Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure Dudley College has the (a) funding and (b) teaching staff to deliver effectively the skills required for the future.

The government is committed to developing world-class technical and vocational education in order to level up skills and opportunities across the country and is therefore investing significantly in our further education (FE) institutions and their people.

Dudley College, like all 16-19 providers, will benefit in 2020-21 from £400 million of additional funding announced last August. This is the biggest injection of new money into 16-19 education in a single year since 2010, with 16 to 19 funding increasing at a faster rate than 5 to 16 school funding. This includes an additional £120 million of funding for high cost and high value subjects, £35 million to support students on level 3 courses who did not achieve a grade 4 in GCSE Maths or GCSE English (or who did not achieve a grade 4 in GCSE Maths and GCSE English) and a £10 million increase in resources allocated for the Advanced Maths Premium.

As a 2020 T level provider, Dudley College will also benefit from additional funding for the delivery of T levels, including funding for the extra hours and industry placements, as well as the Early Adopter Development Fund to enable early providers to support the department to co-create high quality courses.

Our ambitions can only be achieved if our FE institutions are able to recruit, retain and develop outstanding FE teachers. We are therefore investing an additional £24 million in programmes designed to boost the FE workforce in 2020-21. This includes £11 million for training bursaries and grants worth up to £26,000 each in priority subjects and £10 million to expand the government’s successful Taking Teaching Further programme, which brings industry professionals into FE teaching. It also includes £3 million for a new high-quality mentor training programme to support FE teachers.