its submission to MPs for this debate what they ask Chancellor and the Education Secretary to do. Pay has fallen in value by 25% in real terms since 2009. Teachers in FE colleges earn on average £7,000 less than teachers in schools. We hear a lot about red lines these days, but will the Minister commit to a red line for her Department to get that changed? Since 2010, around 24,000 teachers have left the FE sector: a third of the total teaching workforce. What will the Minister do to ensure that colleges can increase the pay of teachers and ensure that we have a qualified workforce to teach T-levels after their introduction?

It is clear from what we have heard today that more and more Members across this House, especially in this Chamber, know that FE is an essential factor in delivering the fair, socially mobile, economic and community strategies that we will need in the 2020s. We in the Labour party, with our new national education service plans and now the launch of our lifelong learning commission, see FE as an essential building block to achieve that process. Progression, progression, progression is stamped through everything that we need to do in this area as through a stick of Blackpool rock. For now and for today, what Members in this House—all of them—require from the Government is something a little more short term and modest. If the Minster wills the ends, she must will the means. She must require from the Government something a little more. We must commit here and now to start to make good on the promises and the rhetoric that have so far not been backed up with the funding that FE needs, particularly from the Treasury. She and the Treasury must hear loud and clear all of the excellent speeches and demands, and praise for their colleges and training providers, that Members have spoken of here today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne Milton]

I will come to that point in a minute.

[Jim Shannon]

Will the Minister give way?

[Anne Milton]

I would love to give way to lots of hon. Members, but time does not allow. I will make some progress.

FE delivers not only high-quality provision for 16 to 19-year-olds but lifelong learning, which was mentioned briefly. As we heard in a moving story from one hon. Member, it gives people chances to learn that they never had as a young person and the opportunity to retrain when their skills become outdated, to gain higher qualifications and to move along the career path. It also provides patient and caring support for those who are struggling to gain basic skills, opportunities for families to learn together and support for parents to help their children, as we all want to help ours. Although further education’s breadth is its strength, that breadth makes it hard to define: it is not school, but it is not university, so we need to articulate a clear vision.

As hon. Members have noted, funding per student has not kept up with costs. For 16 to 19-year-olds, we have protected the base rate of funding at £4,000 until the end of this spending review period, but that has been eroded by inflation. The Association of Colleges and the Raise the Rate campaign’s funding impact survey report have highlighted many of the issues and financial challenges. Reductions in 16-to-19 funding over recent years have partly been due to falling numbers of students; the number of 16 to 18-year-olds in the population has been falling for 10 years. The level is now 10% lower than in 2008-09, which poses difficult challenges for the sector, but it will start to increase again from 2020.

FE colleges are complex institutions that need to manage ebbs and flows in training provision and finance. On average, vocational courses cost more per student than academic programmes, so we provide more funding for most vocational courses for 16 to 19-year-olds through the programme cost weights. Further education institutions therefore actually receive more funding per 16 to 19-year-old student than school sixth forms, but that is purely a reflection of the greater costs.

I think that the thrust of the message from my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester was that we need to do more to help our colleges. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) spoke about the productivity potential of people who attend FE and about fairness. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) spoke about equality of opportunity; I wonder whether he might send a nice YouTube clip of this debate to the Chancellor, who I am sure would find it riveting. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Sir David Evennett) rightly noted that, despite it all, 81% of colleges are rated as good or outstanding.

Our debates on FE put the case for it front and centre as a driver of social mobility. Bearing in mind the precious little time we have had today, I am sure that the opportunity for part 2 of this debate will come very shortly. My hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) and the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Blackpool South (Gordon Marsden), spoke about T-levels, which will receive an additional £500 million in funding when they are rolled out. In fact, it was in Clacton that I met a woman who said probably one of the most poignant things I have ever heard. She had left school with no qualifications and was a single parent with three children, but she had gone back and done level 2, level 3 and level 4 qualifications. When I met her, she was doing level 5. I asked her why she had done it—what had suddenly inspired her to do it when her children were in their teens? She said, “Because I thought I was worth it.” There is nothing better to hear.

Wages of FE staff are lower than in schools. FE staff are incredibly committed individuals who carry on because of the demonstrable difference that they make to young people’s lives. Further education colleges are independent and set their own wages, but that does not make recruitment and retention any easier.

Differences in life expectancy were briefly mentioned. One of the most significant correlators with poor health is level of education. Better-educated people have better health; I say that as a former public health Minister. The issue needs to be highlighted, and there may be an opportunity to expand this campaign into questions of health—I put that forward as a suggestion, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe will take it on board.

One hon. Member spoke about second chances, and we often talk about third or fourth chances. I have had the privilege of seeing those fourth chances change people’s lives.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the Minister and the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on their speeches. One of the great issues in my constituency is mature students who had a family early or who did not have much interest in education at school but pursued an interest in it at a later stage. Further education can give them that opportunity, as it does at South Eastern Regional College in my constituency. Does the Minister agree that mature students need opportunities in the same way that young people do?

[Anne Milton]

Very much so. This is absolutely about those second, third and fourth chances.

My hon. Friends the Members for Winchester (Steve Brine) and for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton), both former superb Ministers, are now putting their weight behind the campaign to raise the profile of FE and highlight just how important it is for the prospects of young and—never let us forget—older people.

I am pleased to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) met the Chief Secretary to the Treasury—keep on meeting her. We also heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr Dunne) and my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), for York Outer (Julian Sturdy), for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers), for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer), among many others. They all made excellent contributions.