Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to ensure that further education colleges are able to apply discretion in relation to retaining students who may have been absent from maths or English GCSE lessons.

Further education colleges can decide to retain students who have been absent from their maths or English lessons, but they will have their future funding allocations reduced by half the national funding rate for every eligible student who is not offered the minimum planned teaching hours. This demonstrates the importance of supporting all students to make progress towards and attain level 2 in English and maths. A provider is permitted to opt out up to 2.5% of their 16- to 19 cohort from this requirement without financial penalty, where it is not appropriate to offer a student the minimum planned teaching hours.