Further Education Funding
Debate between Luke Pollard and Toby Perkins(5 years ago)
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Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I thank my fellow west country MP, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), for bringing forward this timely debate.
City College Plymouth has been on something of a rollercoaster ride in recent years. The college went into financial crisis last autumn, with a series of changes in principal. The current interim principal, Penny Wycherley, has been outstanding in steadying the ship and getting ready for her successor to start this year, but we need to acknowledge that the college is in financial crisis, and that is for a number of reasons.
First, the cuts to the FE budget have reduced the overall amount of money that the college has to spend. Changes in the way that funding is allocated have disproportionately hurt many colleges in the far south-west. The college has taken on huge financial capital liabilities in building the rather brilliant new STEM hub in Plymouth, which is delivering not only for City College, but for the wider city and the priorities of the local enterprise partnership. That has contributed to an exceptionally high level of recruitment of learners aged 16 to 19, meeting the local skills gap.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making an important point about capital expenditure. The previous Labour Government had a Building Colleges for the Future programme, which was cancelled in austerity times. Now, many college estates simply cannot keep pace, including in Chesterfield.
Luke Pollard
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The lack of funding has meant that City College Plymouth has been unable to keep up with many of the repairs on its old building, leading to leaking roofs. It has not been able to replace technology with what it needs and has moved to leasing technology. It now faces financial barriers in moving off leasing to get the latest technology it needs.
Funding has also had a huge impact on college staff, who have not been given a cost of living pay rise or any other pay rise this year. That is not because they are not brilliant—they are exceptional—but because there is simply no money in the coffers for the college to do that. In an economy where the skills FE college staff have are in high demand, that means we are losing talent and skills. In particular, the engineering staff can earn salaries of £10,000 more simply by leaving the college and the jobs they love, and that is not right.
We need colleges like City College Plymouth to be motoring. It is a forward-thinking college. It has just launched its fantastic marine autonomy course, which will equip our young people with the skills they need to work in Plymouth’s world-class marine autonomy sector. Importantly, it will retrain people who work on the more heavy engineering side of the marine industries in the updated skills they need to succeed in a much more integrated digital marine environment.