When it comes to government funding, poring over official figures often has a similar effect as peering at a funhouse mirror: nothing is quite as it appears.
The autumn statement seems an awfully long time ago. The predictions of financial Armageddon for the FE sector in advance of George Osborne’s speech to the Commons back in November ended up being quite wide of the mark, with the unexpected announcement that the adult FE budget would be protected in cash terms for four years.
Whether you put this down to a last-minute U-turn, persuasive lobbying by sector bodies or simply astute management of expectations by the government, the world of FE was left with an overwhelming sense of relief.
But just because things could have been much worse doesn’t mean that times are any less tough. Protection in cash terms is not the same as protection in real terms. And, of course, changes to colleges’ pension and National Insurance contributions have made it 5 per cent more expensive for a college to employ a teacher.
So I’m extremely grateful to the Association of Colleges (AoC) for working with TES to carry out a comprehensive survey of college leaders across England, giving us a unique insight into the impact that the uncertain financial climate is having (see story opposite).
The fact that a third of principals responded demonstrates the level of concern among FE providers across the country.
A glimpse at the figures reveals why this is. Even when contending with record numbers of students taking GCSE resits, not to mention area reviews and the inevitable structural overhaul that will follow, uncertainty over institutional funding levels is far and away the main concern of college leaders. Not surprisingly, institutions are having to cut their spending accordingly, with almost a third facing the uncomfortable prospect of making compulsory redundancies within the next calendar year.
All this makes the response from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills all the more striking. When it was presented with the survey results, it said that “through the introduction of an apprenticeship levy and expansion of loans to learners by 2020, the total spending power of the FE sector will increase in cash terms by 40 per cent compared to 2015-16”.
Not all of this, of course, will go to colleges (skills minister Nick Boles told the AoC annual conference back in November that colleges had only themselves to blame if they allowed independent training providers to “nick [their] lunch” by delivering the bulk of apprenticeships). But with costs rising, it’s more important than ever to carefully monitor and manage how the influx of cash from the levy is being used.
And after reading Will Martin’s feature on pensioner apprentices, it’s hard to justify the use of taxpayers’ funding on training up workers in the twilight of their careers.
Should the over-60s be given such training at all? Without doubt; any employee should be entitled to appropriate professional development, whatever their age. But it’s hard not to conclude that, in some cases at least, this should be paid for by the employer, not the government.
The risk of existing training being rebadged as “apprenticeships” with a view to attracting government funding is not new. But with additional millions of pounds to come from the levy, and the government preoccupied with building numbers to hit its arbitrary target of creating 3 million apprenticeships, many people who work in FE fear that the danger has never been greater.
@stephenexley
This is an article from the 6 May edition of TES. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To subscribe, click here. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here
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