Further Education Funding

Rachel Hopkins Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Hosie. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) for securing this important debate.

I speak as one of the vice-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on sixth form education. We have heard much that I agree with around FE colleges, Unionlearn and covid-secure colleges, but I want to focus on sixth-form colleges; I am a governor of the fantastic Luton Sixth Form College.

While the covid-19 health restrictions have been critical to tackling the spread of the virus, the Institute for Fiscal Studies states that school shutdowns are likely to have accentuated the socioeconomic divide in educational attainment. We need immediate action to tackle that widening divide—that point has already been well made—particularly the digital divide.

Increasing the national per-pupil funding rate for 16 to 18-year-olds would be a considerable step forward to closing the divide. Education funding for 16 to 18-year-olds has been cut since 2010, alongside rising costs, an increase in the complex needs of students and the Government demanding more from colleges and schools. The national funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds was frozen at £4,000 per student in 2013, and was actually reduced to £3,300 per year for 18-year-olds in 2014. While in 2019 the Government announced that they would raise the rate for 16 and 17-year-olds to £4,188 per student, that was only a one-year deal, in contrast with the three-year funding deal for five-to-16 education.

Will the Minister explain why the rate was not increased for 18-year-olds? Particularly in the context of this year and the coming year, many students have been impacted— for example in terms of exams—and may well need that extra year at sixth-form college to ensure that they can progress on to the right next step for them, be that an apprenticeship, further education college, higher education college or the world of work. I also want to ensure that the rate increases in line with inflation each year. In January, the Government confirmed that the national funding rate of £4,000 per student in 2013 amounted to £4,435 in 2019 prices, so even the recent increase falls well short of meeting the cost of inflation since 2013.

Sustained under-investment in sixth-form funding over the past decade continues to impact on the education of students. A funding impact survey carried out by the Raise the Rate campaign in 2019 showed that, as a result of funding pressures, 51% of schools and colleges have dropped language courses, 38% have dropped STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—78% have reduced student support services or extra-curricular activities and 81% are teaching students in larger class sizes. Those last two points are particularly important to reflect on in the context of the impact of covid-19. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked about the mental health of students and the support that they need, as much as the costs of covid-secure teaching environments.

Research from London Economics found that £4,760 is the minimum level of core funding required to increase student services such as mental health support to the required level; to protect subjects such as modern foreign languages from being dropped because they are deemed unviable; to increase the time available for extra-curricular activities—for example, around employability, skills and work experience; and to improve the range of enrichment activities, particularly for 16 to 18-year-olds in the state sector, so that they can get that social capital to compete with their better-funded peers in the independent sector.

High-quality education that equips young people with the knowledge, skills and experience that they need to flourish in higher education and skilled employment will be critical to our recovery from covid. That point has been expressed in many ways during the debate. I press the Minister to explain whether the per-pupil funding rate will be increased in the comprehensive spending review. Others have talked about the relationship with the Treasury in finding that out.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association estimates that the number of 16 to 18-year-olds participating in full-time education will increase over the next eight years by about a quarter of million. It also states that capital funding for 16 to 18-year-olds is insufficient and calls on the Government to create a dedicated expansion fund to cater for this increase.

The Sixth Form Colleges Association estimates that it costs around £2.5 million to expand an existing sixth-form institution to accommodate an additional 200 students, which works out at about £12,500 per student. However, analysis of Department for Education data indicates that the average 16-to-19 free school costs about £11.5 million to build, including land purchase, and educates on average 397 students, which works out at about £29,000 per student.

The absence of a dedicated capital fund for sixth-form providers means that expansion is simply not an option for many institutions, as sixth-form colleges and academies must bid from a single condition improvement fund for all phases of education, with the vast majority of funding directed to capital improvement, rather than capital expansion projects. The creation of a dedicated capital expansion fund for high-performing sixth-form providers should be a major priority in the comprehensive spending review and could be modelled on the existing expansion fund for grammar schools.

I ask the Minister again to outline what plans the Government have to increase capital funding for sixth forms.