College Funding

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) for getting the debate off to such a good start, and I congratulate the students from Brockenhurst College on their work to ensure that the debate took place.

We need not only to love our colleges, but to treasure and invest in them, because they are at the heart of our communities. They have connections to industry and commerce, help to power our communities, and are also engines of social mobility. All the evidence shows that colleges—more than any other institution—transform social mobility. For those reasons alone, we should do everything that we can to support them.

With the rise of the participation age, it is absolutely nonsensical that a youngster at the age of 16 to 18 should be funded 23% less than a youngster at the age of 15. That makes no sense at all, and the debate draws attention to that. I am really pleased to see the strength of opinion from across the House and that hon. Members know and understand the importance of the colleges in their communities. Today, that message has come through loud and clear to all of us.

The Minister really cares about colleges and is a passionate advocate for them, which we welcome, but she needs to deliver. In her response, she must tell us where the underfunding of colleges sits in the Department for Education’s priorities with the Treasury—is it first, second, third, or 27th? We need to be honest about that. I think people in this Chamber would agree that it would be the No. 1 priority if the Department really cared about social mobility and delivering the skill agenda that we need as we leave the European Union.

Skills are central. One of people’s main concerns during the referendum was the issue of migrant labour. If we are to tackle that problem, we need to invest in skills. Who better to invest in those skills than our colleges? They make the difference. For my pains, I ran a college for a number of years, which was probably a more challenging job than being a Member of Parliament. The challenges that principals face today are much greater than those that I confronted in 2010.

Principals can only balance certain things and manage certain variables. One of those variables is the curriculum. Hon. Members have talked about how the curriculum is shrinking, and that includes student support and enrichment, as well as the breadth of curriculum and the disappearance of STEM subjects, languages and so on. Another variable that we have talked about is the workload of teachers, who have to teach more periods, and therefore have larger classes. Class size is another variable. Only a certain number of variables can be played around with: class size, teacher workload and the curriculum. Principals handle and manage all those things. We are reaching breaking point.

Although we welcome the action on T-levels and additional support for maths, T-levels will not come through until 2022 and will not affect young people now, and the other changes are small beer. We need to ensure that the rate is raised for those doing the central work.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

I echo my hon. Friend’s comments. I say on behalf of my colleges—Franklin College and Grimsby Institute—that his points are exactly right. The additional cost burdens of things such as general data protection regulation, which have not been factored in, all add to the costs pressures on colleges.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. One the great colleges in my constituency, John Leggott College, which I was proud to lead, contacted me this week and said that the staff pay increases would be a real challenge for colleges. If the pension increases remain unfunded, that will represent the equivalent of six teacher posts. North Lindsey College also raised the issue of support for apprenticeships. It has had a massive 30% increase in apprenticeships this year to deliver on the Government’s priority of apprenticeships. It is concerned, however, about the potential cap to the funding of apprenticeships, which would really damage the investment that has been made in them.

I hope the Minister will give us reassurances that the strength and development of apprenticeships will not be badly affected by those changes. We need to raise the rate, treasure and invest in our colleges, and recognise that they are a key part of our future.