Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support land-based education.

Land-based colleges play a central role in meeting local and national skills needs, including supporting the department's commitments on Net Zero. These colleges are significant assets to their local communities, enabling people of all backgrounds to gain sought-after skills, get good jobs and climb the ladder of opportunity.

Departmental officials are working closely with Landex and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to develop a strategy for land-based colleges which recognises their central role in supporting the delivery of key national priorities. This strategy will position land-based colleges within the Green Jobs Plan as hubs of skills training and technical innovation, boosting take-up in rural areas of high-quality skills training and ensuring high-quality, updated technical qualifications are available in each local area.

In addition to receiving capital funding, land-based colleges have benefitted from the £300 million the department has invested in the 21 employer led Institutes of Technology, which are leading the development of technical qualifications in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics related areas.

In the 2023/24 academic year, land-based colleges also benefitted from a significant uplift in the specialist programme cost weighting from 1.75 to 1.975. This means where young people are taking specialist land-based courses at these institutions, they now attract a 97.5% uplift on the core funding rate.