Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for sixth-form colleges to provide extra-curricular activities to develop employability skills.

Colleges use their funding to provide study programmes that are tailored to students’ needs and include employability, enrichment and pastoral (EEP) activities as well as teaching time for qualifications. EEP hours can include activities such as development of employability skills, careers advice and guidance, and pastoral support such as mental health support.

Colleges have a requirement in their funding agreements to secure access to independent careers guidance for 16 to 19-year olds. The government’s careers strategy expects colleges to use the benchmarks published by the Gatsby Foundation to develop and improve their careers provision. We have published guidance to set out in detail what colleges are expected to do. The department is not prescribing how each college fulfils the requirement. There is a wide range of support available, and drawing on connections with a network of employers should be a central aspect of the college’s overall careers strategy.

We have recently allocated additional funding to support institutions to develop their capacity to establish work placements, as part of the preparation to deliver T levels. This will have a direct impact on employability. A number of sixth form colleges will receive this funding.

We recognise that colleges cannot act alone to support the mental health of their students and the proposals in our green paper, ‘Transforming Mental Health Provision for Children and Young People’ to provide additional support to schools and colleges will be supported by over £300 million in additional funding.

In addition the department is actively considering the efficiency and resilience of the further education sector, and how far existing and forecast funding and regulatory structures meet the costs of delivering world-class provision.