16-to-19 Education Funding

Kelvin Hopkins Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Westminster Hall

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I will try to follow that guidance.

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin). I agreed with pretty much everything he said and I very strongly support the campaign for our sixth formers. With that clear, I want to use this opportunity to speak on behalf of the brilliant Paston Sixth Form College in my constituency. This year, it secured an A-level pass rate of 99.3%, with 80% at grades A* to C. It is an institution achieving very high academic standards, yet as a result of a completely flawed area review, it is being forced to merge with City College Norwich. That is a good institution, but it serves a different market and has a different purpose from a sixth-form college with a very strong academic standard. It is a sixth-form college in an area that has a low-wage economy and where there is traditionally a low rate of students going on to university, yet we are forcing it to merge and losing it as an independent, stand-alone institution. That is a crying shame.

I am disgusted, frankly, by the area review, which I think is completely flawed. Why is that? The area review combines further education colleges and sixth-form colleges—two types of organisation that often do very different work—and leaves out school sixth-forms, which are doing the same job as sixth-form colleges. It is totally flawed. An institution that is currently funded for 688 students is deemed to be unsustainable, when there are two new free schools in Norwich—one of which is funded for 201 students and the other for 80 students —which are deemed to be viable. How can anybody justify that uneven playing field, which has forced a brilliant institution to merge and lose its independent status?

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman touches on a subject that also affects me very much. Two local colleges are being talked about in terms of a forced merger. I have written to Ministers and to the educational establishment to try and make sure that it does not happen. I hope that the Minister takes note that we do not want forced mergers, which damage our local systems.

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I do not mind diversity. I absolutely advocate diversity of provision, but I want a level playing field. I want every institution to live or die on the basis of the same rules, yet special favours are being given to free schools. There is an uneven playing field between school sixth-forms, which can cross-subsidise from the higher funding for early years education, and sixth-form colleges, which cannot do that. That is unjust. The Government are responsible for the loss of an independent institution that performs brilliantly. I would like to meet the Minister to discuss my very real concern. I have written about it previously, but my plea was ignored and the flawed area review carried on. At some point, if we want to retain these brilliant institutions, we have to be willing to reflect on a flawed system, and decide to look at all institutions on a level playing field.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

I shall try to stay within three minutes. I speak as a governor for 24 years of Luton Sixth Form College, a superb college with great achievements. Indeed, we have a great success on my immediate left: my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) was a star pupil at Luton Sixth Form College many years ago, which proves my point. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group for sixth-form colleges, so I will focus particularly on those.

In my second ever debate in this Chamber, some 20 years ago, I called for better funding for sixth-form colleges. Since then, funding has been squeezed, cut and cut again despite constant campaigning against such cuts. In that earlier debate, I described sixth-form colleges as geese that lay golden eggs: in my view, they are the most successful institutions in our entire state educational system in educational achievement, teaching and learning and value for money.

All of that is increasingly at risk from funding cuts. We should restore and increase funding for sixth-form colleges, not cut it. Indeed, I have called on numerous occasions for the creation of many more sixth-form colleges. The arguments for such a programme are overwhelming. I ask the Government to consider that possibility again and take steps to expand the sixth-form college sector.

Of the final two points that I emphasise, the first is the need for greater contact teaching hours. It is a disgrace that our sixth-form students have half as many contact hours with teaching staff as their counterparts in Shanghai. As a former student as well as a former lecturer on A-level and other courses in further education, I know that there is no substitute for classroom teaching, tutorial time, pedagogic teaching and endless explanations so that all our students can succeed and achieve to the maximum of their abilities.

Secondly, we live in a competitive economic world. It is vital that our students have the best education possible on all fronts, but particularly in mathematics. Luton Sixth Form College runs intensive mathematics courses for GCSE retakes, with great success, but they must be properly resourced. College funding is crucial. Britain still has a national mathematics problem; many students leave higher education with poor maths skills. Funding colleges of all kinds to raise maths standards for all students is vital in today’s world. I ask the Minister to take those messages back to her Department.