Why the silence about college funding?

The Commons Education Select Committee’s oral evidence session on school and college funding barely touched on FE
19th June 2018, 1:51pm

Share

Why the silence about college funding?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/why-silence-about-college-funding
Thumbnail

Had you blinked at just the wrong time, you might have missed it.

In the first oral evidence session of the Commons Education Select Committee’s inquiry into school and college funding, you might have been forgiven for expecting the glaring funding gap once a learner turns 16 - highlighted only last week by a report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) - to be centre stage. Particularly considering the IFS was in fact represented on the witness panel. 

Instead, it ended up being no more than a footnote, at best. And in many ways, this feels very much symptomatic for the general climate in education policymaking at this point.

It is difficult to blame the witnesses in the committee session - Natalie Perera, executive director at the Education Policy Institute, and Angela Donkin, chief social scientist at the National Foundation for Educational Research, quickly made it clear to MPs that FE funding was not something their organisations had carried out extensive research into.

‘Needs to be looked at’

Asked for their views on FE funding, Dr Donkin replied: “We haven’t looked at further education funding in any depth. I would certainly conclude that funding for FE needs to be further looked at.”

Committee chair and former skills minister Robert Halfon, a constant advocate for FE and apprenticeships, tried to push, repeatedly asking how much funding would be required to fund “an FE system fit for the 21st century”. But surely, asking researchers to put a number on this hugely complex issue was simplifying it to a level that made any discussion impossible.

The panel agreed FE needed more funding, and that more money would be required to deliver the government’s priorities. Ms Perera said she thought it was odd to prioritise funding for 5-16 pupils when the participation age had been raised to 18, but said there had been “no analysis of what the impact has been of 16-18 funding in terms of curriculum and in terms of the quality on offer”.  

And Luke Sibieta, a research fellow at the IFS, said he thought funding for 16- to 18-year-olds was around 14 per cent lower than for younger pupils. He also highlighted the fact that funding levels were higher at university than they were for vocational education at post-16.

The impact on colleges 

The panel of MPs did not seem to mind - a couple of follow-up questions on the cost of GCSE resits, which witnesses agreed was “an issue” and something that needed to be looked at, and that was it. Even the citing of figures from the Sixth Form Colleges Association, highlighting the impact of the lack of funding, enticed little more than a concerned silence from both sides of the table.

Before you knew it, they had moved on to discussing the required funding level for a school to ensure a “good” rating from Ofsted. Lip service has been paid to FE, and nothing further had to be said on the matter.

Only last week, skills minister Anne Milton told FE leaders at the Association of Colleges summer reception that she would keep “nagging” the Treasury for more funding for FE. But this morning’s session serves as a timely reminder that there’s a way to go to persuade those who hold the purse strings that education doesn’t stop at the age of 16.

Julia Belgutay is a Tes FE reporter

 

Want to keep reading for free?

Register with Tes and you can read two free articles every month plus you'll have access to our range of award-winning newsletters.

Keep reading for just £1 per month

You've reached your limit of free articles this month. Subscribe for £1 per month for three months and get:

  • Unlimited access to all Tes magazine content
  • Exclusive subscriber-only stories
  • Award-winning email newsletters
Recent
Most read
Most shared