Adult and Further Education

Debate between Navendu Mishra and Andrew Western

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Western (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to contribute to this estimates day debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) on securing this discussion on such an important topic.

I was contacted by the Trafford College Group, which delivers skills and qualifications to more than 12,000 learners and employer partners across the south of Greater Manchester across multiple college sites, including its North Trafford campus in my constituency. Like many colleagues, I am not naive to the challenges facing the further education sector, but I confess that I was still shocked by what Trafford College Group told me about the impact that more than a decade of underinvestment in further education and a workforce crisis have had on its ability to meet the needs of local students and, indeed, employers. Its frontline experience must be considered today as we discuss departmental spending on further education.

Allow me to offer a brief summary of what I was told is happening on the ground: 140 staff vacancies in the last 12 months—a cumulative figure of nearly 20% of its workforce. In health, care and early years courses, it reported significant issues recruiting staff, due to salary expectations leading to more than 20 vacancies in those areas alone in the past year. That forced Trafford College Group last year to take the decision to cease delivery of health and social care apprenticeships. Given the challenges in recruitment in that sector, that is a tragedy.

There are approximately 165,000 vacancies in social care and 132,000 vacancies in the NHS—the total figure is roughly equivalent to the entire population of a city the size of Newcastle. I suggest to any member of the New Conservatives group who seeks to blame immigration for the recruitment problems in our care sector that, instead, they look at their own party’s record on funding the courses that train and upskill the care staff we need, because it is blatantly not good enough.

It is not just health and social care where Trafford College Group is having to restrict entry to courses. Building services, electrics, construction, engineering and early years education are all areas in which students in Greater Manchester are not accessing courses, which could be vital to improving their life chances, all because there simply is not the capacity in the workforce to teach them. It is not just students who lose in that situation; each of those courses is crucial to the needs of our local, regional and national economy. The National Association of Colleges and Employers has highlighted construction and engineering in particular as areas of the economy where skills shortages are most acute.

Like social care, early years education is crying out for more and better qualified staff, who can serve the equally essential purposes of narrowing attainment gaps for children from disadvantaged backgrounds while freeing up young parents—especially women—to drive forward in their careers, with all the benefits that has for the economy through increased productivity.

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour from Greater Manchester for an excellent speech. Trafford College Group has several campuses, including Stockport College, which I visited recently. One of the key issues that the principal highlighted was workforce recruitment because the pay scales are so low. That has a disproportionate impact on more disadvantaged communities, some of whom I represent. Does he agree that the Government are simply failing on pay for that sector?

[Andrew Western]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and he is a champion for further education in his constituency. I quite agree that pay for the further education teaching workforce has lagged behind teaching salaries more broadly for some time. This is a growing crisis, which is leading to a loss of opportunities for our young people. I absolutely agree that the Government are failing on that and need to address it urgently.

Holding colleges back with inadequate funding to both address their workforce crisis and reverse the cuts since 2010 is the ultimate false economy, but that is exactly what is happening. Despite recent uplifts, the truth is that further education funding compares extremely unfavourably with both university and school funding.

The latest IFS annual report on education spending in England found that further education spending per student aged 16 to 18 in 2022-23 was £6,800, which is lower than spending per pupil in secondary schools and only 11% to 12% greater than per pupil funding in primary schools, having been more than two times greater in the early 1990s. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) made a similar point with that data earlier.