College Funding

Stephen Morgan Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. Last Friday, I spoke to the principal of Portsmouth College, which I had the privilege of attending. What he told me was seriously concerning, and I am proud to be here to speak up for that college.

If we walked into a college in Canada, we would see sixth-formers receiving 26 hours of tuition per week. In Singapore, that figure is 27 hours, and in Shanghai it is 30 hours. We give our sixth-formers 15 hours of tuition per week. We owe our young people so much more. How can we expect future generations to compete on the world stage when we give them far less than their counterparts across the globe? If we want this great nation’s future to be as bright as its past, we need to invest in our young people.

Colleges educate nearly 65% of those who go on to higher education. Located both geographically and symbolically at the heart of our communities, colleges are a driving force for social mobility. All that is being put at risk. As we heard, colleges have had to deal with average funding cuts of 30% and soaring costs over the past 10 years. The effects have been severe. Those who attend state-run colleges have spent on them a third of what is spent on those who attend independent schools. In the past 10 years, qualifications in health and social care, engineering and plumbing have fallen by nearly 70% and, perhaps most significantly, IT qualifications have fallen by almost 90%.

The consequences are dire for everyone in our country, not just for our young people. Think of a world where we have hospitals but no nurses, where we can no longer construct buildings such as the Shard, the Spinnaker tower in Portsmouth or the Clifton suspension bridge in Bristol, and where we can no longer protect this country from the ever-growing cyber-security threats we face. That may sound bleak, but those will all be very real scenarios if we do not increase spending on sixth-form colleges.

Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty’s chief inspector, recently expressed her concern about college funding to the Public Accounts Committee, on which I sit. She wrote:

“My strong view is that the government should use the forthcoming spending review to increase the base rate for 16 to 18 funding.”

Again, it seemed the Government had heard enough from experts; they chose not to take her advice. Instead, the national base rate for 16 and 17-year-olds was fixed at £4,000 per student, which obviously does nothing to account for the inflationary pressures and cost increases that our colleges face every year.

The solution to this problem is simple: we need to raise the funding rate from £4,000 per sixth-form student. Failure to do so would mean fewer young people realising their dreams, would dramatically affect the economy and would undermine our nation’s capability in a global market. A small increase in funding would have an immeasurable effect on the nation’s future and would be a minor price to pay for its financial security. I am not alone in asking the Government to increase funding; it is what the staff of colleges such as Portsmouth College tell me they need, and Her Majesty’s chief inspector has said it is essential. College principals around the country have come forward in support of this fantastic petition. We need to safeguard the future of our country and our young people. We need to raise the rate for fantastic colleges such as Portsmouth College.