Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase the number of student teaching hours in further education.

The department currently expects that 16 and 17 year olds in full time education at colleges and school sixth forms are provided with, on average, 600 planned hours of education a year, although many receive more than this. This is ample time, for example for the teaching of 3 A-Levels or a substantial technical qualification, with time for other activities to support young people’s development such as mentoring, additional tuition or work experience.

New T Level qualifications will start to be delivered from September this year. These are larger and more demanding technical education programmes, which on average we expect to be 900 hours per year including a substantial industry placement. T Levels programmes will receive additional funding to pay for the additional hours.

The government has announced increased 16-19 funding in 2020-21 of £400 million – an increase of 7% in overall 16-19 funding and the biggest injection of new money in a single year since 2010. Providers may use some of this additional funding to provide more teaching hours for some students, for example those who do not yet have maths and/or English GCSEs at grade 4 or above, for whom £35 million of the additional funding will be allocated.

The arrangements for adult education are more flexible as the teaching hours provided relate specifically to what qualifications or programmes individual students choose to study and their mode of attendance is subject to agreement between individual providers and their students.