College Funding

Matt Western Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on introducing this Petitions Committee debate today. I will try not to repeat the many points that have been made by hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber.

On her first day, the Prime Minister promised to tackle the “burning injustices” of society, with the implication that everyone in Britain, whatever their background and age, would be able to succeed. Here we are confronted with another example of deed not following word: the cuts to our further education system.

In December, I visited West Thames College in Isleworth in my constituency, which was largely rebuilt thanks to the decision of the Labour Government in 2010 and now has amazing student and technical facilities from that major capital build. The college provides a wide variety of courses, including world-renowned specialist hair and make-up degrees, whose graduates get jobs in the west end and in the film and TV industry; a range of vocational courses designed in conjunction with local employers, such as in aviation and logistics, where we have a local skill shortage; and courses in English as an additional language to enable young people recently arrived in the country to make progress in education and employment. There is specialist support for those who need additional support to access mainstream courses, and specialist courses for students with severe or complex disabilities. There is also a programme for 14 to 16-year-olds who have not coped in school for various reasons, such as health or family problems.

When I visited in early December, I met a number of students on a variety of courses—students such as Page and Rosie, who were aged 18. Each had struggled for different reasons when younger and had missed a lot of school, but West Thames is providing them with the focus to catch up on their core skills and giving them career hopes—Page in bridal hair and Rosie in car mechanics. I met 32-year-old Katrina, who is doing an access to social work course. As the lone parent of a disabled child, she has struggled to pursue a career or even, at times, to get a job. She told me how the course will enable her to apply to university and hopefully achieve her dream of becoming a professional social worker.

Uplifting as their stories are, the students on the different courses raised concerns with me about problems they had experienced recently: cuts to the teaching hours that are needed to cover the breadth of the curriculum on their courses; cuts in courses such as employability, which are so important in helping them to get a job; concerns about the provision of up-to-date specialist equipment and software, because they are changing all the time and the college needs to keep up with the changing needs of employers; and overstretched special needs and mental health support. The college is also suffering from the decimation of adult learning, with fewer and fewer adults able to attend the college.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I was lucky enough to benefit in 2008 from retraining through adult education. Does my hon. Friend agree that the great benefit of further education is the richness and breadth it can provide, and the diversity of courses that does not exist anywhere else? We are seeing 30% cuts at Warwickshire College Group, which has 29,000 students and provides a huge benefit across Warwickshire.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The decimation of adult courses has been brought about partly through the ending of student support for over-19s. The students and colleges are dealing with that cliff edge, which comes when students reach 19. Aviation and ICT course students told me that more than half the students left at the end of level 2, because they no longer got funding. They therefore missed out on level 3, which is the best gateway to jobs.

West Thames College, like many others, has lost 30% of its funding in the last 10 years, while costs, as other hon. Members have said, have been rising. Students told me that they respected their tutors greatly and could not understand how they earned £7,000 less than equivalently experienced schoolteachers. The West Thames principal, Tracy Aust, made it clear to me that this situation, with all these problems, is not sustainable and ultimately impacts not only on students but on staff, businesses, our communities and our wider economy.

How can Government Members wring their hands about UK productivity and then oversee the decimation of the education and skills training that is fundamental to the productivity that this country so badly needs? How can they wax lyrical about social mobility and then withdraw or underfund the options that enable people to aspire and achieve?