Further Education: Finance

(asked on 28th April 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to ensure the financial sustainability of Colleges for Further Education (a) during and (b) after the covid-19 lockdown.


Answered by
Gillian Keegan Portrait
Gillian Keegan
Secretary of State for Education
This question was answered on 6th May 2020

We have provided an extensive range of support to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the further education (FE) sector. This is in addition to the series of wider measures to support employers and employees set out by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on 3 April.

The Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) will continue to pay grant-funded providers their scheduled monthly payments for the remainder of the year. Allocations for 2020/21 have been confirmed and payments will be made as scheduled.

We have also confirmed that FE providers can access the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (furlough scheme) for staff who are not grant-funded.

On 24 April, we opened the ESFA Provider Relief Scheme to training providers with contracts for services that were procured as a service under the Public Contract Regulations (2015).

Our latest guidance on Covid-19 for the FE sector and all other educational settings is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/coronavirus-covid-19-guidance-for-schools-and-other-educational-settings.

This support is designed to retain capacity within the FE sector, which is vital to providing the highly skilled workforce that we need to support economic recovery following the COVID-19 outbreak. We are working closely with the sector to look at post-lockdown impacts and challenges on the sector.

ESFA regional teams are available to answer queries from colleges and the Further Education Commissioner and his team are providing expert advice to college leaders. Further support is available from the department’s pool of National Leaders of Governance.

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