College Funding

Marcus Fysh Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I congratulate the many members of the public who have signed the petition on this extremely important matter. I want to set the scene by talking about what happens in Yeovil. We have an incredibly successful college. It does a fantastic job for its students and it very much wishes to be at the heart of skills development in the south-west, to work with other colleges and the local enterprise partnership, and to make a contribution, which it is well set to do.

The Minister will be aware that some of her officials have been working with the college to help develop various elements of the apprenticeship scheme, which has been a great success, and to think about what happens with T-levels. One feature of my part of the south-west is that it is a hub for defence industrial manufacturing and for the STEM skills that go with that. The college does incredibly well and is an exemplar of how to involve businesses—they often need skills that do not come out of universities in the same way as colleges—in developing programmes for apprenticeships and T-levels, and thinking about how they might look in the future.

On Thursday, I was at Leonardo, our helicopter manufacturer—the only end-to-end aircraft manufacturer that the UK still has—and I met the team that has been working with Yeovil College to help develop the apprenticeship scheme. They were incredibly enthusiastic about the college and what it can do not only for the company, but for the wider community.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I asked him to do so only because he has spoken so eloquently about Yeovil College, and I should say a word about Boston College in my constituency. I met the students, governors and principal of it last week, but I neglected to mention them in my earlier contribution. They do a superb job.

[Mr Fysh]

I thank my right hon. Friend for, as always, making an eloquent contribution to the debate.

In my visits to Yeovil College over the years, it has become apparent that despite having a great amount to contribute and doing an incredible job, it suffers from having to do so on a shoestring. It has found budgeting difficult. For historic reasons, the fabric of the college could certainly do with improvement, and I have seen evidence of that.

As I am sure Members are well aware, the college system does not have the ability to avail itself of capital grants in the same way that schools and other parts of the education system can. That means that colleges have to make everything out of their basic income, which is a real disadvantage. When we add in the fact, which we heard from other Members, that revenue funding for further education students is a lot less than for university students or secondary school students, colleges are put at a disadvantage in trying to deliver programmes.

Part of the problem with the proposed T-levels system is that there is a lot of extra teaching, but for no more money. Perhaps we can have another look and work together as a group to approach the Treasury and make the case that if we are to get behind T-levels, as I am sure we should for all the other reasons we have heard, there must be adequate funding so that our colleges can do a proper job of delivering for the people who, as we have heard, really depend on them.

I thoroughly approve of thinking about colleges as places where adults’ skills can be developed. We heard about that earlier. As we talk about trade deals around the world, and given the speed at which industry is changing in the current technological age, there will be a great demand—probably an increasing demand—for retraining during people’s working lives. It is essential that our colleges play a central role in that. Maths already gets extra funding. Perhaps T-levels should be treated in the same way, because we could really get behind that. Underfunding our colleges degrades individuals’ choices. In Yeovil, for example, there is a great demand for secondary school-type places in the further education college. It does a great job in its sixth form with A-levels, and that is the only provision in Yeovil. There are no choices, so it is really important to the town that we get this right.

It is great that the petition has raised the issue. It is very important to everybody in my constituency to have a well-functioning Yeovil College that can deliver for the industry of our area and take our local economy from A to B.