College Funding

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petition 229744 relating to college funding.

I am moving the motion on behalf of the Petitions Committee. It is a pleasure to serve when you are in the Chair, Mr Walker. I should just say that, formerly, before I came to this place, I worked for Unison, one of the trade unions representing staff in colleges, and I am a member of Unite.

I will read the petition submitted by Charlotte Jones, a student at Brockenhurst College in Hampshire, but first let me congratulate those who have promoted it, including the thousands who lobbied Parliament a few months ago; commend the excellent work done by organisations such as the Association of Colleges, the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the University and College Union and Unison; and congratulate the almost 70,000 people who have signed the petition. It is great to see so many hon. Members in Westminster Hall today. I cannot believe that they are all fleeing the main Chamber, for one reason or another, at the moment. I hope that it is because of their enthusiasm for the subject under discussion here.

The petition is entitled:

“Increase college funding to sustainable levels—all students deserve equality!”

It states:

“We call on the Government to urgently increase college funding to sustainable levels, including immediate parity with recently announced increases to schools funding. This will give all students a fair chance, give college staff fair pay and provide the high-quality skills the country needs.

Funding for colleges has been cut by almost 30% from 2009 to 2019. A decade of almost continuous cuts and constant reforms have led to a significant reduction in the resources available for teaching and support for sixth formers in schools and colleges; potentially restricted course choice; fewer adults in learning; pressures on staff pay and workload; a growing population that is not able to acquire the skills the UK needs to secure prosperity post-Brexit.”

I shall start by asking the Minister a simple question: why? Why are 17 and 18-year-olds in colleges and sixth forms worth so much less than younger pupils or university students?

My hon. Friend is starting to make a very strong case about further education. In answer to his question, my belief is that we have a Government who fundamentally do not understand what further education is for. We have a Government full of people who have never experienced the further education sector, which is why they so undermine it.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I shall develop a very similar case in a moment, but I suspect that it goes wider than Government, because I suspect that the Minister and most others who speak today will agree that it is simply shameful that the divide has been allowed to grow. I suspect that the Minister will blame the Treasury, and I have some sympathy for that position, but I guess that others will say that the problem goes deeper. The near invisibility of further education and now, apparently, other colleges to people in this place is not a new phenomenon. Arguably, it is at the heart of our current political problem—a divided country, with too many people left behind and ignored. No wonder the education divide mirrors the EU divide almost exactly. That is why I argue that it is in everyone’s interest—everyone’s—that this huge injustice be tackled.

Let me go into some more detail regarding the petition and then move to discussing the national picture, alongside some examples local to me, and the impact of the current funding squeeze. As I said, the petition calls on the Government

“to urgently increase college funding to sustainable levels”

in order to

“give all students a fair chance, give college staff fair pay and provide the high-quality skills the country needs.”

The petition notes:

“Funding for colleges has been cut by almost 30%”

over the past decade, stretching resources, support and the staff available.

In Hartlepool, we have three excellent 16-plus providers: Hartlepool College of Further Education, Hartlepool Sixth Form College and the English Martyrs School and Sixth Form College. Some of their cuts since 2010 have gone up to 62%. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need urgently to address funding in order to avoid the irreparable damage that that might do to our colleges?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I suspect that we may be going on a regional tour of colleges over the next 25 minutes or so. The picture that my hon. Friend paints is familiar across the country; indeed, it is all too recognisable across the nation. I represent Cambridge, a place that is rightly associated with excellent education and where higher education often dominates the agenda and discourse. Somehow that makes the contrast all the more stark between the focus on higher education policy—and, frankly, the resources—and that which goes to further education. Many of us remember the huge national outrage when tuition fees for university students were introduced and later trebled, but when fees were introduced in further education, where was the outrage? Where were the marches? In my patch, it was just me and a handful of local trade unionists out there talking about it—thanks, Peter Monaghan and others from Cambridge. Some people noticed, but the vast majority did not. Was the matter considered newsworthy? Hardly at all.

I would like to add to the points that my hon. Friend is making. Where was the outrage when the education maintenance allowance was taken away? That seriously affected students in further education, many of whom were unable to afford the bus fare even to get to college and receive an education.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That issue is almost worthy of a whole debate in itself, but the problem is not just the removal of the education maintenance allowance, of course. Where was the outrage in the country about the near collapse in the number of mature and part-time students? People can read about that in the pages of the specialist press; I think that we all know why it does not reach any further.

I see my right hon. Friend ready to make some strong points.

On that excellent point, does my hon. Friend agree that we need to hear from the Government not about bringing back grammar schools, but about funding night schools? If, indeed, we exit from the European Union, should we not be giving people in our seaside towns, northern industrial areas and parts of London the skills to compete in the economy that we are going to have?

Characteristically, I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Of course, he has been campaigning on these issues very powerfully; I just hope that people are listening.

Let me give some of the numbers. According to the House of Commons Library, in 2010 the average funding allocation was £4,633 per student. The 16 and 17-year-old funding rate has been frozen at £4,000 since 2013-14. The rate for 18-year-olds was cut to £3,300 in 2014-15 and has remained frozen since then. Funding per student aged 16 to 18 has seen the biggest squeeze of all stages of education for young people in recent years. By 2019-20, funding per young person in further education will be about the same as it was in 2006-07—only 10% higher than it was 30 years earlier.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the £3.3 billion of cuts in further education since 2010 is utterly devastating and, given the higher proportion of working-class students attending further education colleges—I was one of them—does he agree that this Government are hell-bent on making life a misery for working-class people in this country?

My hon. Friend makes the point very powerfully. As I said, I see the divide in my own city. She is absolutely right.

My hon. Friend rightly mentioned the £4,000 rate freeze. He might like to know that, had the rate increased by inflation since 2013, the figure would be almost £4,300 today; that is just if it had kept pace with inflation. For cities such as Stoke-on-Trent, there would have been about £2.5 million more funding for further education. What does my hon. Friend think that we could have done with that money?

My hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. When many of us go into institutions and ask, “What could you have done and what would the difference have been, had you had these resources?” the response is very telling. I am sure that we will hear similar accounts from others. I will come on in a moment to some of the implications of the numbers.

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. Just to put a positive spin on it for this Government in the beginning, my local college listened to me and it is very pleased about the bus passes for 16 to 18-year-olds. That has made a great deal of difference for its students.

On the point that the hon. Gentleman is making about the finances, the two colleges in my area—the excellent Richard Huish College, which is in the top 10 in the country, and Bridgwater and Taunton College, which also does an excellent job—have both raised concerns about finances. They find that the cuts mean that they cannot offer staff as much as systems outside FE can, and that it is difficult to recruit. Might the hon. Gentleman comment on that? In the light of the fact that schools outside that system got a 3.5% pay award, which is hugely welcome—I know that those teachers welcome it—does he agree that we should look at the FE system and at least bring it into parity?